Leslie Chung is a Senior VFX Supervisor at the New York City branch of Crafty Apes VFX. She is known for her fantastic work in Little Women, Gotham, Manifest, Deadpool 2, Midsommar, and many more. With a background in computer art, Leslie has been contributing to the film industry for almost 20 years. She won an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Single Episode” for Star Trek: Discovery in 2021.

From her trusty Sony A7 to Scaniverse and Evernote, Leslie takes us into the gear bag she carries for “digital nomad camping.”

Leslie’s backpack gear:

• Sony Alpha 7R
• Canon 7D Mark III mirrorless (occasionally carries)
• 8mm fish-eye lens
• RICOH THETA 360 camera
• Tripods
• Pelican Air carry case
• iPad Pro for 3D scanning
• Multiple monitor screens
• Color Chart, Grey Ball
• Adjustable Stool

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’m Leslie Chung I’m a senior VFX supervisor at Crafty Apes, based out in New York City.

What are some of the recent projects you’ve worked on?

The most recent one, which just had a trailer drop today, is The Crowded Room with Apple TV. Just spent about a year plus working on [it], so that’s going to be out June 9th, and It’s a period drama from the 1970s.

Did you get a set for that one?

Yeah, shot the whole thing through from start to finish. It was a hundred thirty days on set plus like, six months on the post.

Nice. Any other projects you’d like to mention from your work history?

Let’s see – I’m currently – while doing that – was Star Trek: Discovery. We’re on Season Five of that now. I’ve been on it from the start since Season One so it’s been a fun run to kind of wrap that out within this year or next as well, and I won an Emmy for it.

That’s awesome. Congrats!

Thank you. It’s been a great project to grow with and I’m looking forward to the next one…hopefully, any other of the Star Trek spin-offs that are coming.

Yeah, I feel like that’s always like a piece of history whenever you work on Star Trek. I was looking through old VHSs yesterday because I’m putting a bunch of my stuff in storage and I have all these old Star Trek episodes that I had recorded on VHSs. Just oddly nostalgic.

It’s really historical, isn’t it? It’s all kind of doing groundbreaking things with TV and I feel like, social commentary and status. I mean, this was one of the first ones to have a person of color and a woman as a captain.

Yeah, first on-screen interracial kiss too, right?

Yep, a good mix of people of all sorts of sexual orientations, too. And it’s also the show that helped launched the Paramount Plus platform now, too.

Tell me a bit about your kit. What’s in your kit?

I like to carry a Sony A7. My personal kit has an a7R and every now and then I’ll have a 7 Mark III [Canon 7D Mark III] as well. I like to do a two-body kit so that I can have one camera ready to go with an 8mm fish-eye to do some HDRs, and the other one for reference photography or anything else I might immediately need on set with the more versatile lens.

For the HDRs, do you always do it manually or do you use a 360 camera?

I’ll do both if I really need something pretty detailed that I know is going to result in some pretty hefty CG later on. I’ll do a manual one especially if I have an object that needs plenty of reflections in it. Otherwise, finding that the THETA works out pretty well, and is great for a quick run-in and run-out without disturbing production too much.

What else is in your kit?

I’ve got a couple of tripods that I feel forced to use when I really want to get something of very stable good quality. I like to be pretty on the go. I pack it all up into a Pelican Air that I can wheel around everywhere I am.

Everything packs into one case?

Everything mostly packs into one case. I could use an extra little bag attached to it and I’ll have a backpack with me. I think the other really versatile thing I’ll have is an iPad Pro. That helps me get all of my scanning done, keeps me in communication with the post team, with everyone else on production, with Crafty for concurrent VFX that’s going on, and also acts as another monitor too that I can use if I could get a remote feed from the set. That’s a great all-in-one package of a good chunk of everything that I feel like I need on set.

Do you bring your iPad instead of a laptop or do you bring your iPad and laptop?

Sometimes I bring both. I’m a bit of an over-electronics carrier whenever I go on a set. I like to think of it as digital nomad camping – I like to have everything with me, multiple screens so that I can see everything. I feel like I always have a hard time seeing everything, so I like doing that. So, I’ll pick a good station somewhere on set and set up there, maybe near the DP tent or the video village. If I really, really need to see things, I’ll sneak into the DP tent if we have a good relationship.

You work mostly in New York – are you taking the subway or walking everywhere you go for the most part for a set?

For set, I will probably mostly call a cab. It is almost always carrying around a lot of gear. As a small person carrying around thousands of dollars worth of stuff, I feel like a car is usually more appropriate.

Do you have a favorite piece of gear or something you’ve nerded out about recently?

Yeah, I think it’s currently still the LiDAR for the iPad. It’s not like a fully fleshed-out 3D scan but it’s been proven to be really more than good enough for a lot of the things that we need. It’s aided in tracking pretty well, in cross-referencing with measurements that we’ve been able to obtain on set. It helps too, to get a good view of what a location is to show the team, [and] to have discussions with the rest of production about. Looks fancy and great too when you pop open the scanning software and just like, rotate around the room.

I feel like the tech for a lot of other things as far as a VFX supervisor kit goes, hasn’t really changed all that much…but I’d say the iPad Pro continues to impress me.

On her hardware choices for lighting:

Yeah, I’ve used the color chart and the gray balls pretty often for scenes that we expect there to be some heavy CG VFX on. I don’t always do it unless I’m on a bigger show just not to slow down production or super-call attention to myself. But it’s worked out pretty well. I’d like to try out the Spydercube at some point. It just looks like a really great versatile object to have – it’s less cumbersome than the gray balls.

What app are using for the scanning stuff?

I’ve mostly been using Polycam [with] Scanner Pro just to have a few versions of something…It’s been a few months since I’ve been on set, but I think Scaniverse was the newer app that I was told has some pretty great results with their scans, maybe even a little bit better than what I was seeing on Polycam.

What do you use for notes?

For notes, I do Evernote. When I’m really lazy, I’d love to use Apple Notes just because it’s right there, but for the most part, I’m using Evernote because it allows me to share cross-platform and embed pictures and video into it pretty easily with an exportable PDF.

Google Notes, I have been wondering if maybe I should come back into that. The show that I’m currently shooting has been using Google Keep a bit more to share documents across different departments, so I like to explore that a little bit more. I feel like finding a good notes app is always been like an ever-evolving process.

On the unheralded heroism of the collapsible stool:

I think my other favorite unsung piece of gear is this tiny stool that folds up into a tiny thing like this big. It’s literally just a fisherman’s stool that cost 20 bucks on Amazon. Because then I could just fit in almost anywhere with that. It’s super light to fold up and carry in my hand or pop into a large pocket that I might have on my coat, and be everywhere [with it].

Leslie visually demonstrates the power of having a good chair:

So this was a little heavier than my little aluminum stool…but it folds up tiny and it’s easier to fold and feels a little bit more sturdy and just opens up like this into a very small little thing…I just love this thing.

Many thanks to Leslie Chung for sharing her favorite gear with us. Leslie’s upcoming project, The Crowded Room (featuring Tom Holland and Will Chase), is now available for streaming on Apple TV+.