Paladin is the home of David M. Hochstadter.
I am a Senior Digital Compositor currently living in Los Angeles, California. I am close to the outdoors where I can hike and mountain bike. There are amazing views with lots of sage, coyotes, rabbits, and an occasional rattlesnake. It’s an easy drive to , Burbank, Santa Monica and Hollywood. So, it’s an ideal location for me.
I grew up in Thousand Oaks, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. I attended college at California State University, Chico, about an hour north of Sacramento, California. It was there where I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Graphics.
Career
My visual effects career started shortly after college in 2002. I became a Flame assistant at The Finish Line, Ltd., an award winning post production boutique in Santa Monica, California. It was here where I was introduced to the standards and practices of the industry.
The hard work paid off and in 2003 I was fortunate enough be offered a staff position at The Syndicate/Cafefx Group. As a Flame Assistant, I was involved with all aspects of operating the two Autodesk Flame bays. I archived and conformed spots on the Flames, operated the HD and SD machine room, as well as roto, bg prep, and Maya work.
After three years at The Syndicate I took a position as a paint and roto artist at Hydraul’x. There I worked on 300, X-Men, and several other films. After Hydraul’x I freelanced around Los Angeles as a paint and roto artist. I slowly climbed the ladder learning new skills as I went. Soon, being in the right place at the right time paid off, and I was handed some composites under a tight deadline. I delivered and I haven’t looked back ever since.
Now working as a compositor since 2007, I have been lucky enough to work on some big films and TV shows. I’ve worked on Prometheus, a stereoscopic left and right eye photographed composited film. I’ve setup my own Maya stereoscopic camera’s for Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph. I’ve even tackled some hard 4k composites for David Fincher’s The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo.
In 2013 with Television becoming more popular, I started working on episodics, commercials and cinematics. Starting with The Mill, I worked on several high profile commercial and cinematic campaigns. Chevrolet, Apple, and Call of Duty: Ghosts were the most notable.
With my experience in the fast paced, high-resolution Television world gaining traction, I got a call from FuseFX in 2015. It was here I grew into the Senior Compositor I am today. Compositing every type of shot, leading and even supervising.
In 2017 my love of comic books took me to Encore VFX. Here I worked on The Flash, Supergril, Titans, and Doom Patrol. I took on many hard shots and full sequences, dealing a lot with digital environment effects, like holograms. But worked on every type of composite possible. My creativity was allowed to flow freely here. I enjoyed it a lot.
Currently I just wrapped up at Crafty Apes. Here I worked on episodics dealing heavily with CG integration, set extension, and FX integration.
Some of the TV show I have worked on:
1923, MacGyver, The Walking Dead, Magnum P.I., Doom Patrol, Titans, The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, S.E.A.L.S., You, True Detective,TURN, Marvel’s Agents of Shield, American Horror Story, Salem, Hell on Wheels, Manhattan, Sleepy Hollow, Halt and Catch Fire, Scorpion, Stalker, Criminal Minds, Scream Queens.
Some of the films I have worked on: Extraction 2, Unfrosted, Holdovers, Bright, Wreck-It-Ralph, Prometheus, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Gangster Squad, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Yogi Bear 3D, and King Kong.
Some of the companies I have worked at:
Crafty Apes, Ghost VFX, PictureShop, Encore, FuseFX, The Mill, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Reliance MediaWorks, Technicolor, Prime Focus, a52, Zoic, CafeFX, Hydraul’x, Luma Pictures
and EntityFX.
My main compositing package is The Foundry’s Nuke. I am also proficient with Autodesk Maya.
Please check my demo reel out. Let me know what you think. You can find my resume in pdf form there.
You can contact me at davidh@paladinfx.com.
My IMDB credit page.
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