By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Laura Pedro.Laura Pedro, Visual Effects SupervisorEven though Society of the Snow thrust Laura Pedro into the international spotlight and garnered a nomination at the VES Awards as well as trophies from the European Film Awards and Goya Awards, she has been amassing an impressive portfolio that includes A Monster Calls, Way Down (aka The Vault) and Superlpez. Born and raised in Montgat, Spain, Pedro currently resides in Barcelona where she is a visual effects supervisor for El Ranchito.I did not come from an artistic family, but I always liked photography. When I was little, my father gave me his camera, and I began trying to tell stories with it; that is when I figured out this is maybe something for me. When I was 16, our English teacher proposed to us to make a project for the government that would give us money to learn English outside of Spain. My classmates and I decided to make a movie about the robbery of The Scream by Edvard Munch. We won the money to travel to Toronto and stayed there for a month to learn English and finish the movie. The intervening years have strengthened her self-confidence. The difference from then to now is I finally found my own voice.Photography teaches the fundamentals of making an image. I know a lot of things about visual effects, but in the end, its all about light, Pedro notes. If you dont know anything about light, its impossible to tell things with images. Its incredible how photography connects with everything. Originally, the plan was to study photography, not visual effects, at ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya), which is the alma mater of filmmaker J.A. Bayona. I had an accident during the first year of school; I lost all of the exams and couldnt specializein photography. Because of that, I decided to go for my second selection, which was visual effects. The schooling was beneficial as it provided an overall understanding of the filmmaking process. When I was studying, every week we did a short film, and I was either producing or doing camera or directing. That caused me to work with different teams and learn various things for five years. When I finished school, it was easy for me to start as a visual effects supervisor and compositor, and know what the director wants and help them with visual effects.Robert Zemeckis has left a lasting cinematic impression. There are a lot of movies that I cant get out of my mind, like Death Becomes Her and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In my career, I normally do invisible effects, but when I have the opportunity to do comedies with visual effects, its fun for me to be part of that. Of course, you know that its fake, but they tried to do it in the most realistic way. Innovation can come from unlikely sources. InDeath Becomes Her, they developed how to do skin in CGI, then the same technology was used for Jurassic Park. For me, its interesting and cool that you are developing a technology not doing Titanic, but a comedy. Its awesome to have the chance to create new technology. This has never happened in Spain because the industry is small, but we have the opportunity in the films we make to take the technology from the big productions and try to use it in our smaller ones, and teach the producers in Spain that they can trust these new technologies and ways of working with visual effects.Pedro on a set for The Vault (aka Way Down), which is part of the supporting chamber located under the Bank of Spain.(Photo: Jorge Fuembuena)Its important to have role models. Now that we have the schools, maybe in 10 years I will work with more supervisors who are women. Its not about gender. Its more about the age you start doing visual effects or become avisual effects supervisor because Im 34 and other supervisors I know are 40 or 50. We are not of the same age and have different ways of thinking.Laura Pedro, Visual Effects SupervisorOver the past decade, a better understanding of visual effects has taken root in the Spanish film industry where digital artists are brought into pre-production to properly plan for complex shots rather than being seen simply as post-production fixers. Visual effects are in all of the productions, so its easy to work continually, Pedro states. There are more visual effects companies that do television commercials trying to upgrade to narrative fiction. Television and streaming have become a driving force in Spain. Here, the film productions are small, so television and streaming productions allow us to continue working through the year. Maybe you do a film and at the same time two TV shows.Filmic visual effects have made their way to the small screen. The difference when you do a project like Game of Thrones or Ripley is that theres a lot of work in pre-production trying to find the perfect design with the cinematographer and production designer in the most cinematic way, Pedro remarks. Other projects work faster. One has to be willing to adapt. In the end, every project, director and producer is different. Its like a new adventure. When I begin working with a new client, I need to have a lot of patience, try to understand and be faster because I only have three months. Normally, I work with visual reference found on the Internet or pictures or videos taken with my camera. I have this capacity to find what is exactly in the mind of the filmmaker with the reference that I have imagined and later start working with our team doing the concept.Pedro in the Andes in Chile while shooting the scenes where Nando and Canessa attempt to find help in Society of the Snow. (Photo: Quim Vives)For Society of the Snow, the art department built two fuselages and the previs department at El Ranchito helped director J.A. Bayona design each shot of the crash. (Photo: Quim Vives)Pedro participated as Visual Effects Supervisor in the Spanish interpretation of the superhero genre, which resulted in Superlpez (2018).In 2013, Pedro made her debut as a visual effects supervisor for Barcelona nit destiu (Barcelona Summer Night) by director Dani de la Orden, and she would reunite with him a decade later for Casa en flames (A House on Fire), which is currently the most viewed movie in Catalonia. A major career turning point occurred when the emerging talent was recruited by a prominent Spanish visual effects company. I was doing a short film for a Spanish singer named David Bisbal, and El Ranchito called me to begin working with them on A Monster Calls, Pedro recalls. Flix Bergs [Founder and President, El Ranchito] is my mentor, and I learned from him its better to start with the real world and plates, and after that begin working with CGI because that mixture works better for the human eye. Also, he gave me the power to say, No when Im on set.Pedro and Special Effects Supervisor Pau Costa with their Goya Award for Best Special Effects for Society of the Snow in 2024. (Photo: Papo Waisman)Visual Effects Supervisor Flix Bergs, Special Effects Supervisor Pau Costa and Pedro celebrate Society of the Snow winning the Goya Award for Best Special Effects in 2024. (Photo: Ana Beln Fernandez)Visual Effects Supervisor Flix Bergs and Pedro on the set of A Monster Calls (2016), which was their first project together. (Photo: Quim Vives)Pedro after winning her first Goya Award in 2019 for Superlpez. which was shared with Special Effects Supervisor Llus Rivera.Personal highlights include a childrens fantasy tale, a comic book adaptation and the recreation of a historical event. Its not common in Spain to do a movie about a superhero like Superlpez, Pedro observes. We had to build a robot that was 10 to 12 meters tall. Before Superlpez I worked on A Monster Calls where we needed to build a monster that was also 12 or 13 meters tall, so I knew how to film a movie about this difference of dimensions and create something really big. Society of the Snow is a movie that has entirely invisible visual effects. We achieved that by traveling to the Valley of Tears, doing all of the environments with real photography, managing all of this material and developing the tools to work with five vendors at the same time while maintaining consistency. It was a lot of work.Nowadays, the protg has become a mentor. Its important to have role models, Pedro states. Now that we have the schools, maybe in 10 years I will work with more supervisors who are women. Its not about gender. Its more about the age you start doing visual effects or become a visual effects supervisor because Im 34 and other supervisors I know are 40 or 50. We are not of the same age and have different ways of thinking. Patience is a key trait. The most important thing is to be yourself and talk about things. I continue to learn by reading books and watching films. I try to remain connected with the technology and new tools, but its completely impossible to know everything. Real-time and machine learning have introduced new ways of working. There is a good and bad way of using technology. We need to be calmer because we rely on each other in the end to do the things that we love, which in turn creates an emotional response from the audience.