A lot of sweat and high technology are some of the main elements of Tatiane Leite's work in Hollywood. Special effects artist and engineer, with a degree and master's degree from Unicamp, the Brazilian stood out in the fantastic world of cinema and, today, leaves her mark on record-breaking box office productions, such as Ant-Man and the Wasp e Mission Impossible - Fallout.
"The glamor of Hollywood exists in the satisfaction of seeing the work finished, as we are all cogs in the wheel. But, day to day, I work a lot. The market is extremely competitive, technology doesn't stop and we work with cutting-edge technology. So, I have to always be studying, reinventing myself and learning about new tools”, says Tatiane.
For her, training at Unicamp was fundamental to her career. “All the foundation and structure I had at Unicamp allowed me to position myself where I am today. I don’t have the slightest doubt,” she declares. According to Tatiane, the professional versatility and solid technological basis of her training, required by the North American film market, have their roots at the University. “My profile of being a professional who can adapt to anything, with the flexibility to migrate from one software to another or perform the same task using different tools, is based on the engineering I did at Unicamp and the master's research”, she states.
In his master's degree, which he completed in 2012, at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Feec), under the guidance of the teacher José Mario De Martino, Tatiane Leite developed a system for improving the attractiveness of faces in images. The technology created generated a patent and can be consulted in the Patent Portfolio of the Unicamp Innovation Agency (Inova), as “Software to make faces more attractive”.
From the survey of points of interest and relative measurements between facial elements, Tatiane established a training set to be used in learning algorithms to define mechanisms for improving facial images. Among the possible uses of the technology, the following are suggested: editing of advertising images and animation of images to generate videos; avatars of characters, salespeople, presenters and virtual teachers; and suggestions of possible changes in faces for aesthetic plastic surgeries. Furthermore, the research contributed to inserting Tatiane into a very specific niche in the competitive Hollywood market: the digital face lift. “That basic lift on people’s faces”, explains Tatiane.
Upon completing her master's degree, Tatiane went to study entertainment at the University of California and was faced with challenges beyond those imagined. "WedWhen I arrived in the United States, I realized that the area I wanted to work in was completely dominated by men, more so than Engineering, where I came from,” he says. Among the evidence of the reality faced by women in the area, Tatiane cites the only statuette received by a woman, in 80 years of the special effects category: by Sara Bennett, in 2014.
Thus, in addition to the cultural and area differences that the change implied, Tatiane had to convince that being a woman, immigrant and Latin American could positively add to her professional profile. “These three aspects put me at the end of the line, in that little place that no one wants. I had to prove that I deserve this place, showing my technical quality, professional ethics and all the cultural and visual baggage that I bring with me”, says Tatiane. “It was demanding, but it's rewarding when you see that you went into the field you wanted most, the job is exactly what you expected and you fit perfectly into it,” she says.
