Conversations with Logan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Logan.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and got into filmmaking and VFX when I was 10, watching YouTubers like Freddie Wong and Corridor Digital. I admired how they made films with their friends, and I wanted to do the same. One of the first VFX tutorials I remember following step by step was a muzzle flash effect in After Effects on a $300 laptop from black Friday that I still have sitting in my closet today. I was immediately hooked by both the challenge and the creativity of it all.

Early on, I constantly felt frustrated by the gap between what I imagined and what I could actually create. I’d spend hours watching 10 year old 3ds Max and After Effects tutorials, sometimes in completely different languages, trying to piece together how to make an effect work. Most of the time, it still didn’t come together the way I wanted, but I became more determined with the process of figuring it out.

By high school, I had saved enough money to buy a Canon C100, my dream camera at the time, along with a small lighting package and some negative fill. I quit my job at Starbucks and started applying to every freelance job I could find on Craigslist within a 500 mile radius, slowly building a reel and learning through repetition. Not long after, I moved to LA.

Today, I primarily work as a vfx artist running my own VFX shop as my bread and butter, while also being signed with Rodeo FX in Canada as a commercial director. My day to day freelance life might involve 3D animating a cow for a bank commercial, rebuilding environments for a celebrity singer in a Visa campaign, creating a CG hand opening a Coca Cola bottle for Coke’s Christmas commercial, or recreating real world scenes in 3D for live action talent to walk through on a Prudential brand campaign.

On the narrative end, I’ve been fortunate to work across a wide range of projects, including doing all the VFX for the TV series Miracle last year, while also having the opportunity to DP two feature films along the way.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No! Haha, every year comes with new and different struggles. I remember when I started, the main things on my mind were: how do I get consistent freelance work? How do I get clients? How do I make creative work that can stand out in a sea of other talented artists? Those two questions were hurdles for years.

I spent the first three years freelancing while making basically nothing and barely scraping by. During COVID, though, I decided I wanted to finally make a spec car commercial idea I had been thinking about for a long time. I had this concept of a car being stress tested on a factory floor, showing every step of a Porsche being made, then pairing each movement of the car exactly to the ups and downs of a violin to create a piece about artistry in motion.

Because I obviously didn’t have the budget to shoot multiple Porsches crashing and driving on a race track, the only way to achieve it was to create the entire thing in 3D. So, as my COVID project, I spent six months creating a 60 second commercial piece. I still look back on that project and remember how difficult it was to get the dust, water, and crash simulations working properly. I would often spend over a week on a single shot that lasted less than a second.

There were so many times I wanted to give up, but there was something exciting about being crazy enough to spend six months making 60 seconds of video, hoping it might finally get producers to notice my work. After I finished it, I sent it everywhere, and in my opinion, that video single handedly launched my career.

Today, the challenges are different. Now I think more about questions like what career direction I want to pursue, how I want to balance work and life, and where I want to prioritize career growth alongside the rest of my life.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve definitely become known first and foremost for my VFX work, blending technical skills with visuals that feel memorable and land emotionally. My background is a little unconventional. When I first moved to LA, all I wanted to do was become a cinematographer. I worked my way up to buying an Alexa Mini because I thought it would help convince people to hire me as a DP, but whenever people saw my portfolio, they were usually more excited to ask about my VFX work instead. Then I’d get so busy doing VFX that my cinematography ambitions would end up taking a back seat.

Over time though, I realized that background across VFX, cinematography, and post production actually became one of my biggest strengths when it comes to directing. It allows me to approach projects from multiple angles at once, whether that’s designing shots technically, understanding how something will come together in post, or thinking visually through lighting, camera movement, pacing, and emotional tone.

I’m still most proud of my Porsche spec commercial because of what it represented for me at that stage in my career. I spent six months building the entire thing in 3D during COVID, hoping it might help get producers to notice my work. Looking back, that project completely changed the trajectory of my career.

More recently, one of the projects I’m most proud of is an Omega piece I developed over two years. It blended live action with VFX to move through moments across history, from the 1930s Olympics to modern Olympic athletes, Apollo space missions, and deep sea exploration, all tied together through the role Omega played in each of those worlds. It’s probably the most ambitious piece I’ve made to date.

What sets me apart most is that multifaceted background and my willingness, especially on personal projects, to stay committed to an idea for an extremely long time in pursuit of a result that would traditionally require millions of dollars to produce. I’ve always loved trying to bridge that gap between high end cinematic ambition and resourcefulness, and that’s what indie filmmaking is all about.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I have a lot of big plans to eventually write and direct a feature film soon. What excites me most is applying the same indie mindset I’ve used in commercial filmmaking toward making a movie. The technology available to filmmakers today is more powerful and accessible than ever, which means there has never been more opportunities for people to go out and tell meaningful stories.

To me, filmmaking has always been about resourcefulness just as much as creativity. Finding ways to make something feel larger than its budget, discovering unconventional approaches, and solving problems creatively is part of the art form itself. The challenge is not simply making something look expensive, but finding stories that emotionally resonate with people regardless of scale.

I think our job as filmmakers goes far beyond mastering one technical skill or niche discipline. At its core, filmmaking is about telling stories that matter for people who care. It’s about exploring psychological and ethical questions, making audiences laugh or cry, helping people relate to experiences outside of their own, and sometimes simply giving someone an escape in entertainment at the end of a long day.

That’s what I’ve always loved most about filmmaking, and my hope is to spend the rest of my career continuing to create stories that can connect with people in that way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://loganmcnay.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/logan_mcnay/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LoganMcNay