Rising Stars: Meet Shaman Marya

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shaman Marya.

Hi Shaman, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My dream of being a storyteller goes as far back as I can remember. I spent my early childhood in the UK and my formative years up till my late 20s in India, where I completed high school, undergrad in Philosophy and Law School. During this time my love for the cinematic arts was always all consuming and at the back of my mind I knew I wanted to be a part of cinema as an artist and storyteller. The films of Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo Del Toro and David Fincher among many others only made my desire to be a filmmaker even stronger. I would give anything to be able to be a part of the magic. In 2014, I took a chance on myself and got a job at a wonderful Production House in Gurugram, India, making nonfiction content for Indian television. In 2019, I was accepted to USC’s MFA program in Film and TV Production and made my way to start life in LA. At USC, I found my love for Virtual Production and have been fortunate to work as an industry Virtual Production Artist since 2022. What excites me the most is using new and innovative tools to bring stories to life on the big screen. I love making my own independent films but also cherish working on other productions.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I would say it’s been a very bumpy road. New Delhi isn’t exactly the home of a cinematic Industry and growing up in a place where filmmaking was alien to education and only a consumer-level product, it always felt like the big screen was something distant and unattainable. In fact, it felt so unattainable that I didn’t know where to even begin this journey and flirted with a variety of career paths before I managed to get my first probationary breakthrough. It was difficult being in career paths that did not feel intuitively right or suited to where I felt I wanted to be. Moving to LA was also a challenging experience and just a few months into moving here, the world shut down due to a global pandemic. This made the entire experience of collaborating that much more difficult and at a time where I was just about learning my way around the city, it was unsettling. Things did pick up though, and I received a prestigious grant from Epic Games (Megagrants Program) to make a short film (to be released in 2023!) and I cannot thank my friends and collaborators enough for making that possible. However in the summer of 2020, while working to make this wonderful 3D animated project, I lost both my grandfathers in India and I couldn’t even travel to be with family due to pandemic restrictions. But their loss spurred me on to work even harder. I wanted to honor their memory with the films I work on and the stories I am a part of telling.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As a Virtual Production Artist, I work at an interesting intersection of technology and filmmaking that is still very new to the Industry. I specifically enjoy working in real-time game engines to create 3D animated content and to that end, I have been fortunate to work at MPC in the last year, the VFX studio that worked on amazing films such as Lion King, Jungle Book, Spiderman No Way Home and 1917 to name just a few. Independently, the power of being able to work on this kind of content from home has been special and having received the Epic Megagrant, I feel privileged to be able to bring my creative vision to the screen. My specific focus has been on real-time lighting, which is something truly unique. As a real-time lighting artist, I am able to iterate and light in a way that I was never able to in live-action production (I still absolutely love live-action, don’t get me wrong!). But Virtual Production lighting has given me the opportunity to work in a world where the only limit has been imagination.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Of course my family, which includes my wife Tara, grandparents, parents, brother, sister-in-law and the most adorable niece and nephew. They inspire me and push me to do better every day. My friends and collaborators here in Los Angeles, specifically the Producers of my short, my professors at USC, colleagues at MPC and the Cinematographers I have had the privilege of working within the last year. Alyssa and Jackie, the Producers of our short Catch, have been nothing short of guiding lights in my everyday life, giving me the space I need as a Director yet calling me out when I need to be creatively reined in a little! My professors at USC and colleagues at MPC, especially my supervisors, have shared their knowledge and experience patiently and selflessly, helping me be a better artist and filmmaker and I absolutely love them for everything they have given me!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @shaman_artint, @shamanm90
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/shaman-marya-a68438181
• Other: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm10560319