Program Leaders
From film to games, acting to sound design, makeup to animation, VFS faculty share our students' enjoyment of creative accomplishment. Drawn directly from their respective industries, Program Leaders are accomplished artists and professionals selected for their ability to help you develop direct relationships with the people, industries, and ideas shaping your artistic disciplines. While strongly influencing their programs, they remain deeply connected to their fields by pursuing their own work producing and directing films, writing screenplays, or designing sound.
Senior Administrators also play an important role during periods of growth or evolution within a particular discipline. Often they will manage a program for a period of time to make certain VFS's vision and core values are always in focus and are clearly articulated. This ensures that our high educational standards are always being met.
As our highly experienced educational leaders, these individuals create a bridge from the school to the industry by guiding you through the production of the highest quality results in your reels, films, portfolios, and performances.
Bill Marchant
Head of Acting Essentials
Head of Acting for Film & Television
An actor, director, and writer, Bill's feature film Everyone won Best Canadian Film at the Montreal Festival and played to packed houses at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Bill also had a recurring role on the popular Canadian television show Da Vinci's Inquest .
Marianne O'Reilly
Head of 3D Animation & Visual Effects
Head of Classical Animation
Head of Digital Character Animation
Marianne O'Reilly is a veteran management executive of the sports entertainment and visual effects industries. She was the director of game presentation for the Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks. Her credit list at Rainmaker Visual Effects, where she progressed from a visual effects producer to President in 2007, includes Dead Like Me, Night at the Museum, and Vantage Point.
Miles Nurse
Head of Digital Design
Miles is a seasoned, enterprise level leader, who has established creative processes and innovation models across multiple interactive platforms, stretching from consoles, casual games and the web to mobile, tablet, and retail products. Miles has worked and collaborated with some of the world's top dive resorts, eco-organizations, and entertainment brands, including Microsoft, BigPark, Bodog, Adobe, National Geographic, Tourism BC, Divers Alert Network (DAN), Ocean Frontiers, Ocean Village Resorts, Investus Financial Group, and Funny Farm Comedy Show.
Sebastien de Castell
Acting Head of Entertainment Business Management
Sebastien brings a diverse career as an educator, product strategist, interaction designer, and project manager to students in this forward-thinking program. His professional work has included leading the experience design for TV series like ReBoot and Heartland and consulting for the game Lord of the Rings: The Third Age.
Don Hunter
Head of Film Production
Don began his career as a newspaper photographer in Winnipeg. A full member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, he has filmed hundreds of documentaries across Canada and around the world. His dramatic credits include MacGyver, Stargate SG-1, and The X-Files.
Ted Jones
Head of Foundation Visual Art & Design
An established documentary filmmaker, director, and production manager, Ted has been involved in the broadcast and film industries for 25 years. He’s been recognized frequently for his work, including winning the Prix de Lausanne in 1990 and receiving an official commendation from The Directors Guild of America in 2000.
Dave Warfield
Head of Game Design
A game designer who has worked in the industry for fifteen years, Dave comes to VFS directly from Electronic Arts, one of the most successful video game companies in the world. Dave has worked on 26 major game releases, including NHL 2005 , NBA Live , Mission: Impossible , Top Gun: Danger Zone , and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Stan Edmonds
Head of Makeup Design for Film & Television
Stan Edmonds has been a motion picture Makeup Artist for over 25 years. He has over 50 film and television credits and has served as Head of Department on such films as I, Robot, The Butterfly Effect, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Scary Movie, and Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning film Unforgiven .
Shane Rees
Head of Sound Design for Visual Media
Prior to joining VFS, Shane worked at Sharpe Sound Studios as a Re-Recording Mixer, where he mixed Foley and backgrounds, music, effects mixes for various TV shows, ADR recording, laybacks and quality control. After leaving Sharpe Sound he started his own mobile ADR recording company that works on shows like Smallville, Dead Zone, Reaper, and Aliens in America.
Michael Baser
Head of Writing for Film & Television
Michael Baser has written, created, produced, and showrun some of TV's most beloved series, including Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day At A Time, Maude, Three's Company, 9 to 5, What's Happening, Full House, We Got It Made, and So Little Time, He has also created and written a dozen half-hour and hour-long pilots for ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.