From Jumanji to Game of Thrones, Lucía Peralta, a matte painting supervisor, is at the top of post-production.
With more than ten years in the sector, Lucía has vast experience in visual effects and creating digital environments, working on different productions between Spain, Bulgaria and London until her emigration to Australia.
Lucía studied Art Direction at ECAM and visual effects at VFS (Vancouver Film School), and is the artist behind the hyper-realistic landscapes and scenarios that we see in large productions such as The Jungle Book (2016), Game of Thrones (2017). Aquaman (2018) or Jumanji (2019).
Nowadays, it is not common to find technicians like Lucía, women at the top of the industry, directing departments in post-production. According to a report by The Celluloid Ceiling, only 21% of films are edited by women. Let’s not even get into the world of animation and visual effects.
But this has not always been like that. At the dawn of cinema, when it was only an idea that little by little was materializing in small projects, many of them were carried out by women, and they did so in a manner as dedicated to writing and directing their stories as men did
Going even further, the job of an editor required such precision and delicacy that it was exclusively feminine. With the industrialization of cinema, directors engaged in one set after another, losing control in the last process of making the film: editing.
This motivated many editors to develop their creativity and bring a different touch to the films. With the advent of sound cinema, when the importance of editing work became clear, men began to enter it, seeking to make a career by taking over the job and, as a consequence, displacing women.
In an industry dominated by the male presence, Peralta stands out for her ambition and mastery, and for her role as an artist and a woman.
It is a fact that in management and supervisory positions within the post-production of audiovisual projects where the proportion of women is much lower than that of men.
The causes of this imbalance are many and varied and to understand part of its origin we can go back to the days of the pioneers of the cinematograph. But it is a common project to correct this gap and build an industry where balanced job opportunities are a reality.
One of the pillars of this balance is the young talent that is either being trained or going to be trained to become part of the world of post-production. Attracting the best artists and technicians to this industry is everyone’s job so that the potential of many women from future generations of professionals does not go to waste.
Like Lucía, who is a benchmark in visual effects in Spain, we believe that there may be more female talent in the different areas of the post-production sector, in which they could excel and, in this way, help raise even more an industry that is already flying like a rocket. We encourage them to investigate in this field and be encouraged to discover the infinite possibilities that await you.
It is up to us to train and inform ourselves, but it is everyone’s job to make female talent stand out and shine.
