Meet Fefo Desouza: the VFX flame artist behind your favorite movies
With an incredible resume including significant breakthrough titles such as X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Men days of future, The Avengers (quoted number 7 in the IMDB best VFX movies of all time), and Fast and Furious 6 amongst many others, Fefo has made a name for himself in the Visual Effects and entertainment industry.
Born and raised in Brazil Fefo started his career in 1983 by working as an editor and producer at “TV Globo’’ a Brasilian free-to-air television network, and quickly scaled up to become a VFX artist for commercials at Casablanca Finish, the best post production company in Latin America at the time, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. But his career did not finish there! After achieving his full potential in Brazil Desouza moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to aim higher, working prolifically in hundreds of feature films, TV series, commercials and music videos. And today, after 20 years of experience he has become a major player in the U.S entertainment industry because of his outstanding work.
One of Fefo’s most acclaimed creations is Selena Gomez’s music video “Kill em’ with kindness” where he is credited as a 2D artist. The video hit over 511 MILLION views and right after it dropped, the song climbed 22 spots on the Billboard hot 100 chart from the 74th position to the 52nd.
The black and white video is empowering and sexy. We see a fierce Selena reinforcing her independence after her breakup with Justin Bieber.
Another incredible, and also, one of the most recent pieces in which Fefo portrayed his talent was Drake’s new music video “Laugh Now Cry Later” where we can see the legendary Grammy award winning rapper crying tears that weren’t really there. These were added by Fefo in post-production.
Apart from working with Drake and Selena Gomez, Fefo’s outstanding VFX art has been featured in music videos with iconic names such as Beyonce, Katy Perry, Janet Jackson, Lorde, Fergie, and many others, a dream that would seem unreachable to someone who grew up far away from the US market. But when talent is undeniable there’s no limit to what someone can achieve, no matter where they came from. This is the case of Fefo Desouza who broke all barriers to become one of the best in the world at VFX, recognized by the public and celebrated by his industry peers.
