An Oscar win, emergency surgery, and the road back to moviemaking

While his colleagues and wife were celebrating the pinnacle of critical recognition following their Oscar win, WSU alumnus Eric Saindon headed for the hospital.

Bothered by abdominal pain all day, Saindon quickly dashed for the exit mere minutes after receiving the 2023 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects as part of the team from New Zealand's WetaFX.

He handed his Oscar over to a colleague with a message for his wife: Enjoy the evening's festivities, I'm heading back to the hotel.

"You have to have the Oscar to get it engraved at the Governor's Ball and to get into the after parties, so my wife took it and went to the Vanity Fair and Elton John parties and met all these amazing people thinking that I was back at the hotel," Saindon said.

He continued, "Meanwhile, the doctor who I saw said things were not good, got me into the passenger seat of his car, and drove me to the emergency room."

It wasn't until the Weta contingent returned to the hotel around 2 a.m. that they learned Saindon wasn't just catching shuteye outside of the limelight. In fact, he was in the middle of surgery.

Two days becomes three weeks

Rather than suffering from kidney stones as had been speculated, it turned out Saindon was suffering from a ruptured small intestine. He woke up the morning after his surgery feeling pretty banged up, and spent the next four days in the hospital recovering.

Doctors and medical professionals eagerly awaited the first signs that the surgery had been successful: a bowel movement.

After being discharged, doctors asked Saindon to stay in town for a week just in case. The issue for Saindon and his wife was that they'd left their kids with a neighbor. What was expected to be a two-daystay in Los Angeles for the Oscars turned out to be three weeks because Saindon was forced to return to the hospital to treat a bacterial infection just a few days after surgery.

Highlights of his second hospital stay included having his IV ripped out by a passing chair, an ambulance technician stuffing headshots and contact information into Saindon's pockets en route to the hospital, and seeing groups of doctors stopping by to take selfies with his Oscar.

Current work

Three weeks after surgery, the Saindons finally returned to New Zealand. While he brought back a significant scar, Saindon is doing well after some adjustments. Travelers insurance came in handy for the $280,000 medical bill.

Saindon is currently working as the senior visual effects supervisor on the upcoming third Avatar film, which is now in post-production. His office is just a few steps away from James Cameron's, allowing the director to come by to discuss shots that Saindon and his team are working on.

"Some directors will say, "I hate that, give me something else," Saindon said. "Jim doesn't do that, he says, 'This shot is about this character, this is why this element needs to be here or there,' just deliberately explaining why he wants something."

Throughout his two decades at Weta, Saindon has been on the forefront of the evolution of visual effects in TV and film. For perspective, his first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, had approximately 200 visual effects shots. The most recent Avatar film, by contrast, had 3,300 visual effects shots, most fully digital with water, fire, smoke, and characters brought to life with computer graphics. At the same time, audiences have become far more sophisticated when it comes to judging the quality of visual effects. And Saindon hears about it from more than just armchair experts online.

I get lots of opinions from my kids. Any movie we work on, my 10-year-oldwill say, 'I don't know about that facial animation, dad.'

"I get lots of opinions from my kids," Saindon said. "Any movie we work on, my 10-year-oldwill say, 'I don't know about that facial animation, dad.'"

In spite of his workload and distance from the Palouse, Saindon keeps in contact with his former classmates, attending dinners whenever he's in Vancouver or Los Angeles for a project.

And it turns out that famous Coug spirit can be infectuous. He's even gotten his wife, a USC alum, cheering for WSU basketball these days from half a world away.