”I’ve always been fascinated with the building blocks of life and I always wanted to come up with an acronym for my business that would boil down to DNA,” says Darius Fisher, founder of Digital Neural Axis, a small postproduction and visual effects boutique in Los Angeles. “What is it we create? We create media that is the axis between digits and neurons. We finesse the digits that get represented as light.”

Fisher, John O’Hara and Melanie Franciosi — the three primary components that compose this particular type of DNA — have transformed those digits into a successful synthesis of talent and technical know-how. Last year the shop produced 68 visual effects shots for Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” — now on DVD — and is quickly becoming one of the hottest effects shops in the business.

And they’ve managed to do it all out of their home in Venice Beach, California, using Power Macs, Xserves, Final Cut Pro HD and Adobe After Effects. The shop represents the next step in the evolution of digital video and film postproduction, a new species that can compete with large effects houses.

“We create media that is the axis between digits and neurons,” says DNA founder Darius Fisher. “We finesse the digits that get represented as light.”

The Beginnings

DNA’s history is as complex as the molecule of the same name. To unravel it, you’ve got to start at the beginning, deep within the primordial muck where good ideas are born. For Fisher, that muck was British television commercials. As a child, the London native had several key roles in TV ads. The experience sparked an interest in video and film production that would eventually lead to the creation of DNA.

He found his way to a position as a production assistant for an assistant director of music videos and commercials, whom he met while working at a wine shop. And later he landed a job with music video director Kevin Godley, half of the band Godley and Cream and former drummer/vocalist for the rock group 10CC. It was the 80s, the height of MTV, and Fisher worked on videos and concert films for Prince, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Tori Amos, The Prodigy, Madonna, Dave Stewart, Erasure and others.

During it all, Fisher became fascinated with video editing on the Mac. He learned all he could in his spare time. It paid off. In 1989, he got a gig working on the computer game “Burn:Cycle.” The cyberpunk game featured live-action video cut with computer graphics and was composited and edited entirely on Macs. “I was the assistant director of the blue screen, live action portion of this shoot,” he says. “I was so fascinated that all the editing, compositing and programming was going to be done on Macintosh computers. It was really fantastic.”

At the time, the concept of DNA was slowly coalescing in Fisher’s head. “One day, I realized, we would be able to do all our video and film postproduction on these machines,” he says.

Fisher met John O’Hara, an advertising creative in New York who also wrote screenplays, in 1993. Fisher showed up to sublet O’Hara’s loft and the two got along splendidly. When O’Hara returned from his trip abroad, he decided to share his loft with Fisher. Both had a passion for film production and starting a business together seemed only natural. The pair crammed the loft with computer equipment and set up shop. They experimented with digital nonlinear editing, motion graphics design and visual effects on early Power Macs. Finally, Fisher had given life to the primeval form of DNA.

Virtual Nightclubs and Ballerinas

”Burn:Cycle” was a smash hit and Fisher was hired to work on another title: “The Virtual Nightclub.” Fisher flew back to London to serve as director of digital video for the job. He needed dancers to fill the nightclub space — that’s how he met Melanie Franciosi.

Though suspicious at first, Franciosi — a classically trained ballet dancer — was nonetheless intrigued and took the job. Soon she was pirouetting before a green screen in London. When she wasn’t dancing, she was peeking behind the scenes. “I was very curious,” she says. “Are they going to put a background behind me? What kind of background? I used to hang around to see what they were doing with my image. After watching over Darius’ shoulder for some time, I realized that I wanted to help out with the postproduction.”

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