Richard Baneham: Who is the Tallaght man who just won his second Oscar?
Richard Baneham, the Irish special effects and animation expert who is up for an Oscar for his work on Avatar: The Way Of Water. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/GA/Hollywood Reporter via Getty)
It’s testament to the depth of Ireland’s animation talent that as Richard Baneham moved to the US to pursue a career, up to ten of his classmates were also establishing themselves in the industry.
His Ballyfermot College peers were in great demand for their animation skills across various studios in California - meaning the newly arrived Baneham had an extended family of his former classmates and a growing community in his new home.
“Our LA family was made up of ten people from the class who lived in the neighbourhood, from the same class I graduated from,” says the Tallaght man, nominated for an Oscar for his visual effects work on Avatar: The Way of Water, of his emigrant experience. “We have kids in the same schools, on the same hockey teams - we have 14 kids who have all grown up together.
“They are cousins for all intents and purposes. They're all headed off to college, they're getting to that age but they'll be forever connected. I think that kind of base, that stability, really really helps keep everything on an even keel.”
The consistently high standards from Ballyfermot and its animators have long been respected in Ireland and internationally, and Baneham says his classmates are one of three families who were core supports when he and his wife Aishling moved to LA in their early twenties.
“My brothers, sisters, Aish's family, and everybody else's families would come. So in a lot of ways our kids had 8-10 grannies and grandads. They would know all the other grandparents and there's a connectedness there that's quite unique. We've been blessed in that respect. Then our broader family again, which is our Ballyfermot family - there’s Jam Media, Brown Bag, Cartoon Saloon, Kavaleer, all of those guys have been back and forth to LA for writing rooms. And when we come back to Dublin we still all connect.”
Baneham’s journey since that move has brought him all the way to a second Oscar win for the Avatar sequel. Following his 2010 win, he and his Avatar team took the prize at the 2023 Academy Awards for Best Achievement in Visual Effects.
It’s not the only huge-scale epic the Dubliner has worked on - other projects include two Lord of the Rings movies, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Iron Giant. The latter groundbreaking animated feature from Brad Bird was key in the development of his remarkable creative career.
“I'd like to think it's to do with being willing to try and think outside the box,” he says. “It sort of begins with Iron Giant - we had a moment where the hand breaks away and becomes its own character.
“What I'd done is apply the idea of a Great Dane puppy and gave it a personality, to be surprised. Brad Bird was like, ‘Do the whole sequence’, and that sequence led to another exploration which was how 2 and 3D could touch and push back and forward. I was credited with 2 and 3D on that movie.
“For me, it became this sort of journey then of how do you extrapolate out from there? How do you find consistency of character?”
Another notable development from Baneham’s point of view was working with Andy Serkis’s Gollum in a key LOTR soliloquy. “Most animators would keep a mirror at their desk and would empathise with their own facial makeup, their physiology. Ultimately, that leads to an amalgamation of different performances, different choices, different idiosyncrasies in how your face moves. To do it from a standpoint of a consistent reference point in Andy, I think led to the idea that okay, this for me works better. It's a much more believable and present performance. It evoked the idea of a presence and a soul behind the eyes.
“From there, Aslan was an interesting stepping stone for me, because that presented some of the same choices. We were asked to deliver on Aslan before we had a voice. The director came to me and said: ‘Well who would you cast? I said: ‘Given my choice? This character is Atticus Finch. I would cast Gregory Peck, but he's not around’.
“Luckily, we ended up with Liam Neeson. The fact that it was Liam was much, much more consistent with the choices we'd made.”
When Baneham’s work led to him being introduced to James Cameron, the filmmaker was working on an ambitious project called Avatar. That resulting movie in 2009 went on to achieve ground-breaking visual effects and become the biggest-grossing movie of all time. Its sequel is also proving to be a smash hit with audiences. While developments in technology and visual effects have helped filmmakers produce novel big-screen experiences, Baneham believes that great filmmaking comes about through the core elements of story, character and acting.
“It is only about whether or not the tool or the medium services the story, services the performance, services the connection with your audience,” he says. “Ultimately, that's the goal. Our movie is a very intimate family story. It's not sold through visuals, it's sold through performance. It needs to be supported through the visuals and all of the water and the creatures.
"There are times where it's an intimate family argument between a mother and a daughter or father. You have to find the soul of the performance because without the actors the story is not there. We were blessed with an amazing cast, who are incredibly collaborative. Technology that empowers the art is bringing it to life through artistic choice.”
Baneham is glad to be part of the Irish Oscars story in a year when a record-breaking 14 nominations for films like An Cailín Ciúin, An Irish Goodbye and The Banshees of Inisherin has placed the country’s storytelling talent front and centre in the biggest stage in film. He embraced it in his own way in his speech following his BAFTA win, opening with the phrase: “Go raibh míle maith agat”.
“Colin Farrell was so sweet," recalls Baneham. "We met over dinner and the very first thing he said was: ‘Had I won I would have led the speech the same way’. Kerry [Condon] we know a little from LA but had a chance to have a chit chat on stage after her win - that was such a nice moment.”
He’s loving the spirit of camaraderie among the Irish nominees this year, and feels that same spirit that exists among the Irish animation community is part of the reason for its huge success. Going right back to the days that Sullivan Bluth established a studio in Ireland, generations of animators, he says, have stayed connected, learned from and supported each other. “I think that's fundamentally the difference. We wish each other success.”
