From OHIO Interview Day to Emmy Awards, alumni’s journeys continue to cross paths

Thomas Wagener (left) and Wes Cronk, both 2009 graduates of 91̽��’s Honors Tutorial College, show off the awards their respective production teams won at the 2019 Emmy Awards.

From the day they interviewed for admission into 91̽��’s Honors Tutorial College through their parallel and often intertwining college years and early careers, the lives and livelihoods of Wes Cronk and Thomas Wagener have been intersecting for nearly 15 years. This past September saw these Bobcats mark another major and simultaneous milestone in their journeys when the production teams they had worked on each earned Emmy Awards.

Netflix’s “Love, Death & Robots,” on which Cronk, BSC ’09, worked as a digital compositor, took home the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program while the final season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” where Wagener, BSC ’09, worked on color grading, secured the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.

The Emmy Awards were just the latest achievements for these rising stars in field of visual effects who have shared credits on some of the highest-grossing movie franchises of the past decade, including “Iron Man” and “X-Men.” Cronk’s resume includes work on “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Deadpool” and “House of Cards.” Wagener’s IMDb webpage notes his work on the “Transformers,” “Fast and Furious” and “Justice League” franchises and a half-dozen “Marvel” films.

Their roads to the big screen and Emmy Awards weren’t exactly what either of these Bobcats had planned back in early 2005 when they first crossed paths. Cronk, Wagener and their parents found themselves at an Athens hotel in the midst of an ice storm and worried about making it to campus the following day for the Honors Tutorial College’s annual Interview Day with prospective students.

“Thomas was one of the first people I met before I even got to OU,” Cronk said. “It’s interesting because neither of us started out wanting to get into visual effects.”

Cronk and Wagener were both admitted to the Honors Tutorial College where they majored in what is known today as media arts and studies and embarked on four years of collaboration and career exploration.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do when I first got into school,” Wagener said.

91̽�� alumni Wes Cronk (left) and Thomas Wagener are seen in the apartment they shared in Vancouver while working side-by-side on “Deadpool.”

“I wanted to work in film although I had no idea what,” Cronk admitted.

Both initially thought they wanted to direct films and later considered becoming cinematographers. Wagener credits faculty at 91̽�� with pointing him in the direction of visual effects.

“I got a lot of really good guidance from Associate Professors Art Cromwell and Beth Novak who really helped me focus not just on what I was good at but what I was really interested in,” Wagener said. “It was pretty clear from the projects I worked on that I enjoyed working on visual effects more than anything.”

For Cronk, it was Wagener who steered him into visual effects.

“I wasn’t really until my junior year that I did visual effects for a little bit,” Cronk said. “Tom kind of convinced me, like, ‘Hey, you’re really good at this. You should do this.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I do really enjoy it.’ It had never really crossed my mind to pursue it as a career.”

Cronk and Wagener spent their four years at OHIO working on film projects with a crew of fellow Bobcats that formed during their first year on the Athens Campus. Cronk estimated that he worked on approximately 50 films during his college years – 30 of those alongside Wagener.

“Wes was my very first friend at OU,” Wagener said. “We were roommates our junior and senior year of college. He basically taught me everything in school.”

Their academic pursuits culminated in a course known at the time as MDIA 419: Productions, a year-long program in advanced narrative production in which a large group of students produce films in their entirety, covering everything from budgeting and script development to filming and publicity. For the course, Cronk’s group produced “The Dying Western,” which won the Best Student Short Film at the 2009 Las Vegas International Film Festival. Wagener did the score for the film.

Even after graduation, these Bobcats’ paths continued to cross. Wagener helped Cronk land his first job in Los Angeles, and the pair again shared living quarters when they worked in Vancouver on their closest collaboration to date, working side-by-side on “Deadpool.” They’ve worked on more than a dozen of the same films, including “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and, most recently, “Terminator: Dark Fate.” And both were on Oscar-nominated production teams for the visual effects in “Real Steel” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

Today, Cronk resides in Los Angeles where he continues to work and hang out with his Bobcat friends that he collaborated with in MDIA 419. He is a digital compositor, combining hundreds of elements of a shot and lining them up so that the final product looks real.

“Essentially it’s like Photoshop in motion,” Cronk said of his work. “It’s my goal to combine all of the elements into one shot. … Sometimes what I get starts looking like ‘Toy Story’ and I have to turn it into ‘Transformers.’”

Wagener lives in Vancouver and works for Scanline VFX, an international visual effects company known for its fluid effects used in filming fire and water. Depending on the film, Wagener works as both a visual effects artist – often as a compositor like Cronk – and a visual effects coordinator, keeping the wheels the turning and connecting the many elements of each production. Wagener and his colleagues recently wrapped up visual effects projects on “Midway” and the upcoming “Godzilla vs. Kong.”

Wagener continues to stay in touch with staff and faculty from the Honors Tutorial College who were instrumental in his college journey. He even helps recruit prospective students to the college, having been persuaded to choose HTC by a letter from alumnus John Swartz, BSC ’05, MA ’06, Lucasfilm vice president and internal creative producer who has co-produced three of the last four “Star Wars” movies.

Cronk and Wagener both know their paths will cross again soon.

“It’s only a matter of time before we work with each other again,” Cronk said. “We both just worked on ‘Terminator,’ and I have a feeling that we will work together again soon.”

Published

November 25, 2019

Author

Justin Thompson, BSJ '21