Creative Richard brings BAFTA back to Tallaght

HOLLYWOOD has come back to Tallaght, with award winning producer and visual effects supervisor of Avatar, Richard Baneham, stopping to visit the folks and a few favourite hotspots.

It is the height of awards season for movie makers, and Tallaght man Richard Baneham is right in the thick of it having scooped two VES Awards, a Lumiéres Award and a BAFTA so far for Avatar: The Way of Water.

After scooping the BAFTA, the California resident enjoyed some of the spoils in his hometown, stopping by The Edge Café, the Old Mill and even brought his BAFTA award to Dominics Community Centre.

After working on the original Avatar as an animation supervisor, Richard served as the Executive Producer, second unit director and visual effects supervisor on the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.

After revolutionising motion capture technology for a second time working on the Avatar franchise, this time capturing actors underwater, The Way of Water has achieved 131 nominations for different accolades this awards season.

In 2010, Richard picked up a hugely coveted Oscar for his work on Avatar, and although he is well in-contention to get his second Academy Award, he has never forgotten his roots.

“It’s surreal to us, we’ve been at the Oscars, at the Royal Albert, and great parties with Richard,” Michael senior, Richard’s father, tells The Echo.

“In Ireland, this was really a first, to have an Oscar winner for the work on that first Avatar was something that was new to this country.

Richard Baneham in Dominic’s Community Centre in Avonbeg with his BAFTA

“As a family, we’ve got a huge positive buzz from it, at the Oscars, at the film premieres.

“Richard brought all of his brothers and sisters to The Way of Water premiere, except Danielle because she’s all the way in New Zealand.”

Originally from Ballyfermot, the Baneham family moved to Avonbeg before settling in Old Bawn in 1987.

Michael, and his wife Noeleen, are “hugely proud of Richard and his five siblings” as they are “all grounded, great children”.

The Banehams have grown up with a passion for the arts, with them all involved in different industries around creative expression, storytelling, and culture.

Richard is the second-born child to Noeleen and Michael, and for instance, the youngest child, Danielle, is also heavily involved in the film industry.

Danielle works as a Department Manager of Production with Weta FX, working on Marvel Studios’ Shang Chi and Avengers: Endgame, The Christmas Chronicles, and 2016’s The Jungle Book in recent years.

Michael was an executive for Irish Rail, but he is a good passionate singer, while Noeleen has always had an artistic flair, attending art classes in Dominics Community Centre to this day.

The family say Richard’s “success and talent is natural enough”, but his creativity and ethos has been nurtured from the start.

“Richard was always into film, but he was always a really creative and artistic boy,” Noeleen says to The Echo.

“I would read fantasy stories to Richard and his brothers and sisters.

“He’s very passionate and achieves anything he puts his mind to.

“He thinks outside the box, even when Richard was very young, he would take things apart just to see how they worked – that’s the type of child he was.”

Richard then discovered an animation course in Ballyfermot College of Further Education, and that was his launching point into the film industry.

In 1994, Richard left Ireland with his then girlfriend Ashling for Los Angelos, and got his start as a special effects inbetweener and assistant animator on Thumbelina and The Swan Princess.

He later served as an animator for Space Jam starring Michael Jordan before making the transition to computer generated graphics while working on the cult-classic film, The Iron Giant in 1999.

Perhaps his most famous work was when Richard began working with WETA Digital and was responsible for bringing Golem to life in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings franchise.

In the mid-2000s, Richard worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before he began working with James Cameron on his quest to finally realise Avatar.

In doing so, Richard, who was an animation supervisor for the first film, and a crew of animators created the totally digital world of Pandora and its blue inhabitants, known as Na’vi.

The technology that the crew developed was groundbreaking in the visual effects industry and audiences lapped it up, with Avatar becoming the highest grossing film of all-time following its 2009 release.

Richard has formed a strong working relationship with “the best director in the world”, James Cameron, and legendary producer Jon Landau through work on Avatar.

With two Avatar films already released, Richard and the crew are currently in post-production on Avatar 3 and production is underway on the fourth and fifth films.

Avatar: The Way of Water has been nominated in the Best Picture, Visual Effects, Production Design, and Sound categories at the 95th Academy Awards, which is scheduled for March 12 in Hollywood.