Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Zoic Studios, a Los Angeles-based visual effects company founded by Natick High School graduate Loni Peristere, received a Creative Arts Emmy award for its work on the Fox television series "Firefly."

"I’m 32. It feels pretty good to win an Emmy, to walk up the steps and have the stars of ’Nip/Tuck’ give you the award. That was kind of fun," said Peristere, reached by phone yesterday at Zoic Studios.

Peristere, the creative director at Zoic Studios, was part of the studio team that received the "Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series" Emmy for its work on "Firefly." The Creative Arts Emmy Awards were presented Sept. 13 at the Shine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Zoic Studios had also been nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for its work on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

In February, the studio’s "Firefly" team received the Visual Effects Society award for the "Best Visual Effects in a Television Series" for its work on the Fox show. The company, which has 28 visual effects artists, also does work for CBS’ "CSI: Miami" in addition to work for commercials.

Peristere, who graduated from Natick High in 1989, said his studio creates digital images that are integrated with live-action photography.

While developments in software have made it easier and quicker to create digital composites and animation, Peristere said it is, in the end, more art than technology.

"You have to have the talent to recognize what makes it look real," he said. "We spend a lot of time creating digital cars. We have to look at the light and space, the shift in daylight conditions. You have to recognize how the shadows fall, how color and space affects red on the surface of the road. Having an understanding of what makes an image the way it is in the human eye is what makes a digital artist great."

He said digital visual effects are rapidly transforming the way television is produced. Now a program can set an episode in any location with just the help of a photograph and talented visual effects artists. It can also stage epic scenes like the one Zoic helped create for an episode on "Buffy," involving tens of thousands of vampires, by using digital technology to reproduce those vampires.

"TV is chipping away at the high expectations that films have traditionally kept for themselves," said Peristere. "The gap in the quality of work in television and movies is narrowing. The difference is primarily the time you have to develop these things."

Peristere said there are tentative plans to begin production in the first quarter of 2004 on a movie version of "Firefly," which Zoic will be involved with.

"I think we are really going to shake it up," he said.

The next goal for Zoic Studios, he said, is to produce its own shows and movies.

"I’d like to find my way down the road to (director) James Cameron," he said. "We have become such a cornerstone of reliability for studio solutions, pretty soon the company doing that digital work will also be producing."

Peristere said at least one digital company produced a feature film that will soon be released, and he expects others will follow.

"It just goes to show," he said, "that the people in the dark rooms are also good storytellers."