Episode 540 - Sean Rourke: The Third Floor and the Tuesday Night Writers Group

There's a Tuesday night writers group that has quietly shaped the careers of some seriously talented people working in Hollywood right now, and CG Garage is slowly pulling back the curtain on it. Sean Rourke is the second member of that group to come on the show, following Andy Cochrane, and his path through the industry is one of the more unlikely and instructive ones you'll hear. He spent 12 years as Head of Editorial at The Third Floor, the previz studio behind some of the biggest films in production, and he got there by being the only person in the building who remembered how to unjam a three-quarter-inch tape deck. What followed was a career built on dying technology, accidental promotions, and a consistent instinct for being exactly where the creative work was happening. Co-host Daniel Thron and Sean dig into what previz editorial actually is and why it attracts the kind of people who want to direct, how audiences have been quietly rewired by streaming into expecting 10-hour stories and now feel cheated by a 2-hour film, and what AI tools actually look like inside a working production pipeline versus the buzzword version that investors keep funding. Sean also teaches Comic-Con Film School, a four-day filmmaking fundamentals class he has run every year for 20 straight years, and makes a sharp case for why film school still matters even when every specific tool it teaches goes obsolete. And if you follow vampire cinema at all, he runs a YouTube channel called The Vampire's Castle, just scored an interview with Jason Patric about The Lost Boys that has apparently never happened before, and is very pleased about recent awards-season developments. Links: Sean Rourke / The Vampire's Castle YouTube > Sean Rourke > The Third Floor (Previz) > Andy Cochrane on CG Garage > Ben Hansford (AI educator, USC) on CG Garage > This episode is sponsored by: Center Grid Virtual Studio Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "cggarage" for 10% off)

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Episode 540 - Sean Rourke: The Third Floor and the Tuesday Night Writers Group is an episode from CG Garage by Monstrous Moonshine.

This episode is 01:50:31 long.

This episode was published on Mar 16, 2026.

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