Category Archives: Works

Post-School VFX

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post-schooling projects, personal and for-profit

This was more of a motion-graphics or compositing project than anything, my roommate (classmate from school) and I took photos of a gravestone prop in a local field and replicated them in, adding another hill in the background, some 3D gravestones, a fence and a tomb in the background. I matte-painted a city and sky with distant mountains, and using Shake made the city lights flicker a bit. I moved the camera in slowly throughout the course of the shot with different-distance objects moving at different speeds to emulate parallax. The movement is super subtle and basically unnoticeable unless it’s pointed out, but it was a cool exercise.

Watch Final Graveyard on YouTube.

After school and the above project, and with tons of help from an old teacher/adviser, a few of us got work on a small film that came into town. Icarus was a Dolph Lundgren action movie that needed some enhancement. We added blood spray, sparks and bullet hits, debris and smoke and other elements to a collection of shots. It was a good experience.

Watch VFX Reel Winter 2009 on YouTube.

VFX in Vancouver

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school half-year and final reels

My half-year reel is just a collection of all the better stuff I did in the first semester at VanArts.

Term 1 Reel

Our final project was a Sweeny Todd-inspired 3-shot short that involved extensive rotoscoping, a full 3D city background replacement and even shot extension. We started filming the opening shot as high as our Cinematographer’s crane would allow, but we envisioned the shot starting above the rooftops, tracking along the roof line and then down into the street to see our actor.

To get that high up and see a whole city, the city had to be modeled, textured and lit, then a camera was animated along the roof line and down into the street to meet up with the point where the real camera move began. The actor had to be entirely rotoscoped out of the existing environment and placed in the newly-created old-London city street.

Because the real camera move begins low in the air compared to our CG buildings, the part of the shot where we would see the actor before we actually had footage of him, we needed some kind of person to be walking along the street before he really was. To accomplish this, I had to cut him out, cut him up, and re-animate a still frame of him walking down the sidewalk from the point where the camera comes out from behind the building to where it meets with the real camera. After doing this for almost a month, it never improved, and always look mechanical and bad. Not to mention I had almost a minute of footage to rotoscope already and the background replacement for one street was more than enough work for the guys doing the 3D work.

Final Project: Morte Street Website

World Space Odyssey

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sci-fi short film/visual effects experiment

Watch World Space Odyssey on YouTube.

This was a short film project I made in my senior year of high school and served as a sort of intro to visual effects, although I hadn’t thought of it as that at the time. But it was great, I set up my garage with a big green sheet, some worklights, my homemade dolly and shot everything in a day. I did all the post work (compositing and editing) in Adobe Premiere, and used the MIDI setup at school (don’t remember what software they had) for the soundtrack, in addition to using music by Justin R. Durban.

LATENT(CY)

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experimental feature film about selling out

LATENT(CY) Playlist – Parts 1-7

I’m not a fan of experimental filmmaking or abstract expression. I’ve got no problem with it, it’s just not my style, not the way I express things. So this film was a bit of a challenge. Essentially spearheaded by myself and a classmate, I was much more of a clear-narrative kind of guy and he wanted more of the experimental, surreal elements. We co-wrote, co-directed, and were largely in charge of everything together. I was assigned the directorial position, and had to assume producing responsibilities as well when a classmate went on a study abroad trip, so I was double-shifting and managing most of the production by the midway point.

It was one of the most demanding and stressful projects I’ve worked on. I had to ignore an invitation to become an NHS student because of it. Not only was I coordinating everything from props and costumes but I was negotiating with locations, making sure we had permission to shoot in local businesses, public places, and making sure the actor’s schedules fit our deadlines for shooting and getting the project done. And on top of all this, I was making another short sci-fi film, more of a visual effects experiment even, in another class, so I had to balance that as well.

It took us about 3-4 months to complete, from concept to public premiere in the local movie theater, with a budget of around $1000 (donations from friends and family), and entirely non-profit. There were five students working on it and six actors. When it was done, it got good response from the community and friends and family I’ve shown it to, and was reviewed by Microfilmmaker magazine.

Kids and Heroes

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Breakfast Club-esque short film project in junior year

Kids and Heroes w/ Director Interview

Growing up, I latched onto storytelling as any kid, but film became the medium with which I could contribute to that field when I saw the original Star Wars trilogy. Stereotypical, I know, but it’s what happened. I loved them. I still love them. They’re brilliant. They’re wonderful.

Star Wars and the discovery of Star Wars fanfilms opened my mind to the possibilities of film and visual storytelling, and the possibility that I could make my own. I could be a part of that universe. From making props to writing movies, I was all about fanfilm ideation for a good year or so before I realized that with any traveling, I could find any location, and with any camera, I could shoot that location and tell a story within it. That opened up the whole world of film to me, and I began coming up with ideas left and right, writing short synopses and full screenplays all the time. All the while working away at my Star Wars homage piece, and finishing the script about 3 years after I’d started it.

Of course when I read it now, it seems juvenile, laughable, but I remember the feeling I got when I wrote it, when I realized I was capable of making something. And that was probably the biggest influence on my creative career of all. Given the opportunity, I can make something awesome, and frankly, why the hell not?

Kids and Heroes was my first serious short film project that I did for a Digital Editing course in junior year of high school. Now, to me, it’s trite and predictable, and of course as the creator I’m going to be more critical than other people, but in essence, I think it’s still a very valuable piece. It’s my transition from fun- or spare-time filmmaker to someone dedicated to their practice, making it their own form of expression. And when I showed it at the end of the semester premiere, it blew people away. :D