SEVEN. MONTHS. I’m hanging my head in shame…

Let me update you on what’s going on in my life! Because there’s a lot that’s transpired since last December! We’re going to talk about three things.

1. Work on “The Secret Number” continues.
2. My short film “En Route” has been released online.
3. I’m going to Pixar!

1. The Secret Number is coming along! It’s been a tiresome production and post-production has been grueling, but we’re really in the home stretch now. Although I’m making last-minute editing tweaks, that’s the most complete part of the puzzle. Right now we’ve just got tons of music, sound design, color grading, and visual effects work still to do!

Until recently, I’ve been pretty good at keeping my vlogs up-to-date on the The Secret Number site.

Thus far unreported: Last month we showcased a work-in-progress version of the film for my school, and it got a great reaction! We ended up winning several school awards:

1. Best Undergraduate Narrative
2. Best Visual Effects
3. Best Cinematography
4. Best Sound Design
5. Best Editing
6. Best Original Score

Crazy, huh? It’s funny because so little is actually finished.

2. Yesterday, I finally released my short film “En Route” online! Check it out:

This has been a long time coming, but I’m very proud to finally be able to show it off.

Also, check out the revamped site! We’ve got the full film available for download, a VFX breakdown, as well as stills and set photography. The comments are starting to stream in on YouTube, and so far the reactions are positive!

3. I’m going to Pixar! Yup, I can barely believe it. I was lucky enough to have been offered a 12-month residency position in the Camera & Staging Department at my favorite animation studio in the world.

This news got a pretty huge response from the Blender community. When a blurb was posted on BlenderNation, over 130 people commented on the story! I’m pretty blown away, honestly.

I clearly owe this opportunity in large part to Blender and “Sintel”.

So, I’m excited to be moving to Emeryville in early September. I don’t know quite what to expect but I’m of course super super psyched! But I have a lot to accomplish before then…

Back to work!

It was a great experience and we were lucky enough to win several awards!

I was also interviewed by several publications in the past couple months:

Savannah Magazine Article (Jim Signorile)

New York is Boring Article (Pat Longstreth)

Geronimo Projects (Alex Getz

Not to mention the coverage on “Sintel”, which was the October issue’s cover story of 3D World!

More to report soon!

Bourbon St. in New Orleans

I’ve also been working with the visual effects team to begin chipping away at the 50+ shots of the film. I’ve got an amazing team and I’m excited about the way things are coming along! More updates on this front to follow. Postproduction will likely take another four or so months…

I also had the opportunity to go to Siggraph in New Orleans to work on the Blender Boothcrew! I met a lot of awesome and talented people, and I had a great time.

Now I’m back in Maryland and I’ve got only 6 days before I leave for Amsterdam for Durian! I’m using the time to get as much editing, vfx, email correspondence, family time and lifeplanning taken care of so I can throw myself 100% into the project without distractions. Not sure what it’s gonna be like, but I’m getting pretty excited!

There’s a lot going on in my life right now. Production for “En Route” went really well! We shot in Savannah over four weekends during the last month of school.

Here’s a sample frame from the raw footage, at 2k:

...and this is half-res.

In other news, I have this thing called “Infectious Mononucleosis”, known more conversationally as ‘mono’ or ‘glandular fever’, depending on where you’re from. I have a fairly mild case of it, thankfully, but that’s what I’ll blame my disappointing progress on.

I installed Ubuntu Linux on my machine! Scary intimidating. Don’t know the first thing about the command line, and I’m having a frustrating time with basic things like figuring out how to switch keyboard layouts on the fly and get my display resolution correct… but I think I’m gonna like it. My inner geek has been neglected for too long now anyway.

 
Aaannddd….

DURIAN!

This too is no longer news, but it’s so exciting it needs a dramatic introduction. I’ve been asked to direct the next Blender Open Movie project at the Blender Institute in Amsterdam!

I won’t post too much about it now because very little about the project has been defined.

But we’ve already got a fantastic core team, with concept artist David Revoy, renowned Dutch comic book author Martin Lodewijk, incredibly talented software developer Brecht van Lommel, composer Jan Morgenstern and of course the remarkable Ton Roosendaal, lead developer of Blender and head of the Blender Foundation.

Submissions for other artist positions ends in just a couple days and I’m confident we’re gonna put together an awesome team for this project. Alright, that’s enough superlatives for this paragraph…

I’m super excited. If you aren’t familiar with Blender’s open movies, check out the first two projects: Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny.

Really phenomenal works, and the films were created almost entirely with open source software.

Production starts in September and will last 6-8 months, so if everything works out I’ll be in Amsterdam in less than four months! Be sure to follow the progress of the project at durian.blender.org.

Alrighty. That was an epic post. Time to get back to work!

–Colin

On my way.

After a fantastic and semiproductive 6-week break in Maryland, I’m headed back down to Savannah for school. I’m currently a junior, and have about a year and a half left at SCAD.

I aim to make good use of that time. During this break I wrote two short screenplays (well, more like one and a half) which I’m really excited about. At school I’ve gotten to the point where I feel that the most valuable (and educational) thing I can be doing right now is pursuing my own independent projects.

So my plan for the next six months at school is to make an ambitious short independent film– with a real cast, crew, and budget. It’s an intimidating prospect for me, but I’m determined to make it happen. If you want to learn more about the project or possibly get involved, please let me know!

I’ll be posting more about it shortly, and hopefully will launch a website for the project.