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!

I’m now making a short film for my senior thesis at the Savannah College of Art and Design called “The Secret Number”, based on a short story by Igor Teper.

We’ve just launched our Kickstarter campaign. Very curious to see if we can get the funding we need from anonymous film-supporting angels on the internet!

You can follow our progress on the project on our Production Blog.

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!

This week we’ve spent meeting and getting acquainted with the team for project Durian.  There are currently 7 artists and 2 developers on the project, and everybody seems pretty much awesome!  We’ve been talking loosely about the film, about the team roles, about our technical targets, but we’ve also spent a great deal of time discussing story.

Originally the plan was to have a finalized story for Durian by the end of July.  However, the story process has been extremely protracted, mainly due to problems communicating and collaborating long-distance with the writer, legendary dutch comic author Martin Lodewijk.  Both he and I have been busy, and the back-and-forth between us has been very slow.

I have been given the opportunity to adapt a concept supplied by Martin– to develop it further and expand it to screenplay format.  However, since we didn’t meet our end-of-July deadline, we’ve found ourselves without a fully developed story.  Members of the team have come up with a number of hypothetical concepts and inklings for the project in discussion with me, and I think many of these ideas have a whole lot of potential.  However, it is my task to work within a concept provided by the writer, so at the moment we’re waiting for another concept from Martin.  It’s a bit sad not to be able to seriously consider these other great ideas, but I think the discussion has really gotten our creative juices flowing and I’m confident we will settle on a really great story for Durian.

This week has been very exciting, and very stressful/frustrating at the same time.  Be sure to follow the progress of the project on the blog: http://durian.blender.org.  I plan to keep the more personal ramblings and my feelings about Durian on this personal blog, and the more public updates and presentations on the Durian site… but I’m sure there will be some overlap as well.

I’m crazy excited about the coming months so expect a number of updates!

In other news, work on En Route continues.  I probably won’t have much time to touch the edit in the next few weeks, but I’m pretty excited about where it’s going!  The vfx work happening in Savannah is picking up speed.  Looking forward to posting some renders!

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.