So I’ve been back in the States for a few weeks now. Project Durian is coming rapidly to a close. Though a bit of work still continues, the film is pretty much as complete as it’s going to get. The credits are materializing, the final work on the mix is right on schedule.
It’s been a weird but easy experience coming back. It’s almost as if I never left– like I’m picking up right where I left off. It’s interesting how so much of your experience is connected to the physical reality of space. My desk is the same, my room is the same, my family still stresses me out. When I was in the thick of work on Sintel I felt like the project would never end. But looking back on it… it doesn’t seem like such a long time.
It’s incredibly hard to look at the film now with any real perspective. I try to imagine what it’d be like if I was never involved in the production, and instead randomly stumbled across the finished movie online. Would I be impressed? Would I be disappointed? What would annoy me?
Hard to say. There are some films that really blow my mind. But in my imaginings, I don’t think this short would’ve totally rocked my world. This doesn’t mean I don’t feel great about how it’s come out. I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done on the film, and I’m proud of everyone who’s worked on it. We struggled against a lot of things and won. But “Sintel” is surely not the best short animation ever made. From a technical and philosophical standpoint, however– as a movie made entirely with open source software, released creative commons to the world– it’s kinda groundbreaking. I’m honored to have been involved in probably the biggest Open Movie project the world has ever seen.*
I wouldn’t trade anything for the chance to be a part of this project. I appreciate every moment of it– even the painful parts. I made a lot of friends, worked with a lot of talented artists, learned a lot about myself and the process of directing. I’m sure my view of the film will shift a lot as I gain more distance from the film. It’s not even released yet– the jury’s still out. I look forward to attending the premiere in Utrecht in just a few weeks! And even more than that, I look forward to the moment it’s out in the world and I have thousands of YouTube comments to read.
Sorry, don’t mean to repost again from the Durian blog, but I felt this little video was worth it. Gives a nice sense of the space I’ve been working in the past year, the size of the team and some of our rituals.
Basically, we’ve only got two more weeks till our “pre-premiere”, so we’re going a little nuts to finish things up before the team leaves. I’ll be staying longer for a bit less than a month to take care of odds and ends… but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! We’re allmmoosttt there….
Shot and edited by animator Beorn Leonard. Music is “Perambulator” by his brother, Simon Leonard.
Welp, I posted this over on the Durian Blog, but it seems perhaps more appropriate for my personal site.
Just had a short jaunt to Savannah, Georgia to showcase En Route and see my friends and family. Since I took a year off for Project Durian, most of my friends from school are graduating this year! So it was a little bittersweet, but definitely a lot of fun.
En Route won the following Awards in the graduate category:
• Best Cinematography (Jason Osterday) • Best Editing (Me) • Best Production Design (Aaron Hoskins) • Best Graduate Film (my producers, Andre Danylevich and Yotam Dor) • Best Visual Effects (Sandro Blattner), which was in competition with both grad and undergrad films.
I’m so proud of the work that everybody has done on the film!
Hastily put this video together, mainly for the blenderheads following the progress of “Sintel”.
Sintel is coming along nicely! Only 45 more days before the premiere. SO much work to do!
Welp, we’re in the home stretch with En Route. We’re hoping to premiere it in Savannah in late May… which means we’ve got about two and a half weeks to get everything done!
Last weekend I worked on the poster (above), the website, and the trailer for the film.
Pretty pleased with how things are coming together!
For those keeping track, I’m still in Amsterdam working on Project Durian for the Blender Institute. Time is flying by. It’s a bit hard to believe I’ve been here for nearly eight months! Only three more months on the project, and we have SO much more work to do. Are we really 75% done? Doesn’t seem like it.
Things are picking up speed though, and the team is expanding! Hopefully we’ll be able to do this thing justice.
Since January I’ve been focusing most of my effort on the 3D animatic, which I’m trying to bring to the level of quality where you can just watch it and see the film as it will be, with decisions about character blocking, shot design, and editing all set and final. There’s a lot of considerations to be made, from timing and performance, environment design and composition. It’s been a really fun and gratifying experience, because I’m basically shooting an entire movie without having to get up from my chair! Week-by-week, scene-by-scene I’ve just been piecing the film together… and just this past week I’ve finally replaced the last storyboard. We’ve got the whole film in layout!
Although we’ve been posting frequent updates on the Durian Blog, my most recent post I feel is worth including here as well. Here’s the first scene of the film in OpenGL. So no renders, but the animation is 90% done:
Although there are flaws I’m aware of, I’m pretty proud of how the scene is working. I’ve never actually shot a fight scene in real life but I did a fair amount of experimentation and ‘research’ (action movies FTW!). Check out all the cameras!
I would say my usual “Let me know what you think!”, when I post new work, but we’ve already got 115 comments on the Durian blog, and it’s hard to even find time to read them all.
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