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.

–Colin

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!

–Colin

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.

Later!

–Colin

As we’ve known from the beginning, the visual effects workload is pretty intense, and we’ve allowed our vfx team to set the pace for postproduction. I’m extremely excited by the work they’ve done so far, and plans are currently in place to bring this film across the finish line in late March!

I’ve only bit off a few shots to handle myself, but I thought I would post a tidbit about what I’ve been working on the past couple weeks.

There is a scene in the movie that involves a CG toy plane. Here’s a glimpse of the final shot of that sequence:

Doesn’t look real yet, but I’ll keep working. I also worked on a shot from a scene at a science fair. My actor was supposed to play a character at multiple ages, but for this scene he was supposed to look twelve or thirteen. On set we I had him stand on his knees, to make him look shorter… but it didn’t look quite right. In After Effects I tried fooling with his on-screen proportions to make the shot more convincing:

What do you think?

Anyway, I’m really holding out on you — these are just random shots that I’ve spent a bit of time on. There are a lot more ‘newsworthy’ shots being done by the vfx team… but they may not see the light of day till the premiere!

For now, I’m back in Amsterdam to redirecting my focus on “Sintel”. Full-on production is gonna be a long haul, but who said animation was easy?

–Colin

Check out some of these beautiful stills, which have now found a place in the edit:

All shot with a Canon 5D Mark II. Looking forward to posting the trailer as soon as we have some completed VFX! The team is making awesome progress.

–Colin

But now we are only two weeks away from the shoot, and it is time to announce the project to the world:

Visit the official site.

“En Route” is 5-minute short film that follows the life of a pilot in reverse chronological order, from the moment of his death in a horrific plane crash, to a pivotal moment he experiences as a 7-year-old boy.

This film is by far my most ambitious project to date. Although the finished piece will be very short, the film involves a scene with the smoldering debris of a plane crash, multiple sequences involving a variety of aircraft, cockpit scenes, many different actors (some of whom play the same character!) and a number of locations. There’s a whole lot to take care of, but I’m really excited about how it’s coming together!

I’ve got a fantastic crew and producing team, made up of students from the Savannah College of Art and Design. We’ve casted out of Savannah and are drawing upon a number of local resources (aviation-related and otherwise) to make this thing happen.

We’re shooting on the RED camera, which kinda blows my mind.

A beast of a camera.

I’m also putting together a killer visual effects team for the project. Although I expect the core team members to be SCAD students who can work on this project locally, I’m definitely interested in doing some long-distance collaboration for visual effects. (If you’re interested, send me an email!) I’ve already got some good guys doing post sound, and Jasper Blunk has signed on as composer.

All in all, I think this is going to be a really fantastic project, and hopefully something that everyone involved will be proud of.

For more information, and to keep closer tabs on the progress of the film, visit the official site, enroute.colinlevy.com. ]]> http://www.colinlevy.com/blog/new-film-project-en-route/feed 1 http://www.colinlevy.com/blog/psaid-2009 http://www.colinlevy.com/blog/psaid-2009#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:37:19 +0000 Colin Levy http://www.colinlevy.com/blog/?p=238 This year I decided to enter the PSAID competition again, which is focused on promoting cash donations, rather than the donation of goods, as the best method for disaster relief. Last year I won second place with “In Dire Need”, which you can watch here.

Here’s my entry for this year’s contest:

Click to Play.

Unfortunately, I found out today that I did not make the final round.

I didn’t put as much time into this as I would have liked, but I’m pretty satisfied with the way it came out. Well, I’m satisfied with the latter 15 seconds. Well, I guess just the shot of the quarter. That shot is pretty cool.

But I finished it and got it out on time, and although it’s not my best work it’s certainly worth showing! Also, the music for this spot was done by Jasper Blunk. Let me know what you think.

My friend Roque and I won Best in Show at the SCADDY Awards!

The SCADDY’s are an annual advertising competition for students at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Apparently there were over 1,800 submissions, and we won a Silver for “In Dire Need”, and a Gold and Best in Show for “The Disappearing Act”. No cash prize, but a couple really pretty trophies.

But first, here’s my third and final Video Sketch, which deals a little bit with the issue of inspiration, and the fleeting nature of ideas. This one is a little out there, but I think it turned out surprisingly well. Check it out:

Click to Play

The amazing music was composed by Jasper Blunk.