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 could not be happier with the response it’s gotten. It took me completely by surprise. Seriously, before this weekend I would never have predicted it would spread the way it has. I mean, what’s going on? The film has so many flaws!

Our reaction on irc. (I'm effstops)

But… it seems to have struck a chord with people. It was featured on Slashdot, Geek.com, NewsinFilm, and Cartoon Brew!

Not to mention our fanbase at blendernation and sintel.org and where there are now over 600 comments.

People have been tweeting about it– including the incredible Felicia Day… and a post I made on reddit.com even made the front page!

And now there’s over a quarter million views on YouTube. I’m overwhelmed! I feel like I’m personally getting too much credit for the film. It was really a team effort from beginning to end, and I was fortunate to be working with an incredibly diverse and talented team. Thanks guys!

I especially want to thank Ton Roosendaal, the producer of the film and the lead developer of Blender, for giving me the opportunity, putting the project together, weighing in creatively and pushing us all to do our best work.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, check it out:

–Colin

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.

–Colin

* citation needed.

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 2