Poster
Trailer:
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!
–Colin
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. 
Later!
–Colin
As you may know, my life for the past four months has been consumed by Project Durian, which has been an amazing experience so far. However, I was fortunate to be able to spend the holidays at home, and over the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to get some work done on my film En Route. Things are coming along nicely!
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
This summer I’ve been working at a snail’s pace on the cut of En Route. During this time we’ve been accumulating even more material to fill in the gaps in the edit. Last week, Yotam Dor, my producer and main actor of the film, was able to get into a real live cockpit and shot some footage for the film!
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
This announcement has been a long time coming. I’ve been working on this project in some capacity since last November… mulling over the concept, jotting down ideas, drafting the script, and gathering together interested parties.
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! Read the rest of this entry »
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