What a ride!... If you liked the movie and if you’re curious about how and when it was made, have a look here!
It’s done! ‘Strange Beasts’ had its cast&crew & friends screening at Framestore, London (February 2017) and its official online release on ‘Short of the week’ (March 2017). 24 hours later, it's a staff pick! Yeepee! It even has its own little imdb page. ‘Strange Beasts’ is a self-funded short film. Thank you so much everyone who got involved.
January 2016: With time to kill during winter, I have watched and listened a lot about virtual reality, integrated reality… The new trend… Well, not so new anymore, but still one of the ‘next big thing’. Anyway.
I just wanted to make a hoax video in a first place: I thought: “Ey, let’s make a fake commercial, about a pretend VR or AR game, and just post it online, and drive people crazy because the game will look so cool...”
Today, people watch blockbusters full of amazing quality VFX, but everyone is a little blase about it... They've seen a lot of it I guess... With a good hoax, though, and sometimes not-so-fancy VFX, you can actually make people believe a story. So to that end, I think a ‘hoax’ is a great sort of storytelling.
To make a good hoax, it has to look and sound absolutely real… Or it won’t work. I have to be well informed. So I’ve watched even more videos, about Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, the latest game trends, the future of gaming, the latest gadgets in development, etc… Very geeky time ideed. But I quickly found out, there’s a lot of those ‘demo videos’ online, which are pretty much exactly what I wanted to do, and so well done… It was a little discouraging at first, but then I turned my ‘hoax’ into a narrative, which I think translates how I feel about Augmented Reality: It's a mix of fascination and a bit of fear too!
February 2016: Time to gather a team, starting with my friend Djob (his tumblr here), who’s amazing at design (and drawing, illustration, 2D animation… damn.)
It was really important to me to get the design right. I thought, for this short to work properly, I need people to like the designs at least! Then my friend Dean, a talented concept artist, got involved and is responsible for all the modelling, texturing and CG concepts of both creatures. Walter was way too scary at the beginning!
March/April 2016: Meanwhile, I start to organize the shoot, I present my little script to a few friends, then friends of friends, etc… Until I get my team complete. It was a small on-set team (11 people, 1 person per task, literally) but a great one! I rent a bit of material and get the authorisation to shoot inside of a VFX house in Soho. I needed a ‘high-tech'-office looking place, it was perfect! 2 days shoot (Saturday-Sunday), mid-April.
Above: Some members of the team, end of day 1. Standing, left to right: Bridget (makeup and hair), myself, Anthony (DOP), Michael (sound recordist). Sitting, left to right: My super mate Vince (2nd assistant and on-set photographer), Tim (actor), and Amelie (first assistant).
May/June/July 2016: I put together a first edit and start all the CGI and UI, and compositing on my own. All of that on evenings and week-ends as I had a full time job. I realise I can’t do both. I quit my job.
I should also mention, I could never have done this short without my friends Amelie and Pery, founders of the VFX studio 'Peanut'. They supervised theVFX on set, they are responsible for all the tracking, and for the little anecdote, they also introduced me to Tim, the actor. And then Tim introduced me to the young Poppy and her parents, whom he met on a previous shoot.
August/September 2016: I get more help for ‘step 2’ of the CGI: Rigging and animation. As a CG animator/previs artist, I know a few people in that industry, so it helped! ;) That’s also when I meet Pierre, the sound designer and composer. We’ve worked from the distance (he’s based in Paris).
Rigging: Maickel Pasta. Animation: Joffrey Zeitouni and Philippe Moine. Friends and former colleagues of the anim/VFX industry.
October 2016: When the anim was close to final, I contact Rick and Mario from the studio Red Knuckles, former Art directors at Passion Pictures (that’s where I met them) and they say Yes! Awesome! They did the rendering and compositing of the creatures. Thanks again guys. Red Knuckles is co-producer of the film alongside Peanut.
December 2016: Happy Christmas Holidays everyone.
January/February 2017: Red Knuckles delivers the final rendered/comped sequences. Anthony (the DOP) puts me in touch with Lewis at Electric Theatre Collective, who does the final grading of the movie. I had pre-graded the film myself, as I wasn’t sure I would get a professional grading. All I can say is, it was SO worth spending the time with Lewis in the colour suit. Pierre (sound) delivers all the files for the final mix. By the way Pierre, I hope you know how happy I am about it!... Yipee!
Conclusion…
Once, I've heard on a podcast someone said: "When you're a young artist, and truly believe in your idea, you might feel you're not carrying your project, it's the project that carries you." It all makes sense Today. I feel amazingly lucky to be surrounded by great, talented people. I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me achieving this little short. Thanks.
