I posted yesterday about how to go about hiring some blender talent, and pretty much everyone told me I should just describe the job and the money, and see if folks are interested. So here goes:
I want to get a title sequence done for a short film project I’m working on. It’s a sci-fi comedy thing that has a lot of effects, and I want a nifty title sequence to go with it.
The sequence would probably be between 45 seconds and a minute. The idea is to have the camera hurtling through space at high speed and flying past various celestial objects–planets, moons, a sun, a nebula, that sort of thing–and encountering the opening titles as it goes, pausing briefly at each title before zooming off into space again. Ideally, it would end up at earth, zooming in on Southern California as the titles fade to black.
The basic animation isn’t that hard–I’ve done mock-up versions that only took me an hour or so with the basics. The problem is, I’m a crappy artist and a rank amateur at blender. My planets look like bowling balls with pictures stuck on them. My camera paths are very simple. You get the idea. I need somebody with skills.
Ideally, the animation would have the following:
- The celestial objects would look cool. Not necessarily photo-real (everyone’s going to know it’s computer animation) but cool. It’s stuff like atmospheres and camera flare that really sell that kind of thing, and I SUCK at that stuff.
- The “space” itself would look as good as possible, ideally a combination of high-resolution picture and the blender star generator. I’m open to suggestions on this.
- It would be great if the titles themselves had a nice look–perhaps did something interesting as we passed them. Again, I’m open. They could fly away, get eclipsed by passing objects, just something to add to the overall feeling of motion.
- It needs to be rendered at broadcast resolution.
As for pay, here’s the deal. The project is for the Fox Searchlab, a directing program run by Fox Studios. Searchlab shorts are supposed to be low-budget, so I’m restricted in what I’m allowed to pay. Plus, I’m poor.
I’ve got $200 to spend on the titles. I know that sucks, but I can promise tons of exposure to some pretty senior Hollywood folks. The head of Fox Searchlight sees all the shorts, plus pretty much every other exec in town. So that could be nice for someone looking to break into effects. Also, know that nobody’s making any money off this, Fox included–the money sucks for everyone. That said, I don’t think this should be TOO hard, especially for someone who has already played around with space stuff enough to have some things lying around.
A quick word on my background… I’m a writer/director in Los Angeles. I’ve had a bunch of films in festivals, including a film on the SCI-FI channel (Me and the Big Guy), a film on the FX Movies Channel (First Prince), and another that has been on PBS (Chekhov’s Gun).
If you’re interested, please let me know your thoughts on how you might approach the project, what you think you could do. If you have some links to your previous work, please email them. I don’t really care that much if you’re local, although it might be more convenient.
Thanks again, everyone.
–Matt
