Looking for help with a short film

I’m getting ready to shoot a 15-minute, live-action, high-def, sci-fi short that’s going to require a number of CG effects, for which I’ll need a little help. This is not a paid gig, and before anyone posts a link to the “no free work” essay, let me explain a little further.

This is a non-commercial, collaborative project. Everyone is volunteering their time. I am a member of a filmmaking co-op here in Los Angeles called the Socal Film Group - a bunch of people who donate their time and energy to one another’s film projects in order to learn and to produce work for their reels. It’s a talented bunch – including professional screenwriters, DP’s, grips, a sound guy, a professional compositing artist and others. But one of the areas in which we’re lacking is 3d talent. That’s why I’m posting here.

I myself am not much of a Blender artist. I’ve been teaching myself the software for about 6 months, and lurking here for a little while, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to become proficient with it. I am, first and foremost, a professional screenwriter, having written screenplays for Paramount, Intermedia, Gale Anne Hurd and most recently actor/producer Morgan Freeman. I have a blog that gives a little background on me, if anyone’s curious. And, if you’re really curious, you can watch my last short here (no visual effects in that one).

As a professional writer and a member of the WGA, I do not write for studios or producers (other than myself) for free, and I sympathize with those who look unkindly upon those who try to wrangle free work for a for-profit project. This is not one of those situations. The short is not intended to make money, and in the unlikely event that it does (e.g. festival prizes, etc.), that money will be shared among all of the participating talent. That’s a standard policy of the Socal Film Group, and I’m willing to sign an agreement to that effect with anyone who helps out.

The short will be a scary, tense story about a couple of survivors of an alien invasion that has decimated the population. It’s going to feature some Omega Man-style shots of Los Angeles devoid of people and traffic, and there will be a few shots of alien space craft and machines, and a climax featuring a few CGI aliens.

The goal of this short is to make a completely professional looking film that will really impress Hollywood agents, executives and producers – something that will serve as a real showcase for the writer/director (me), the actors, the DP, the scoring artist and the FX artist(s). So, if you’re a seriously talented CG artist looking to build up your portfolio with material that combines CGI with live action, I could use your help.

What I need can be broken down into two categories:

  1. a conceptual artist who can design really cool and original aliens, alien ships and other alien technology (this person could also serve in the next capacity)

  2. one or more kickass Blender artists to model and animate a dozen or so shots based on those conceptual designs (that work will then be integrated into the live action material by our compositor)

There is a third, less involved way that people could help out – and I’m not sure if this sort of request is usually made, but here goes…

I need some simple models of a) poseable people and b) various everyday vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.). These models can be low-res, low detail. They’ll only be seen from a distance and won’t even be animated. I only need a few CGI people to appear as scattered dead bodies. But I need a lot of vehicles to appear in multi-car pile-ups and abandoned traffic jams. Not fancy sportscars or concept cars, but just your average cars that you’d see on the streets of LA (SUV’s, minivans, pickups, sedans, semis, etc.). So, even if you don’t have the time or desire to volunteer as an artist on the film, if you’ve created any such models that you’re willing to lend out (properly credited, of course), that would be really cool.

We’ll be shooting the live action material at the end of July. The FX work will start as soon as possible and probably take several months. I expect the film won’t be finished until the late fall (one of my screenplays goes into production in September, so that will distract me a bit).

Volunteers can work from anywhere on the planet, so long as they are fluent in English. In addition to credit, everyone will receive a copy of the finished film on DVD and, if needed, on some kind of HD format.

If anyone is interested, or wants to know more, I’m happy to discuss it here or or via email ([email protected]).

Thanks for listening. Sorry about the huge post, but I wanted to give as much detail as possible.

  • Michael
  1. one or more kickass Blender artists to model and animate a dozen or so shots based on those conceptual designs (that work will then be integrated into the live action material by our compositor)

Will you be supplying footage for use when the animations are designed? I ask because they are working on a compositing contest now that uses Icarus and Voodoo for camera tracking, and they are doing some cool stuff like that over there, but I think they need to have the footage for working out the animations. Not that all the designing and effects can’t be worked out prior, I just mean that the animation part of it has to be tuned to the footage.

Very interesting, I’ll see if I can make a minivan or a pick up truck :slight_smile:

1 Like

Craigomatic:

I haven’t figured out the workflow entirely, but yes, I imagine the live action shots (w/ tracking info) would be provided for animating. Some shots could probably be completed in Blender, but others would have to be composited later.

Now, this is what I call an interesting project, and as I see that you have done quite nice jobs before, it has even more appeal to it (as opposed to some of those newcomers requests that have just an idea but can’t back it up with anything). Lately I have been watching some hobbyist, near zero-budget short live action movies and I think that they are really interesting. For example these two are really good: Silent City, by Ruairí Robinson and A Lonely Sky, by Nick Ryan (the making of a Lonely Sky is very interesting too along with the Boeing CGI effect shot breakdown).

I don’t currently have skills to do any professional level animation footage (at least within reasonable time limits), but this project would be on my list if I were pro enough.

Good luck with this one! Waiting to see this finish :slight_smile:

one word: pi

S-T-S:

Wow, those shorts are pretty sick. In essence, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. Ha ha.