Hello everyone!
Thanks for all your positive feedback.
@Keen: When we were studying back in 2010 what a “feasible output” for non-pros would look like, we did look at OLDER video game trailers (Digic/Blur earlier work and not the most recent - Stuff like the “Hellgate: London” trailer). And we also tried looking at the Resident Evil CG film “Degeneration”. There were things about that film that I liked, and quite a bit I didn’t like. (like Scowling Leon, but I digress) But yes, definitely we kind of looked at those and sort of pegged a benchmark we could aim at realistically, rather than burn ourselves out chasing AVATAR level effects. We also looked at a lot of Xbox360 games to see how some FX could be implemented in ways that weren’t so resource extensive.
@leifdk: Thanks for the offer. It is very very humbling. In reality, the Sound Engineer and Song writer were onboard immediately after the VFX supervisors/Senior artists had seen the script. I think some people will be surprised to see the names we have in the Sound and Audio category. When the trailer comes out, try pausing the trailer at the end (Production Names list) and see if you recognize them. But again, I will definitely keep you on record. Thanks again.
@NinthJake: Again, thanks. Each of the updates on the blog, if you click on “Read More” or the Post Title, it opens up to DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY where we talk about many of the elements that would have gone into a “Making-Of”. I am not sure we can create a documentary because the amount of rummaging we’d have to do today to piece together the entire progress would be very extensive. You have to understand that when REVERSION started it was a case of: “Can we really do this?” So we weren’t exactly recording everything thinking we had all the answers (to wit, in the beginning we had a LOT of questions). What I had 2 years ago was “theoretical answers”. I had taken notes from the production of Jurassic Park (which to me was the best Production layout ever made)… a few white papers from Pixar’s early days (which focused on Project Management)… But even then we didn’t know if it would work. So many short films fail, and REVERSION is actually pretty FX heavy, from halogen lights, to explosions, shattering glass… things that would normally require hundreds of PC’s to render (if done to a maxed out level). The movie blog isn’t just to promote the film, or promote the team, but also to sort of try to document and give back as much as we can to the Community about our experience, because in more than a few ways, it DID work in that we were able to assemble the movie more or less as we intended within a finite and controlled schedule. This is why we are putting DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY within each update.
However, there are also many many things we experimented with and learned for Modeling, FX, Animation, Scene planning, etc. For example: What detail should be modeled in, and which ones can be normal maps or displacement maps? If you have any questions though you can reach me via pm, or email me at [email protected] or fire an email to [email protected] .
@FXR: Many many thanks for your comment.