Dying Ice - youTube

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 21:46:34 +1100

Hectic! Nick Kacevski as an absolute top bloke - and made me very welcome when i arrived at Dr.D - when he asked me to comp “a shot or two” for his short i of course said yes - I ended up doing all the comping for over 25 shots - most of which are hopefully pretty subtle. Ice and flame elements were created by Edwin Erdmanis, also at DR.D - the spear was created by Simon LeGrande - now at WETA - and lovingly hand-re-tracked and roto’d by yours truly in Shake (yes i do know NUKE, just finding it hard to let go (‘sniff’)... a very big - but very fun project...

my AFI Nomination for “Plastic”

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:50:47 +1100

Very pleased to announce that iIhave been nominated for an AFI Award for Visual Effects. As on-set VFX supervisor for the short film “Plastic” I worked with Director and VFX artist Sandy Widyanata to plan and implement the shooting of the various plates and elements needed.

“Plastic won the international VES awards in LA - hopefuly we can win at home. The attached clip (published by autodesk) shows some of our work in action...

Myself, Sandy, and artists Eric So and Chris Jackson have all been nominated together. One of the films we are up against is Baz Luhrman’s “Australia” - so wish us luck!

Under Ice - finally uploaded a bit

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:40:47 +1100

Under Ice (written by german playright Falk Richter) was a play i completed the AV design for that played at the Stables theatre in August & Sept as part of the Griffin Independent season. Youtube doesn’t give justice to the more than 8m wide screen, Set Design by Melanie Paul, Sound design by Rosie Chase or Kellie Mackereth’s great direction... watch it in hi-def...

Thought it was time i shared a snippet; and some reviews...

http://musicfeeds.com.au/art-and-culture/theatre-under-ice/

http://kjtheatrereviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/under-ice.html

Phetsta & shockOne - The Sun - youTube

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:22:53 +1100

My good mate Scott Dolan directed this clip in a dynamic two-man crew with another good friend, Dev Hassan, who provided the cinematographic know-how to pull it off. The clip for UK collaborators Phetsta and ShockOne has already had airplay on Rage, and the track was on high rotation last week on triple J. Shot entirely on Red, I completed the onlide edit, grade and delivery to both a HD master and youTube on my Mac Pro at home - the first all-Red broadcast delivery i’ve completed from my home studio.

VES, IF and AFI updates

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 15:42:03 +1100

“plastic” directed by Sandy Widyanata, and which i worked on as on-set VFX supervisor, has been nominated for a VES award for outstanding visual effects in a short film... very cool!

“Four” directed by Erin White, won best short film in the IF awards, and Xanthe Highfield took out the best achievement in short film craft AFI for her design work -

congratulations to the whole team!!!

fOUR nominated for an AFI award

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:46:05 +1000

We’ve recently learned that our excellent short film fOUR, directed by Erin White and Produced by Zyra McAuliffe, has been nominated for an AFI in the category of best short fiction film. As VFX supervisor I worked on a number of scenes in the film, the largest being the CG pre-vis and motion control programming for the final sequence of the film, a 1-minute and forty-second long motion control sequence, which I then cleaned up and composited at 4K in Shake.

We are extremely proud of the film.

instructions on how to vote for fOUR (Kindly provided by Zyra) are included below.

1. JOIN

                     Log on to     www.afi.org.au and click on “AFI Membership”
                     Email           membership@afi.org.au and request an e-form
                     Call                1300 139 697

2. SEE*
Attend the screening of the Short Fiction Films
in the capitol city nearest you.

If you can not make it to one of the following sessions contact
Zyra McAuliffe to arrange an alternative screening or DVD
Email: zyramca@gmail.com    Mob: 0411 743 387

*This could be optional, but let’s assume you will.

3. VOTE

i) REGISTER to vote online by emailing memebership@afi.org.au
or calling 1300 139 697and quoting your membership number.

ii) CAST your vote via the Online Voting Form which will be
available in September at afi.org.au. Follow the instructions
on the form to ensure it is valid.

Online voting opens Monday September 1st and
closes 5pm Friday 3rd October.

Plastic in Palm Springs

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:22:02 +1000

Plastic, directed by Sandy Widyanata, is screening as part of the Palm Springs film festival. As on-set VFX supervisor Iworked with Sandy and DOP Greg DeMarigny to plan and execute the shooting of all of the VFX elements and plates.

Anna is preparing for a first date with Henry, a man she has secretly admired for years, when everything goes wrong. Thus begins Anna's downward spiral of self-criticism. If only she could change a few things about how she looks....if you could, would you? And how far is too far?

I’ts a great film - The team on “Plastic” was amazing, and i’m sure the rest of the crew would join me in wishing Sandy a great trip to watch the film screen in front of a US Audience!!!

UV warp for Shake plug-in

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 14:10:26 +1000

As part of building the environments for The Red Kite - we wanted the opportunity to really sculpt the images in the comp - in order to be able to change the skies in the last scene we wanted to render out the skydome as a blank, UV mapped object, and be able to apply the sky texture to it in Shake, where we’d have more control over the exact composition.

Being an impoverished student at the time, i couldn’t afford to go out and buy a commercial product - so i made one!

This neat plugin does it all in one step - just hook up the rendered 16/32 bit UV map to one side and the texture or video you want to map on the other. The download comes with a maya surface material that correctly maps the
UVs.

grab the plugin here!

I’m hoping to work on one that uses the default UV’s from renderman- so stay tuned!

The Red Kite hits rendering stage

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 18:07:38 +1000

The Red Kite is a story about a girl who lives inside a giant machine. One day she discovers a red kite, and she begins to wonder what life might be like outside her cramped cell.

Renderman is a fantastic renderering tool - and with the install complete (and already rendering scenes for another broadcast job!) Final pictures for the Red Kite should be complete soon.

stay tuned!

Smirnoff Experience takes off on MTV

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:29:37 +1000

Pat Clair and I won the SMPTE collaborative award last year with his short film “Starcross’d” so when Pat pitched this concept to me I was on board straight away - who wouldn’t have fun animating a giant music-powered rocketship in the shape of a Smirnoff logo?

Juice Productions was tasked with the completion of the spot in just 13 days. Pat and I relied on all our “shorthand” techniques learnt on Starcross’d to get the spot completed in time - It is on air now on MTV Australia.

thanks also due to Lissa Pascale-Brown - who stepped in at short notice to model and animate for a week.

fOUR awarded SMPTE collaborative award

Mon, 2 Jun 2008 20:14:44 +1000

fOUR, directed by Erin White, makes innovative use of motion-control technology to tell a unique and engaging story about two couples becoming a family of four.

Towards the conclusion of the film, director Erin had scripted a montage of shots with the intention of showing a progression of time as the two couples move in together, get to know each other, give birth to their baby and grow together as a family. There were initially 10 separate scenes with a voice over linking each scene. Erin had originally envisaged a locked-off shot that would dissolve between the different stages and this final critical sequence would serve as a coda to the story with the final reveal of the narrator being the daughter of the protagonists. Instead after an extensive period of research and pre-vis - Motion control was chosen as the most appropriate tool.

The clip above was originally filmed on 35mm with an anamorphic lens - so the small web-clip above may not do it justice! A very big thankyou also to Eran Dolev from Carnival films/ Camera collective, and Dan Thompson from RSP for their assistance with the extensive R&D required.

Erin White, John Brawley (DOP), Xanthe Highfield (Designer), Zyra McAuliffe and myself worked hard to bring this vision to the screen and are extremely excited to be recognised by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

Lake Mungo Screens at SFF 2008

Sun, 1 Jun 2008 20:36:53 +1000

Lake Mungo, Directed by Joel Anderson and Shot by John Brawley, is also the first feature I VFX supervised. I completed over 40 shots for the film personally, ranging from rig removals, to head replacements, retouching and matte painting. Nick Bitar, Jason Glenfield and Christopher Jackson were also employed as freelancers to work as additional compositors and roto artists.

The creative goal was to create seamless and transparent ghost effects and composites that would stand up to enlargement and freeze-framing as the edit progressed. The VFX team came on quite early in the production, both advising the on set construction and delivering pre-production tests, as well as managing the post-workflow for the Panasonic P2 originated media, and heavily treating and downgrading the 35mm, digibeta and DV material used to create a mixed-media, documentary feel.

Lake Mungo screens at 8:45 on Wednesday June 18.

Click Here to go to the SFF website and book tix!