Update

I’ve been having an enormous amount of fun flying out to some of the film festivals we’ve gotten into, and meeting other truly independent filmmakers who are tilting at the windmills of this crazy industry of ours. While I’m generally just happy to have the opportunity to screen my work in front of actual human beings, I’m thrilled to announce that “The Place Where You Live” won distinctive achievement awards for Editing, Visual Effects, and Production Design at Des Moines Iowa’s Wild Rose International Film Festival.

It was my second festival in two weeks, and while audience response continues to be really positive, this kind of additional recognition is icing on the cake, and a nice bit of validation for all the folks who’ve worked so hard to make this impossibly ambitious project come to life. This is especially true as the Wild Rose International had an impressively strong lineup of films to show, including a pleasingly high number from other Minnesota filmmakers (shout-out to the Twin Cities!).

VFX

Huge congratulations to everyone who pitched in with me on the VFX, most of whom were tragically left off of the certificate (for reasons solely of length). However, I can amend that here by giving a huge shout out to Brian Mulligan, Aaron Vasquez, Joel Osis, Christopher Benitah, B.J. West, Brian Olson, Patrick Burke, and Marc-André Ferguson for his organizational talents putting the original Smoke-based VFX crew together. I couldn’t have done this without this incredibly talented team of artists, and if I were you I’d hire all of them.

Production Design

I’m also excited that Kaylynn Raschke’s contribution as Production Designer has been recognized. An industry veteran stylist with over two decades of experience in commercial styling for print and broadcast, set dressing, and wardrobe, she went above and beyond with limited resources to design and assemble a fantastic pair of environments for the movie, each of which had a lot going on. Production design is all too often neglected in smaller productions, and I’m proud to say that’s not a problem we had.

Editing

Lastly, I’m very pleased to be recognized for the editing of this piece. While I’ve not had my shingle out professionally as an editor for clients since the late nineties, I’ve continued practicing the craft through cutting my own work, that of my wife Kaylynn (a filmmaker in her own right), and in doing the occasional bit of surgery on projects requiring finishing in addition to grading. It’s nice to see that I’ve still got it.

More festival screenings are coming up; go on over to whereyoulivethemovie.com for the latest listings and updates!

Nina Ashton, a professor of physics, is abducted by her counterpart from an alternate dimension—one in which her husband has died. As her doppleganger takes her place, Nina struggles to rebuild the machine and reopen the gateway between worlds in order to regain the life that should be hers.

I’m very pleased to present a preview of the first two minutes of “The Place Where You Live,” my new science fiction short that’s working its way through postproduction, shot by fantastical shot.

We’re aiming for a May release, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with how it’s turning out thanks to the fantastic cast and crew, as well as the incredible talents of designer and animator Brian Olson, compositors Brian Mulligan, Aaron Vasquez, Joel Osis, and Christopher Benitah, and 3D artist BJ West.

Kelly Pieklo has begun working on the sound design and mix, which can be heard along with John Rake’s wonderful score. I also need to thank Autodesk for their sponsorship of this project (the entire program is being edited and composited on Smoke 2013), as well as Splice in Minneapolis for their hands-on support.

If you want to learn more, I’ve blogged about the production, and I’ve also blogged about post.

And keep your eyes peeled for my next major announcement, once the whole 12 minute film is ready for viewing!

Those of you who’ve been following me on Twitter have undoubtedly been noting my now constant stream of preproduction tweets, so I figured it was time to stop being such a tease and share a bit of what’s going on. I’m producing and directing a short subject I’ve written called “The Place Where You Live.” I’m not going to spoil the plot, as you’ll have an opportunity to see it soon enough, but here’s a clue…

The headshot shows our lead, Dawn Krosnowski, who’s heading up a cast of three in this tightly scripted “Twilight Zone-esque” excursion into speculative fiction. Kaylynn Raschke, art director extrordinaire, has been overseeing construction of our two sets for this project.

Building in the Office Set

We’re saving money by shooting in a non-traditional space, in this case, a pair of stages usually reserved for band rehearsals. The tradeoff is that they’re odd spaces, but the advantage is that Kaylynn has had more time to work on the sets, and we haven’t needed such a huge crew.

From This…

To This

The last time I had a set built was 1991, since then it’s been all on-location shooting for me. However, it’s nice to be back in a mode where things are more tightly controlled. While not a feature, this is easily the most ambitious project I’ve worked on, with dual set compositing, lots of VFX, and a terrific crew headed up by cinematographer Bo Hakela.

So that’s what all the fuss is about. After six years of being in development with two other projects, it’s nice to be shooting something again. I’ll be posting updates once principal photography is finished, and more as we shift from production into post, and the post specialist in me gets to rue decisions that the director in me just had to make on the set.

I received some fantastic news this week from my collaborator, illustrator Ryan Beckwith, regarding our long-term project, Starship Detritus. He’s been laboring for months on the art for our pilot episode of this animated science-fiction series. This being a side-gig for both of us, his work as a commercial storyboard artist kept interrupting (damn you for being so successful, Ryan!), but getting the news that he’s finished is the biggest leap forward since I finished writing all 13 episodes of the first season.

Of course, now it means I need to get off my backside and start scheduling some After Effects character animators to put these images into motion. Ryan’s been creating high-resolution, multi-layered Photoshop comps (in conjunction with his assistant Ryan Zalis who aided with flatting and other assorted tasks). Working with our first animator, Steve Rein, the artwork has been constructed to accommodate skeletal and puppet-tool animation in After Effects.

Being an illustrator and not an animator, Ryan has gone in a much different direction with the artwork then in most animations. From the very first color tests he did, I was impressed with the texture and detail he brought to the world I’ve written, and it’ll be exciting to see the scenes come alive.

It’s a bit poignant; I used to work with After Effects every day back in the late 90’s, but having been focused on color correction for so long, at this point I’m so rusty that I’d rather work with faster artists to bring these characters to life. I’ll stick to animating the camera and framing of the final comps for rendering out the finished shots.

Of course, as the writer/director/editor, I’ve a few other things to handle. The very first thing I did, after Ryan and I storyboarded the first episode, and he created the first complete set of roughs, was to record a group of temp actors reading the script, and edit together an animatic in order to get the timing of the show right. This has been our reference going forward, and as soon as I get my hands on the full finished set of artwork, I’m looking forward to updating the animatic with the color art.

Which will take a bit of doing. The original animatic was put together in Final Cut Pro, but given this is such an After Effects-heavy project, I’m planning on moving the entire edit over to Premiere Pro in CS6, to take advantage of its AE integration. I’m hoping this creates some efficiencies. Besides, it’s an excuse to learn a new piece of software by doing something real, which I find is always the best way to learn.

Additionally, since this process has ended up taking far, far longer then it was supposed to (par for the course), I’ve begun novelizing this first season. As fun as the 13 episode, ten-minute-per-episode structure I used for the scripts has been, there’s additional story that my chosen format simply won’t accommodate. Prose has been a perfect outlet for the added bits, and the idea of telling this story across different platforms is tremendously appealing to me. At this point I’m 11,000 words into the novelization, and having tremendous fun with it. Alas, now my day job is interrupting, since working on the new version of the DaVinci Resolve 9 manual is proving to make scheduling creative time challenging.

Moving forward, there are plans within plans, and I’ll be sure to share more when there’s more to share. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grading and tech-writing work that I do, but creative projects like this are what brought me into post-production in the first place, and it’s gratifying to be making progress on my biggest creative project to date.