Seeker
Short Film • University Project • 2020
Seeker was my graduation team project for university. I was the director on this project and had the pleasure of leading my classmates and some outside professional help to creating a 1.5 minute short film that we are all proud of to this day. I’ve outlined some key parts of the work done below in this post.
The team
Director: Rassoul Edji
Producer: Tosin Ogunleye
Cinematographer: Matteo Balduzzi
Executive producer: Oscar Lowe
Starring: Vincenzo Meola
Edit and grade: Rassoul Edji
Music and SFX: Carlos Jiménez
Titles: Rassoul Edji
3D: Oscar Lowe • Rassoul Edji • Tim Coleman
Animation: CJ Burbage • Rassoul Edji
2D: Matteo Balduzzi • Luca Valentino • Vincenzo Meola • Tosin Ogunleye • Milan Grundza • Charlotte Derry
Matchmove: Matteo Balduzzi • Tosin Ogunleye • Will Phillips • Pranav Borse • Luca Valentino • Vincenzo Meola • Milan Grundza
Special thanks: Jeff Lowe • Monica Lee Lowe • Jonathan McFall • Allar Kaasik
Project brief and goals
The brief was to create a sequence of shots in a photorealistic setting and integrate VFX elements into live action plates. We had a timeline of 3 months to complete this project.
One of the goals I set for the project was to have it encompass the entire filmmaking pipeline. We did everything for this project, including but not limited to: Previz, postviz, crewing, principal photography, rehearsal shoot, location scouting, editing, VFX, motion graphics, grading, sound effects, and music.
The story and idea for the VFX was that a killer robot was chasing a wealthy man who tries to escape from him (The story didn’t matter).
We found a location and filmed the project across two days, with the second being a reshoot.
We wanted most of the VFX work to be invisible effects such as set extensions and cleanups with the exception of one “hero VFX” element and that was of course Titan, our main 3D asset.
Titan
The main asset in our project was the robot, “Titan”. We built him in a very condensed time frame (just 5 weeks) from start to finish. Because of this, we had to use a lot of kitbash to design him quickly, and then mould the look of the character around that design. The below image is what we used as a concept, it was made using kitbash parts from models we bought online of hard surface assets. Next to it is the final Titan asset. The final model had 2272 objects and 116 udims.
The rigging for Titan was done by Tim Coleman, an experienced Rigging TD in the film industry. He rigged Optimus Prime in the 2007 Transformers film. That’s how I knew him.
The final rig was very flexible and had a lot of detail that really elevated the realism of the movements.
The final rig utilized:
Custom “Task Builder” tool
1180 joints
2000+ rigged geometry
7000+ transforms
We did very quick look mockups in Photoshop to see which style of metal and color styles looked best for us before settling on the black and red look seen in the film.
Shots
We had a total of 12 VFX shots to deliver in our 3 month timeline for this project. 8 of those shots included Titan and some form of animation.
Across the full film there was 905 hand animated frames. Most of those were for the animations of Titan, and a couple shots included environment animation.
We shot reference for a lot of the movements for Titan so that we could base his movements in reality.
We did a lot of environment work, in both 3D and also through matte paintings all with the goal of keeping everything as real and as invisible as possible. We extended the location that we were on to look more vast and uniform and also walled off. We also extended the tree line, landscape, sky, and main entrance gate, to further help with the effects. Some trees and other elements had to be cleaned out and replaced because Titan interacted with them and we needed control over them.
We had to replace the reflections on the glass of the car to match the new sky we had put in. We did this by motion tracking the car, adding a 3D model of the car to the track, and then applying the new reflections to that 3D car and comping it back on top of the plate.
Because of his immense weight, Titan would crack and muddy the ground that he walked on. We devised a method to accurately place custom effects on the ground as he walked by them in compositing with a custom projection setup.
Awards
We received various awards for different aspects of the project during it’s festival run after University finished. This project was a great way to end off the University experience.