Director Ben Shirinian and I shot this epic short film nearly four years ago! It is now finally getting its premiere… it just recently screened at Cannes.
Shot over eight days in a green screen stage in Toronto, the film was a highly technical venture – with full previz being done for every scene to determine where the camera needed to be, how it would move, what light needed to be where, etc.
We built a 60×30 soft light in the studio (Commercial Studios) in order to create the massive overcast sky feeling that envelopes most of the film. I believe we had 35 or 40 space lights hung that were double diffused behind 6x 20×20 full grid cloths. We shot with Red MX using Cooke Mini S4 lenses.
CamBlock Motion Control was used for a time lapse / real time sequence.
In order to get as much in camera detail and feeling in a green screen world – we made sure our actors were walking on a real surface wherever possible, so for example any of the exterior scenes in the fields or forest, the art department made 60′ long paths of dirt, leaves, grass, logs, etc so that the interaction of the ground with their feet would feel as real as possible. The VFX teams then blended their matte painting world into where our world stopped. Same thing was done for set pieces in the orphanage, beds, doors, stairs, etc.
Challenging in a jig saw puzzle kind of way – but what an amazing story and what a beautiful way to tell it.
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