By Rodney Appleyard
Cockroaches are not meant to be likeable. However, post-production house Postmodern Sydney is used to making strange visions a reality – even those of budding screenwriters.
The company jumped at the chance to become involved with one of last year’s Jameson Irish Whiskey’s screenplay competition winners, screenwriter Raen Fraser (who happens to have a day job as a financial adviser).
The short film is about a character called Charlie, who is tragically killed on his wedding day. Reincarnated as a cockroach, he must woo his bride back, or face losing her forever.
Director Luke Eve (who won Tropfest in 2005) said although this story appealed to him the most out of the winners, he was a bit worried about how he could tell the story with the lead character being a cockroach.
“The only solution was to get a post house involved,” Eve says. “We pitched it to Postmodern and they jumped at the chance. It was really important getting them to come on board early before shooting started.
“It meant we could plan how Charlie would look; how the cameras would move and how he’d fit into the scenes before we started filming the live action.”
In total, Eve says about 80 VFX shots were created for the 11-minute film. An animatic of the movie was made first, so they could map out how Charlie would interact with the real-life characters.
After the live action plates were shot, Ian Dodman, the VFX supervisor from Postmodern Sydney, dropped in a 2D version of Charlie, so that the character could then be built into the scene.
“We didn’t want it to look too much like a cartoon,” Dodman says. “Instead, we wanted to make it very realistic. Our plan was also to make people read its emotions clearly. We put a lot of thought into how we could get the audience to empathise with it.”
They concentrated enormously on the eyes, which were essential for conveying emotions, although they did not want it to be too human.
Getting the lighting right was essential to make sure the bug’s skin could be reflective and translucent. Dodman’s team used chrome balls to capture the lighting from the location and that was then applied to the 3D model.
Shading was also important to make sure the light bounced off the surface of the bug realistically. The only problem is that Eve will no longer kill any cockroaches since working on this project.
Visit www.johnjamesonproductions.com.au for more details about the competition.