PARALLAX

When famous bands disappear for a bit from the public eye, this leaves their fans in a whirlwind of longing, disconnect and heartbreak. We assume that our brief hiatus from the social sphere has had roughly the same effects on you guys...

Alright, so maybe our social media absence wasn't as noticeable, but we assure you that it was not in vain. Over the past seven months our production tackled some of our biggest challenges since the beginning of the project, and finishing final visual effects took our project all the way to Eastern Europe to do it. Now as we narrow down the final tasks left in completing our film, let's take a look back at what the past seven months were all about.

A Message from our Director:

For those just tuning in, the story of “Parallax” is about a man who creates a mass-communication device at the dawn of the internet, and as the network of users grows, he begins to isolate himself from those around him.

Before production, the crew pre-shot segments of the movie, to be used on set as videos the users of the fictional network uploaded. Like Youtube of today, but on VHS and in 1987. During production, the actors watched these videos through a teleprompter, which allowed the crew to capture their reactions to the videos as they looked directly into the lens. In post-production, we place the user’s video over top of the footage of the actor watching it, creating a layer of video between the characters and audience. Or put otherwise, we watch the character watch a video, as they watch us watching them, while we watch the video they watch too - a recursive look at our interactions with technology, as we in turn interact with the film itself.

Unfortunately, in order to fully achieve the effect, so it didn’t look like a bunch of overwhelming and confusing information layered on top itself, numerous complicated VFX techniques were needed to pull it off. At its core, what we needed was for the audience to be able to perceive the most important information on both layers of video; simultaneously. Picture a pop-up book, where certain parts of the frame overlap, and in the negative spaces of the frame (or unimportant information) we decrease the level of transparency, and in the positive spaces of the frame (or more important information), we increase the level of transparency. The concept gets a bit complicated however, as you add motion to the design; since we’re not talking about a single page in a pop-up book, but roughly 21,600 frames of footage.

The ambitious quest to complete visual effects started almost a year ago, when we were already pushing through three very demanding months finishing VFX for the rest of the film. That part of the process involved buffing logos, superimposing screens on many moving televisions, and creating shots that would have otherwise been impossible to shoot during production. The first half of VFX was by no means a cake walk, but the next phase of was certainly treading into uncharted territory. It’s safe to say if you didn’t understand the moving pop-up book analogy, you’re in the large majority of the population, including artists we were interviewing to do the job.

Throughout the process, we held meetings with more than 50 VFX artists from around the world, including individuals and teams from New York, Vancouver, Mumbai, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and London. In the end, only one team of Serbian artists, led by Stanisia Naumovski, were fearless enough to tackle the project, and were also able to do so on a budget the production could afford. Stanisia’s team was required to use a mixture of highly specialized techniques to pull off the final effect, and their finished product is nothing short of perfection.

One of the key techniques used to finish the shots is called “Stereoscopic Rotoscoping.” It’s an extremely time intensive process that involves cutting out layers of video, frame by frame, to match movements of the live action footage. They use this same technique to make the layers in 3D movies originally shot in 2D. To knock down any of your growing excitement, the film will not be projected in 3D, we only used the same techniques to be able to create multiple layers and manipulate them individually. After all the work was done, we recompressed the files back down to 2D for the final film. However, instead of only manipulating 3 layers like “3D” movies do, in some shots we were working with up to 8 different layers, so take that 3D.

The final look of the effect more or less could be described as visually pleasant, to aesthetically pleasing. In fact, those who watch the film will most likely not even notice any work has been done at all. Though this comparison really takes for granted all the work they now see as it exists. At this point, most people are probably thinking, “why go through such great lengths to achieve a marginally noticeable effect?” If that’s the case, you may also be someone amused by explosions…lots of them. We’re sorry to disappoint.

It is very possible (and a sincere hope), that the images may live on in your memory after watching, since ultimately, a film is only worth the experience one remembers after viewing it. Audiences take the images they see with them for as long as they are held by that individual or collective mind. If the effects designed can be attributed to the way you remember the film, more power to you, but the VFX are only one facet of production, and we certainly tried just as hard to communicate the same story through lighting, performance, camera, production design, sound, and music…all of it. The point of the past 7 months was not to be able to shout out, “Hey look! We used the same effects they did in Avatar!!” -- the intention of the effect was the direct result of telling the story as effectively as possible.

So where does that leave us you say? Last you heard we were submitting to film festivals and “essentially” finished. Well, 7 months later, we truly are “almost finished”. Next we move on to 4-5 weeks of Color – a part of the process where each shot is literally colored, to give the film the final look. We also have one last day of sound work at Ground Control Studio in Brooklyn, and after that…(drum roll), we actually are finally finished making the film. Besides the film itself, we also have a trailer and teaser we are proud of, and excited to share with you. So please stay in touch in the coming months, where we’ll be hosting cast and crew screenings, a crowdfunding campaign for distribution, regional public premieres, and film festival bookings. All are on the way.

A true measurement of success is how much further you can take a film once the lights have been turned off, the cows have come home, and everyone has long since stopped caring about your small independent film. Because the reality is, there is always an audience for a film, it just takes dedication to bring it to you, and you before it. Every aspect of this production has been an uphill battle for us, and the next biggest challenge is going to be getting the film out there. We only hope if you’ve read this far, your interest brings you in front of the screen to see what thousands of hours of time, hundreds of individual’s efforts, and years dedication have all been about. So thanks more than anything for continuing to care and believe in this movie. We look forward to seeing you at the premiere.

Until next time-

Like "Parallax":
Follow "Parallax":
Track "Parallax":