Here’s the latest version of the reel. Right below there’s another one, highlighting just the VFX shots, in a short 45 second cut. Below that there is some explanation about the project and some related posts, regarding its making and tricks I learned along the way.
For a quite a while now I wanted to tell a story involving UFOs, aliens and that kind of thing. For even a while longer, I wanted to tell a story through the main character’s point of view. From a VFX standpoint, my task is not easy merging these two things together.
Hovering Lights aims to go over a strange day in Vancouver – Canada, when an amateur cinematographer and his girlfriend see weird objects in the sky that don’t behave as anything they’ve seen before. My main sources of inspiration for the look and feel of the movie are Cloverfield and Dark Skies, but I’m borrowing references and ideas from a whole lot of other places in order to achieve my goal (check the other posts for more information about this).
As a VFX student, my main focus is compositing the whole thing together seamlessly, almost as one continuous shot. For that I know I’ll face many other challenges such as hard tracking shots and integrating CG elements into live plates while keeping a decent camera work. What I really enjoy about working on this project is using the VFX as instruments to help me tell a story, instead of having a reel that just looks cool.
Let’s see how that is gonna turn out!
This blog’s goal is to keep track of my progress over the following eight months, from writing the script up to the finished movie, having constant updates along the journey regarding ideas, execution, effects, challenges, changes and whatever happens during this time. Also a really useful tool to prove this is all original content!