Phoenix Forgotten

Definetely an unusual project, this “found footage” movie told a story of curious teenagers who tried to discover the truth behind the Phoenix Lights mystery. Unfortunately it did not turn out too well for them, with some non-terrestrial activity in their way.

One of the most challenging projects to work on, it was a slow burner until the climactic resolution towards the end, where the client wanted a feeling of a single unbroken shot taking place in pitch dark, with shaking and glitching camera, and a plethora of “unexplained activity”, all the while a giant ringed structure was floating above the actors.

The challenge was to correctly present the mindbogglingly massive scale of the rings in a pitch black environment, while also integrating it with the camera that made tracking and consistency quite difficult. I worked with the team of CG artists and compositors to bring the director’s idea to life, while making sure the graphics stayed consistent across the entire shot. We created the giant CG rings, adjusted the animation as per the storytelling aspects of the shot, integrated atmospherics to present the scale, recreated from scratch the entire environment where the actors were running (so as to make sure the rings stayed in same 3D position even as the camera jumped wildly while being carried by the actors), as well as integrated additional lighting effects into the area that was already lit by the practical effects present during the filming.