MAYHEM
(My thesis film at CalArts)
Embedded Files
In my final year at CalArts, I was tasked with creating a thesis project. I set 2 personal goals with this film to learn Blender and to manage a bigger team than I ever had before to pull off a bigger scaled film than before.
I ended up working with over 20 artists who assisted from music, sound, dance, motion capture performances, and much more. It was my first time coordinating such a huge team of people but I think that despite the bumps in the road, the film was completed right on time. Along with achieving my goals with the film.
Having people helping out on my project meant that I needed to organize myself in order to be able to coordinate everyone who was helping me out.
First I started with setting up all the shots that needed to be animated. Putting in the thumbnails , to visually see what needed to be done, and this created my shot-list. I was also learning Blender and had planned an ambitious motion capture dance, So I setup an extra table to track my progress on the separate element that had a different workflow to the right.
I noticed that I quickly was starting to lose track of time, I wasn't seeing the deadline ahead. So I quickly setup a calendar to the right of my shot list.
The calendar was a huge help, as a visual person being able to track my productivity was really important because I was able to see and plan/ track my meetings, deadlines that I placed for people, and planning in advance if I knew I was going to be out of town. You can even see that the calendar turns green as it gets closer to the deadline.
The Backgrounds
Loose Thumbnail Storyboard
Layout by Sage Markowitz
Background Painted by Sage Markowitz
Very quickly I realized that I wouldn't be able to handle creating the backgrounds on my own. Not to the level that I wanted, and that it would sink a lot of time if I decided to create the backgrounds taking away from all the other tasks I was juggling.
I asked my friends Sage Markowitz, Roman Aguirre, and Izabella Anguiano-Jacobs if they were available to help out. This part of the process was one of the biggest learning curves of the entire project, and I'm endlessly thankful for their patience with me, and for creating such beautiful backgrounds for the film.
We scheduled regular meetings to check in on progress, discuss what needed to be done , and other notes for the backgrounds to be done.
Thesis Spreadsheet.xlsxPage updated
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