It was no easy task translating this dark novella into a short film. It required a team of students and professionals who strived from the very beginning to ensure that the finished product would be nothing short of awe inspiring and a crowning achievement in everyone’s careers.  From the awesome writing to the riveting acting, the mesmerizing makeup to the blood curdling sound, the astounding animation to the incredible digital design and game play. Each and every team member came together to ensure that the world would notice Team Rats.

And they have. Even before premiering, The Rats in the Walls has become an official selection at the H.P.Lovecraft Film Festival taking place in Portland, Oregon from October 1^st to October 3^rd. A single selected film amongst over 200 entries. For a student made and produced film, this is now small feat and it could not have been done without this devoted team.

While the last four months have been tumultuous, they have taught me many things; not only about the nature of film making, but about my own abilities. Movie making is a long and often stressful endeavor. Yet, with the right team of people working with you, the end result can be nothing short of magical. Regardless of where I end up in the future, The Rats in the Walls will always have a special place in my heart for being the first film and interactive piece I ever produced. Thank-you Team Rats for making the experience so memorable.

I still can’t believe that 4 and a half months had passed since we all started this journey, a journey  that definitely had many ups and downs and presented challenges all the way… but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This project gave me the opportunity to work with many talented and hard worker persons, it gave me an insight of how the industry works in general but with the “comfort zone” of still being at school, it showed me my strengths and weakness and specially made me realize how much I love producing. I’ve spent the last 18 weeks of my life between crazy stories, old giant octopus, weird sounds, lots of codes and many, many color correction process and I’m thankful for that.

It saddens me to think that it has come to an end, we delivered the final video for screening on Tuesday and I can’t describe all the things I felt watching it on a big screen with a full theatre, it was the must amazing and exciting experience I have ever felt and I want to thank all the persons behind this project for it, I can’t say enough to express my gratitude and thankfulness towards them.

From the Executive Producers, Senior Producers, to the Film Crew, make up artist and all the Post-Production team, THANK YOU for trusting me on this Project!!!!!!!!!

To my Awesome Team: Thanks guys for all the hard work, all the sleepless hours and all the talent you bring to C’Thulhu… I couldn’t have done it without you guys!!!!

Just missing Nida K and Vincent vH.

It’s time for me to close this chapter and move on into my next venture: Julianne Mayweather’ Tales of Fairies, which for sure I would keep you guys posted.

Once again THANK YOU SO MUCH  to all the persons that made this project possible, that now it’s an official selection for the H.P Lovecraft Festival!!!

Here is Justin and I giving our amazingly cheesy but still awesome speech, as well as a EBM10 Group shot!

Dagon along with three others are going to be featured at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival on October 1st-3rd. Here are a few screen shots from the film. So get excited and wish us luck hopefully we all win something!

So long friends!

Four months and counting ….

Benjamin and I are satisfied by the completion of “The Music of Erich Zann”.

This was the first project facilitated by us wet-nosed producers, and I must say,   we loved every moment of it. From late night phone calls to “it’s pizza time”, we successfully managed to produce a visually appealing short, chilling film and interactive application (click on the link below to preview the app!)

http://vimeo.com/14495919

It began as a story written by some dead guy, but when tasked with reading 3 of his short stories, we liked the simplicity of “Zann” and it’s dark and twisty ending.

One of Zann’s greatest ingredients is it’s sound. “Music Untitled” composed by Michael Fraser worked effectively throughout the film to set the mood of the story. From harmonious, flowing music to chilling, high shrilled tones, the music enhanced the film.

Finding our actors and keeping our Post Team (must have been the donuts we fed them late at night) was a bit of a challenge, but in the end, we really lucked out.

We would like to thank our wonderful digital design team, our creative production team, our super talented post team, and our sound team for their time, patience, and dedication to this project. We would also like to acknowledge Paul Toolan and Lucas De Beer for their compelling portrayals of Erich and Alex.

Throughout this process, friendships were developed, setbacks were encountered (and overcome!), and we ALL learned the different processes that even a 3 minute film has to go through to make it look visually appealing and marketable.

Another great asset was the development of Anthony and the “Ben Pen” (that is a story in itself). Seriously, Benjamin Morales is a wonderfully creative and detail oriented guy to work with. It was nothing short of a pleasure to be paired with him on this project (Thank you, Ben!).

The most rewarding feeling about being on this project was seeing Zann and it’s music come alive!

**Disclaimer (there’s always one for these blog-things, right?)

We sincerely apologize for anything that may have, did, or is going to go wrong as a result of this film. We do not, however, take any responsibility for anything that may have, did, or is going to go wrong as a result of this film. After all, we’ll just blame it on Anthony, right?

Thank you for your support and Zann is going live now.

We have come so far over the last 4 months! We took a simple concept, turned it into a script and the rest is history. Now that production has completed we begin a whole new journey, marketing.  We must now build our audience, and our first order of business is taking on the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon where  “The Dunwich Horror” was finally made an official short selection earlier this week, and we are truly proud of this accomplishment. With an expected November release on the Android Tablet, we must continue to build up our buzz surrounding this project, and achieve our goal of raising money for our charity, The Wikimedia Foundation. This is a great time to take in and celebrate all our successes as we get ready to move our product out into the world!

After 4 months of hard work, blood, sweat, tears, and more than a few trips to Memphis Blues BBQ to celebrate, I’m so very proud to announce that Project Space Squid — Now titled Compendium Vol. 1 — has officially come to a close.  It still shocks me to think that it’s all over and done with, and that it’s finally time for us to move on and start the next chapters of our time at VFS, and even more than that, taking the next steps in our careers as producers.

When we started this project at the end of term 2 (Wow, April, so long ago!), none of us knew what to expect.  We were told to write up briefs on our favorite HP Lovecraft tales, that this would end up on an iPad, and that we were to figure out how to get from point A to point B.  How could we say no? The opportunity to produce our first short film alongside an interactive property? It was like a dream come true, and all while in school, seriously… I could not have asked for more.

We’ve all grown so much in the last 4 months, and to see the transformation along the way has been a truly rewarding experience for me. and through this blog you’ve seen some of my process along the way.  So I guess, this is where I will take the time to thank everyone who was involved in C’Thulhu, from start to finish, so get ready people, this is a long one!

***As I was writing this post, I got a phone call from my classmate and super awesome friend, Nadeem Siddiqui, letting me know that…. THE CALL OF C’THULHU HAS BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE HP LOVECRAFT FILM FESTIVAL IN PORTLAND OREGON!!!!!! WE DID IT!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!… Now onto the post.

First and foremost, I’d like to thank our oh-so-fearless leader, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin.

If it wasn’t for her hard work and dedication, Project Space Squid never would have gotten off the ground, and we are all immensely thankful.  She was there for us to advise us when we didn’t know what to do to fix our problems, to calm us down when we were ripping our hair out, and to celebrate the many victories we had along the way.  She was so much more than the Executive Producer credit she got on this project, she was our mentor, our boss, set decorator, asset creator, motivator and our friend.  And most importantly, she believed in us.

When we started in this program in January, she told us it was a year-long job interview, and she could not have been more right.  We got the opportunity to be on set and work with students, alumni and industry professionals, all while getting an education in the class room, learning how to create all of the proper documentation to go with the project, how to get funding for and marketing our final pieces, how not-to-get-sued, and a laundry list of amazing skills that I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere else.

My top 3 Jessica Lessons :

1. How to be a classy producer. (don’t gossip, and always smile when you’re screaming on the inside.)

2. Not everything can be fixed in post. (and you should never, ever say that it can be.)

3. Don’t use buzzwords, you’ll date yourself. (especially not “exposure”)

So once again Jessica, thank you.

And now, onto my lovely co-producer, Sandra Rojas-Gonzalez.

Back in week 1 of term 1, Sandra and I decided to work together on our first episode of the Blast Light, and in term 2, through Ken’s pairing system, we were placed together yet again to work on “Encore – In Support of the Actors’ Fund of Canada”. When we got the opportunity in term 3 to pick our partners, it was an easy decision to work with Sandra who is the most supportive, dedicated and often sleepless teammate, and one of the most amazing friends I’ve ever had.  She’s always ready to take on a new challenge, and never shied away from dealing with the consequences of our decisions, and more importantly she was the voice of reason and maturity when I was losing my little head.

From making our team meeting itineraries, and personalized name tags, and even cut-out paper C’Thulhus, she was all about C’Thulhu through and through, and I think it helped in keeping our team on track to the final goal, and also made C’Thulhu lovers out of all of them!

On set for Call of C’Thulhu

We started this process as friends, and though we went through some pretty tumultuous times throughout this project, we never lost sight of what was really important, and were there to support each other every step of the way.  At the end of the day, if I needed someone to talk to, about anything and everything — I knew she was there, and I can’t thank her enough.

Us celebrating at the Space Squid Wrap Party.

So now as we enter terms 5 & 6, it’s time for me to say goodbye to my first co-producer, and welcome Myles Messinetti to my team.  Sandra moves onto “Julianne Mayweather : Tales of Fairies”, while Myles and I move into our travel-reality show, and although I’m sad to see her go, I’m so happy to say that we’re both pursuing something we are so very passionate about, and I know we will both be moving onto great things.  I love you Sandra!!!! ♥

Now onto the rest of our super AWESOME C’Thulhu Team!

In the 21 years I have been on this earth, I have never once played on a Sports Team — outside of the obligatory gym classes, where in JR. High I always said I had my period…– and although I’ve been in drama clubs, singing groups, and other projects before, but it just doesn’t compare to what we built in the last 4 months.  I’ve seen these people more than I’ve seen my family, and I’m happy to call each and every one of them my friends.

Lead Motion Designer : Ehab Kamal :

Wildly talented motion designer, incredibly creative and highly dedicated to giving the best he possibly can all the time.  I’ve met very few people in my life who are as passionate about what they do, and I’m so lucky to have met Ehab.  He was so happy to show us his progress every step of the way, and though the keying, rotoscoping and lighting was a big challenge for us, he came through with flying colors, I know he’s destined for great things, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.  (Especially this new photography course he’s taking )

Interaction Designer : Nick Lenko :

Like Ehab, Nick is incredibly passionate, and quite frankly, he’s a jack-of-all-trades.  He started out as our interaction designer, became our on-set photographer, our honey and tea runner, and moved onto our Impact Awards team, helped us with the website, print materials and overall concept of the CopaCabana, and now he’s helping on my final project.  At only 19, he’s already accomplished so much, and I know he’ll continue to do so for many years to come.  Although he’s moved back to Toronto now, I know our paths will cross again someday. (If anything, I’ll fly there so we can wait in line for our iPhone5s together because, let’s face it we are Apple junkies.)

Secondary Motion Designer / Title Sequence : Nida Khan :

(Forgive me for the picture Nida, i didn’t have any of you on our set, and this was the next best thing cause it had the staircase, and I also took this from your Facebook…)

As beautiful as she is talented, Nida was a huge asset to our team, always ready to take on whatever responsibilities she needed to.  She created our opening title sequence, setting the mood for the film and gave us an inside peak into the world and home of the great C’Thulhu… After seeing her final project, I was happy to recommend her to my classmate Nadeem, and I know that together they can produce the most incredible Bollywood title sequence out there!

Amanda Healey & Vincent Van Haaf :

Our super talented developer team who turned our initial concept into a reality.  At first the idea of an interactive video seemed a bit daunting, and as we delved further into it, it posed more than it’s fair share of coding nightmares, but these two worked fearlessly to pull it off, and I’m so proud of our finished product!

Celia Chung :

Though we didn’t get to work much with the artistically gifted Celia Chung, she created some beautiful backgrounds, assets and “buttons” for us for our interactive experience.  She worked on the Rats in the Wall as well, where her artwork can be found throughout the interactive experience.

Our Super Talented Actors : Brennan MacGregor & Ron Guwick :

What can I say about Brennan? I met this guy when I was 13, and here we are, 8 years later, in an entirely new city, both following our dreams.  He’s a wonderfully gifted actor, a hell of a screamer, and ran fearlessly on that treadmill for us.  Can’t wait to see what you do next buddy!  And Ron, he was the father of our very talented make-up artist Carla Guwick.  He came in the day of  the shoot, and sat there and played dead, he did a great job and had just the look we were going for (his C’Thulhu style beard was pretty sweet too).

Make Up Artist : Carla Guwick :

Carla was a huge help not only with casting, but in creating the perfect dead guy, and the cut in the professor’s arm, that starts the unravelling of Joseph’s life.  She was very hands on on set, and quick to jump in when needed.  She also fashioned us some very realistic looking puke (too bad it didn’t taste super great haha, poor Brennan) and was a great asset to our team!

3D Team : Steven Davies, Jagdeep Saggu & Raymond Corbett :

At the beginning of our post-production process, we were told we had to scout out some new team members to help us with keying and rotoscoping the footage.  We went over to the 3D department, and met the new compositing instructor Raymond Corbett who gleefully got us two super awesome VFX artists, Steven Davies and Jagdeep Saggu, who worked tirelessly into late nights, and gave us the fantastic footage we could not have done without.  They put so many long hours into this project, and without them we never would have finished on time, so to them, a million thank yous.

We worked with three very talented sound designers to put our piece together.  We started with Taavo Ruberg who worked as our Boom Op on set, then moved onto Ben Ozga who helped us with our ADR session, and rounding off with Maria Luz Orezco.  We had a great team that were able to work off each other’s pieces to come up with something great!  Thanks so much guys!

Set Builder : Michael Van Straaten

When we started this project on Day 1, we were told that we had to build a staircase, and we thought well… okay, how on earth are we going to go about doing this? Well luckily enough, my great friend Michael Van Straaten stepped in and helped us build our project!  He went to Windsor Plywood and HomeDepot on about 50 different occasions, and set up a plan, and followed through until the very end.  He did a great job and we were able to use the staircase in Nida’s final project! Mike is also the guy who helps me celebrate my many victories and consoles me on my defeats — and let me tell you, we can eat a whole memphis blues BBQ platter plate! You’ve become one of the best friends I could ever ask for, and I’m glad the TRU days are behind us!

Awesome Documentary Team : Ian Berg & Sam Green :

Ian, Ian, Ian, I don’t know what more I can say about this guy, and no matter what I say, it won’t do him justice.  He spent literally an entire weekend at school, and countless late nights working to make sure that Dagon was finished on time, and documented our process with Space Squid along the way.  He’s a highly dedicated, motivated individual and he’s turned into a great friend — and he’s from Alberta yo!

Sam Green, so fun to be around, and now I get to see her every day as she’s joined our EBM VFS family!  She’s a gifted designer and an excellent photographer, and I can’t wait to see her work here at VFS, and whatever she does for SamGreen Photography.  (And I’m so very proud to say that I’ve made myself another friend, who is a girl! A rarity for me!)

And finally all of our wonderful instructors, advisors, mentors, PMs, TAs and anyone else who helped us or our team members along the way :

Myron Campbell, Amber Bezahler, Ryan Atimoyoo, Stephen Webster, Brett Forsyth, Orrin Stroll, Robyn Wiener, Christine Baudry, Sencer Yacin, Bob Woolsey & Sara Sutherland :

Thank each and every one of you for all of your hours, your dedication and for your belief in us.  We really appreciate it and could not have done it without you.  Can’t wait to see the next edition of Compendium, and I hope you all get the chance to work on it again! (If I forgot anyone, please let me know and I’ll happily add you to my list)

And last, but certainly not least, the rest of my classmates.

We actually did it.  I’m so proud of the 10EBM10s! We’ve evolved so much this year (and I don’t just mean from All the Single Ladies to Baby, Baby, Baby Ohhhh, to Tunuk Tunuk! to whatever 80s Music Myles is playing) and I’m so happy to be a part of such a great group of people …even with all of the nicknames…(po.tat)

We definitely had our ups and downs, and times where we thought we were going to scream at each other (and sometimes we did) but we all learned from each other, and some of our qualities, mannerisms and expressions rubbed off on each other as well.

So a big shout-out to : Sandra Rojas, Nadeem Siddiqui, Sichao Chen, Myles Messinetti, Justin Norton, Benjamin Morales, Janelle Miguel, Ivan Maltsev and Justin “Jayo Staxx” Olson! You guys rock! ♥

Check us out, we’re like a mini UN.

Final Words

Quite possibly one of my favorite parts about this project, was starting to blog.  I had always kind of wanted to start, but never really had any reason to, and getting the opportunity to talk about my process throughout C’Thulhu was simply amazing.  It’s started as an assignment that turned into a photo journal that I can look back on for years to come and share with my friends and family when I’m *hopefully* traveling the world.   It also inspired me to start a personal blog detailing everything from my favorite foods, trips and adventures, to my time at VFS.  Check it out @ http://mhbobsledder.com/

Well I guess this is where I should wrap it up, so a final thank you to one “person” this project couldn’t've been done without :

ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’Thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.  Oooohhhh Great one, I am your servant great C’Thulhu.  Thank you for letting us embark on this incredible, life-changing journey, now you can go back to sleep…

Thanks for reading ya’ll.

P.♥

PS. Some of the photos taken for this blog post are from various Facebook pages, and some were taken by the following people : Sam Green, Sandra Rojas-Gonzalez and Nick Lenko. Thanks guys!

If you happen to be on the EBM floor the other day you may have noticed the fowl stench of dead fish! This is because in order to make our sea monster look and feel as real as possible we decided to take numerous different types of fish and sew them all together.
The lovely Pink fish head you see above is a cat fish, those cool looking legs are prawns and of coarse it wouldn’t be a sea monster with out greasy squid tentacles.
The only down side to making this awesome monster is that all of our hands cloths and basically the entire floor smelled like the beach at low tide.
In our film the sea monster creeps up behind our main character out of a giant abyss. So in order to make the movement as creepy as possible we put our frankenstein fish in a tank and brought him back to life.
In conclusion nothing looks better then the real thing but only at the cost of stinking for days on end, this was a price we where willing to take.

As we delved further into term 4, we were winding down with the visuals and were able to start focusing on getting our ADR down and our soundtrack finished up!

On the suggestion of our interaction designer, Nick Lenko, we got the help of the very talented, Ben Ozga, a VFS Sound Design graduate, and brother of our fellow EBMer, Daisy Ozga.

We met early last week with our lead actor, Brennan MacGregor and our director Michael Chase, and journeyed as Brennan would say “…from terrified, to terrified, to dead.”

Working with Ben was a wonderful experience.  He was able to walk into a studio he’d never been in before, set everything up in a half hour and get us going.  He explained everything to Brennan and the rest of us, letting us know what he was doing along the way, and it was awesome to get to see the sound board in action!

We started simple with a few “breath” takes to get Brennan into the mood, and then started working on his lines.  Luckily enough for us, this film has very little dialogue, so he quickly nailed that, and we were able to move on to the more complicated stuff.

….And wouldn’t you know, puking on microphone is just as challenging as puking on camera!  We had to do the take a few times, but it was a lot of fun watching him, watch himself and trying to match the acting with the voice, but he’s a star and pulled it off like a pro — Great work Brennan!

Last but certainly not least, we had to recreate the scene where Joseph offers himself to C’Thulhu and gets devoured.  To create the perfect terrified scream was a bit of a challenge, we really wanted to recreate the feeling of Joseph being eaten alive, and as hard as it was for him to do it in front of a green screen, here we were in a dark sound studio.

We tried a few different styles and a few different lengths and eventually found our happy medium — a mix of angst, fear and sheer terror.   It took a couple of tries to make sure he didn’t go too loud but we got it and I can’t wait to see it with the film with the soundtrack!

Thanks for reading — see you again soon!

P