santoroland

: It's Kind of a Funny Story

May 19, 2010

It’s Kind of a Funny Story holds a very special place in my heart. For a number of reasons.

  1. It was my second time playing VFX Supervisor on a project.
  2. This was our most ambitious film project to date.

For me there were three standout shots. These were both technially chalenging and the most fun to work on.

  • a. When Keir Gilchrist (Craig) is walking on the I-Beam over traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
  • b. When Keir Gilchrist falls off the bridge towards camera and I had to hand paint the water.
  • c. The POV shot falling from the Brooklyn Bridge down to the river. Which was cut from the final film. But it holds a special place in my heart because I did everything on the shot. All the modeling, surfacing, camera, lighting, rendering, and compositing!

Here is a link to the IMDB page for the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804497/

This second set of shots shows some animation work we did at Curious Pictures for the film also.

  • Brian Drucker - animation supervisor / animator / lead animation designer
  • Dominie Mahl -background artist / creative supervisor
  • Anthony Santoro - Compositor

These animation shots were challenging. Mostly logistics. Budget was a bit tight, and we didn’t have enough time to get the animation department (all freelancers) integrated into the production pipeline. There were many late nights, and folks background rendering local.

In retrospect, how I loved the pipeline we built at curious. My friends and I spent years putting it together. It was all cobbled together with perl. BUT, there was not another television/animation studio in NYC at the time who had anything like it:)



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