The Escape (Star Wars)

Watch the full short here.

Like most Xennials, I was obsessed with Star Wars when I was a kid. I saw The Empire Strikes Back on HBO when I was 8 (1991) and was instantly hooked.

The franchise had an earned reputation for merchandising, but by 1991 it had all vanished from the shelves of toy stores and its television spin-offs had been short-lived. I had only two avenues to indulge my new fandom: The Thrawn books and a making of documentary, "From Star Wars to Jedi."

I wasn't a veracious reader back then so the Thrawn trilogy was a struggle despite my best efforts (I enjoy them immensely as an adult), so that making of proved to be the most significant piece of Star Wars media in existence.

I can recall being a little depressed upon seeing it. This peek behind-the-scenes revealed that those characters were just people in costumes and those creatures merely puppets operating with rods. But then depression gave way to inspiration: I can make costumes and I can build puppets. A short time later, I began experimenting with stop motion. It's shocking how good one can get at timing the 'REC' button on a 1987 Panasonic VHS camcorder to capture just one frame of video.

Flash forward. It's 2024 and I'm itching to do something creative. More than that, I need a scenario to test out some VFX methods that I haven't had an opportunity to try.

Lucky me, I have friends who are amazing cosplayers. Wouldn't it be cool to create a micro-short with my cosplaying friends and pretend it's the last 40 seconds of a Mandalorian-type TV show. Our hero is on the run as imperial forces close in.

Of course all of this is an excuse for me to try the ACES workflow, use the new pyro tags in Cinema 4D, and improve my keying/compositing skills in After Effects.

Nicole and Kat as the Mandalorian and Sith.

We shot all of this on a 4 x 8ft collapsable blue screen.

Why blue and not green? Simply, blue tends to work better for low light. I knew we'd be in a tight narrow corridor with edge lighting from the quasar-like bulbs along the walls and just a few overhead spots. Had we been out in daylight, I would've opted for green.

Not exactly a studio setting.

I did extensive storyboards prior to shooting anything. Once I had the environment built in C4D, it was easy to get a sense of how I would need to cover the scene. Lighting, camera, lens choices, and framing can all be determined ahead of production which makes it easy to show up on set (or in a friend's band room) and not have to waste time guessing where to place everything.

This also helps with performance. The talent is standing in front of a flimsy blue disk looking at a lanky 6'4 guy hunched over a camera saying things like, "PANELS EXPLODE!" But of course there's nothing to react to. The storyboards helped the performers visualize where they were and what to expect in the final shots.

Original storyboards.

The short proved to be a great learning experience and a fun time playing dress-up with friends.

The pyro sims were a bit of a struggle, so I'll need to dive deeper in a future project, but the ACES workflow and compositing work was solid.

Compositing behind glass and reflections

There are tons of tutorials about compositing and adding 3D elements to a scene, but NO ONE is talking about how to put people inside scenes where door layers, objects, and even semi-transparent items like glass or cloth will obscure the talent.

I was able to use AOV's and then use some after effects trickery to get the reflections and glass look. AOV object buffers were simple enough for the rest.

I suppose I should be the one to make a tutorial about how to do these things, but I'm not nearly patient enough to get into it all.

On a final note, it's a sign of the times that this particular video occasionally gets the random drive-by comment, "AI" or "SLOP."

AI sucks. What's the point? I do this stuff precisely because I want to be creative. I want to build these things. AI is a shortcut—at best—that I don't need and straight up theft—at worst—that I reject. I suppose it's meant to suggest my work is simply too good for to do without cheating and I should probably consider it a compliment, but it's also annoying to spend 15 years learning this stuff to have it dismissed because some Silicon Valley tech bros did too much ketamine and think LLM's might become sentient if they steal enough of our data.

Pyro sims, the bane of my existence.