VFX BREAKDOWNS
Overview
“Ethereal” is a 6-7 minute VFX short film created by SVA BFA Computer Art students Lamie Doan and Lanbing Lyu. The story is about a social media influencer girl facing the pressure of being popular, cyberbullying, and psychological drug abuse. We filmed the footage in mid-October and are currently in the post-production stage.
Story & Theme
In our story, there’s only one character, a social media influencer, who used to be a dancer. She enjoys fame, but meanwhile, she also needs to keep her image and show people what they want to see. There are also some negative comments, which make her anxious, and gradually she completely broke away from herself from the past. When she became the face of a pill that we named “Ethereal”, she faced more negative opinions. She became addicted to the pill, which made her hallucinate.
In the beginning, we will see our character in the commercial for this "health product". We made this drug, whose function is to make people relax and calm. However, the side effect is that it can make people addicted and cause hallucinations. With media marketing, celebrity endorsements, and large-scale publicity, it is often difficult for people to see the truth. This drug is a symbol that everyone encounters various problems in their lives and faces different pressures, and everyone has their own way to escape, which could be a kind of drug. In contemporary society where the Internet is so developed, consumerism is flooding everywhere. When people are looking for ways to make themselves happier, it is just easy to fall into the trap of consumerism.
Another topic that we wanted to discuss is social media. Our characters’ mobile phone screens and computer screens will appear throughout the film, and we will also see people’s reactions on social media and the impact of these comments on the characters’ mentality. Social media has already been a part of almost everyone’s life. However, while social media enriches our lives and makes communication more convenient, it also has its side effects. Young people are always following trends blindly, the beauty standards are distorted. People lost their own judgments, only caring about the number of likes and comments of others. It seems that social media could be another type of poison.
At the end of the film, she deleted all unread messages and chose to quit social media. Her billboard was replaced by someone else, but almost the same content was repeated. What we want to show through this dark ending is that this industry will not change because of one person's departure. It’s difficult to change the existing patterns of society even though many people have realized its shortcomings.
Visual Style & Inspirations
We did a lot of research and got inspired by many different films. Our main source of inspiration is Hekter Skelter (2012) by Mika Ninagawa, Perfect Blue (1997) by Satoshi Kon and Black Swan (2010) by Darren Aronofsky. We also took references from many classic cyberpunk science fiction movies, movies and TV series related to drug abuse, such as HBO's Euphoria (2019) and Enter the Void (2009) by Gaspar Noe. But while learning from the classics, we also tried our best to maintain the originality of the story. We are fortunate to have an actress who is a dancer. This allows us to play more deeply in the past identity of the character, and to get some really beautiful dancing shots.
We filmed in Lanbing's room, and she is also the production designer. The art direction of the entire film is designed towards retro-futurism and some y2k styles. The character's room is covered with highly saturated pink and is full of various decorations. We put a lot of effort into the production design. During the almost one-year-long pre-production process, we did a lot of research to determine the final art direction. The two of us chose to cooperate at the beginning because we shared a common aesthetic orientation, and we both wanted to tell a sci-fi and futuristic story. But the elements of sci-fi have been widely used nowadays, so we want to make our work more unique as much as possible. Therefore, we chose to add some retro elements to futurism. We used a 2003 game boy as a prop phone, but in the film, it has the same functions as contemporary smartphones. We even bought an Apple monitor produced in the same period to make the whole art direction more harmonious. We also designed the labels of the pill, and made a bunch of pill bottle props, which will be seen throughout the film. We tried to maximize the use of the limited budget to bring the best quality of the production design.
Production & Crew Position
There were about ten people in our crew, most of whom are students. Lamie and Lanbing are the creators of the story, as well as directors, art directors, and co-directors of photography. As the producer, Lanbing was responsible for most of the crew recruitment and budget. She’s also the production designer. Lamie is responsible for more post-production work, especially VFX and compositing. But the whole post-production tasks will be shared equally by both of the group members. We filmed for three days in mid-October. One day was in the school’s green-screen production studio, and the other two days were shot indoors. We are still continuing to shoot some exterior shots for billboard or screen replacement. The entire shooting cycle is not easy, and we could have made some shots better, but within the limited budget and time, we also did our best to do everything possible.
Schedule & Budget
We are now in the editing stage and are gradually starting to do some compositing. We will lock our editing before the end of this year, and we are also looking for other people who can help with the post-production. We will concentrate on VFX, compositing, and the needed 3D content in January and February. We will focus on the sound & music and color grading in March, and complete all post-production in April. Throughout the post-production process, we will also update social pages and try to reach more audiences.
During the entire production process, our biggest part of the budget is paying the actress and production design. But we feel that the final result is really worthwhile. The 2nd big part is our camera operator and the equipment. We didn’t have that much budget to hire a very professional DP, but fortunately, most of the scenes of the film were shot in our own home, so we could do a lot of preparation and testing, and completed all the lighting and shot design all by ourselves. In the later stage, we also plan to spend some budget to ask other people’s help to complete some 3D content and music & sound production.
Post Productions
We almost independently completed the work from pre-production to shooting and editing. However, as computer art majors, the project’s main purpose is to showcase our VFX and compositing skills. We will do the rotoscoping, green screen keying, 2D & 3D tracking, matte painting, and other tasks in Nuke. Meanwhile, we will also make some 3D pills and their simulation animations in Maya, and render them and composited them into live-action footage. We will also use After Effects to make some motion graphics and add them to the billboards and electronic device screens that need to be replaced, where planar tracking with Mocha will also be integrated.
We are using Premiere Pro to make the editing, and after the completion of the compositing, we will do the color grading in DaVinci Resolve. We are trying to use Logic Pro and Pro Tools for music production and sound design.
