Stranger Danger is a brand new short film created by Adam Oestergaard as part of his MA thesis at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco - read about how the director created the VFX and watch the film below
Title: Stranger Danger
Director: Adam Oestergaard
Synopsis: The tale of a young woman: ordinary by day, assassin by night
Software: Maya, After Effects, Nuke
Website: http://www.adamoe.com
Stranger Danger Short FIlm from Adam Oestergaard on Vimeo.
Adam Oestergaard, director,
I made Stranger Danger while undertaking a Graduate degree at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
Even though its a simple story, the script went through 30 revisions from the original idea until I started shooting anything.
I knew from the beginning I wanted a La Femme Nikita – an ordinary woman by day, assassin by night type of character.
Night and day
The first thing I shot was the opening chase scene, which in the film is only around 15 seconds, but it took a good 12 hours to get the shots we needed, by which time, it had gone from day to night. At this point I had to decide whether to re-shoot and reset everything, or keep it and try to match the different skin tones, which were quite obvious in the different plates.
I chose the latter, which was a tricky process: there are 20 shots in the opening scene, each with a different look. I started by removing hard shadows from all the day-lit shots and turned them into night using Nuke.
How to treat the talent
The next shot was the greenscreen shoot for the 2 opening shots of the film. Ashly, the main actress got a few bruises from this…
For the compositing of the shot, my friend and DP Harald Boysen went and shot a plate from a tall building here in San Francisco, I then modelled a 3D skyscraper in Maya for the snap zoom and did the glass shatter using Blastcode – also in Maya.
When it was rendered, the frame sequence was put behind the actress jumping through the window in order to get accurate refraction change upon the shattering glass.
Inspiration
For the motion graphics on the mirror, I took inspiration from Minority Report along with all the HUD/ interface design in movies like Iron man.
At the time I was testing some plug-ins for Red Giant Software, so it was a great opportunity to familiarise myself with them.
The shot where the camera flies through the brain was quite simple. All it took was a basic Maya model I started playing with in Zbrush, before making a basic subsurface scattering shader in Maya and attaching some lights to the camera so that when it flew around inside the scene it only lit up whatever was up close.
The edit
When it came to the editing, I knew that since it was a short action spoof, it would have to cut on the action. My original edit was close to 4 minutes. After consulting with an Editor, I decided to cut faster.
I now think that the director shouldn‘t be allowed to edit his own movie because he holds certain unnecessary scenes even if they‘re not relevant for the pacing and progress of the film!
Where they are now...
I now work as an Associate Art Director at Bonfirelabs in San Francisco doing 3D, compositing and motion graphics and pretty much anything and everything for various commercials. Most recently, I finished working on this Adobe CS5 release video. I did the shot with the pan down of the side of the island in the sky through the clouds.
Visit Adam Oestergaard's website
View Adam Oestergaard's resume (PDF)
