What is the film about?

Money, entropy and the planet are tackled in ‘Disorder’, this 1st part of ‘The Discourse Trilogy’. A film that teases out the connections between our need for an ever growing bank account and the destruction of our environment.

What influenced it?

Rather than any direct influence, the aesthetic came from a need to find a new look to service this story. After creating the boards, I knew I couldn’t achieve what we needed with 2D, but there was no way the budget would stretch to full 3D extravaganza. So when exploring various ways to merge the two, I realised a bold clash was the solution. Forcing my own handcrafted 2D work to sit with the wonderful photorealistic 3D from Scott Geersen. I searched for something that already looked like this, to inform our process, but was delighted to find there very few examples out there.

A little background information...

It started when I was contacted by a tech entrepreneur, Paras Chopra, who’d been writing his unique perspective on people and the planet as a blog. He was excited by how animation could bring his words to life, and how reaching a wider audience could make a more meaningful impact! We immediately hit it off, bouncing ideas back and forth, so decided to start our partnership with a trilogy of films. Vitally, we decided to develop a companion site for the films to fostering debate and learning, called wingify.earth.

How was the film made?

When I created the first designs that mixed 2D & 3D together, I immediately knew I’d found the look. The writer was even more excited than I was, but neither of us knew if we could pull it off with the resources we had. The solution came in the form of Scott Geersen, from Substance, who’s work for TEDx Sydney has been a huge highlight for the MoGraph scene. He also felt excited by the cause, so once we knew he was on-board, it was guaranteed to look amazing! I animate in Photoshop and After Effects, and Scott’s magic happens in Cinema 4D, rendering in Redshift. I’d send him clear animatics, to which he’d block in the 3D, and send back. After a few tweaks – job done. A new process for us both, we’re really excited by its effectiveness, both in production and results.