Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/565118
18 2 0 1 5 E D U C AT I O N & R E C R U I T M E N T S P E C I A L Soar "S oar," a short film directed by Academy of Art Uni- versity (AAU) student Alyce Tzue, takes audiences on an inspiring journey with the young girl Mara, who dreams of one day building airplanes. She builds model planes in the countryside, trying again and again to make them fly – but fails every time. That is, until a miniature six- inch-tall pilot drops out of the sky. The boy's fantastic flying contraption is broken, and Mara is the only one who can return him to the sky before it's too late. Tzue created the later part of the film through the school's collaborative program, called Studio X, where students can team up in an environment that mirrors that of the industry, to gain valuable real-world experience. Each Studio X class works on one to two films simultaneously, covering all parts of the film pipeline (modeling, lighting, an- imation, compositing, and so forth). The selection process is rigorous, but if the concept is accepted, the student director has an entire class dedicated to one or more aspects of the production. However, Studio X did not kick off until "Soar" was in its final semester of production. So, it was up to Tzue and Producer Anson Yu to get the team together by finding the right talent, setting up a schedule, and finding replacements when volunteers' schedules became too busy. In all, 100 stu- dents and professionals contributed to the six-minute film during the course of two years, from preproduction through production. "Soar" became Tzue and Yu's master thesis project, and the pair has been collaborating since. "I hadn't expected that at all at the start. I'd thought ei- ther I'd be sitting alone in the computer lab for three years straight, working on this by myself, or it would be a small, intimate team that would carry this project from start to end," says Tzue. "That wasn't the case." All that time and effort has continually paid off for those working on the project, but recently it has resulted in wide- spread recognition at various film festivals. "Soar" also was selected as a 2015 BAFTA US Student Film Award finalist. Passion Project An extensive team was required as the scope continued to expand. "By the time I had proposed my thesis at midpoint review, it had grown to be quite an ambitious project," says Tzue. "Up to that point, I had handled the writing, storyboard- ing, and directing, but we needed help with everything else, including visual development, modeling, rigging, animation, surfacing, lighting, compositing, branding, graphics, music, sound...." Unlike an actual studio, where one to two full-time people could handle each of those aspects, here, students had to juggle the work around multiple commitments, includ- ing classes. So, they were limited in their time commitment. "I'm incredibly grateful. This film happened because close to 100 people contributed their time – for free," Tzue says. The film was completed at the end of last summer. "It's funny that the film ended very much like how it had begun: with just me. Classes had ended a few weeks prior, and students had left for vacation," says Tzue. The story and, to some extent, the style of "Soar" is reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's feature film The Wind Rises, a fictional biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed aircraft in the 1930s, told in a watercolor style. "Visually, I had one idea starting out and, after trying a few things, ended up going with another style midway through," says Tzue. "I had wanted to go with a visual style that was a bit flatter and inspired by illustration. Even though it hadn't come out yet, the style I had in mind was similar in sensibility to the animat- ed film Song of the Sea – with illustrations and layers within every texture. Some of our concept art revealed this." However, with CG, Tzue feels that the end result always seems to deviate from the feel of the concept art, even at large studios. "Somewhere along the way, while the overall look was still stylized, particularly for the characters – like a cross between Pixar and Studio Ghibli – the film still took