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19 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 on more realism than I would have initially liked," she says. "I figured, though, that this is my first film. I wanted to focus on story. With my second film, I would want to be more experimental visually." The biggest technical challenge, says Tzue, was mak- ing the characters and set look attractive in five different times of the day. The short takes place from late after- noon to night, and each phase had a distinct color palette and needed to convey a mood unique to that stage in the story. Usually, this might involve a lot of different lighting setups and a lot of re-rendering to test out each shot, she notes. Alternatively, VFX Supervisor/AAU Director of VFX Derek Flood and Compositing Lead Jainisha Patel built an extremely complex comp that enabled the group to manip- ulate the lighting and color post render, which minimized render times. Matte paintings were then used for the more distant set, such as the sky and the horizon. "As a result, we were able to transition from a bright golden-hour shot to a hazy purple twilight shot, without changing the lighting setup much," Tzue says. Tools of the Trade The students used Autodesk's Maya and Pixologic's ZBrush for modeling, and Maya for animation and rigging. "Our biggest challenge with rigging was definitely the facial per- formance of the characters," says Tzue. "It was incredibly important to have characters capable of expressing natural- ly and convincingly on screen – especially because we didn't have any dialog." The facial rig on each character, both Mara and Lucas, required much iteration. "Each time the rigger delivered an update, I drew over the face for better lines and simpler shapes," explains Tzue. "In the end, we created both a joint system and blendshapes for each character rig, and that gave animators a lot of freedom." For texturing, the crew used Autodesk's Mudbox and Maya, as well as The Foundry's Mari. Compositing was done in The Foundry's Nuke. This and other software in the AAU labs run on Dell computers. Let the Ambitions Soar Indeed, "Soar" was quite the extensive project, and at times, Tzue found herself having to scale back due to limited time and resources. "We looked at dynamic grass that reacted to the wind. Wind plays a large role in the film, and an envi- ronment that fully reacted to it would have been a big plus. But it was something we tried near the end of production, and we just couldn't get the motion to read right in a short amount of time," she points out. Also, the original design called for dressing Mara in a baggy sweatshirt. "It gave her a memorable silhouette and a sort of bookish look that I really liked," the director says. "However, it involved some tricky cloth simulations, and we couldn't afford to dedicate a huge chunk of time to it. Ani- mation would have been a pain as well, with lots of revisions to make sure the cloth sim worked." One of the biggest lessons Tzue learned during this project is that to make almost anything work, you've got to work with the crew. "It's the people behind the tools that make a film what it is, and what it isn't," she says. "I learned truly how difficult – and also how crucial – it is to handle a team well. You need to motivate them with a vision, have a vision but leave room for their creative input, let them be creative but maintain discipline, be disciplined but allow for mistakes, leave a margin for error but jump in when you need to, be hands on yet not so much as to be over- bearing. It is insanely difficult keeping that balance. But it is honestly one of my favorite parts of being a filmmaker." Is there more to this story? "I'd love to make this into a feature film – the idea is definitely there, and it would be much more elaborate than this short," says Tzue. If the op- portunity for a feature doesn't materialize, she would love to start on another, more visually stylized short. "I just wanted to make a good movie, one that would stay in people's memories for some time," says Tzue. "As production went on, we wanted the film to perform well in the festival circuit. We wanted to create good enough material to help jump-start the careers of everyone on our crew. And, we did." "Soar" helped several crew members land jobs, including Tzue, whose reel containing "Soar" shots helped land her a position at Oculus, where she intends to soar. ■ IN-DEPTH Q&A WITH TZUE: Go to Extras in the July.August 2015 issue box