Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/710451
www.postmagazine.com 38 POST JULY 2016 EDUCATION & RECRUITMENT 'The Ghost Next Door' "The Ghost Next Door" (4:37) is a haunt- ing tale about a skeleton whose sleep is disturbed by the cries of a newcomer to his graveyard — a lonely, sad, young ghost. Eager to help, the skeleton makes multiple attempts to cheer her up, each a bigger failure than the last, before a strangely- sweet, last-ditch effort to comfort the frightened spirit finally does the trick. "It's a story about good intentions and comforting those who mourn, but most importantly, it's about coming to terms with the things we cannot fix and mak- ing the most of our situation," explains Christopher Bringhurst, who wrote, direct- ed, edited, composited, co-produced and co-animated the film with several of his fellow Utah Valley University students. Of course, the prospect of creating an entire short film from scratch is a scary proposition for any filmmaker, especially for a student. However, Bringhurst en- dured more than his share of nightmar- ish situations in bringing this frightfully delightful animated short to fruition. First, when Bringhurst's pitch was accepted, he had the support of an entire class — nearly 30 students. Alas, those numbers dwindled and the team shrunk as other student projects commenced. Nevertheless, the handful of artists who remained had a hand in almost every aspect of the project. Zachary Thorpe handled nearly all the rigging. Bringhurst modeled the skele- ton and co-modeled the ghost with lead shirt, vest, pants and shoes." The animators were new to RenderMan RIS, which had just been released at the time, and found themselves with little documentation or experienced users to offer guidance. Needless to say, rendering and render times became an early obsta- cle. "We found ourselves divvying up the expensive scenes evenly between us to prevent any person from pulling out too much of their hair," Norman says. For one of the final shots when the main characters fly over the newspaper city, because of how close the characters were to the camera, render times were eight hours per frame for the characters alone. "Their long render times also meant they would not work on the renderfarm. With three days to our final film deadline, we looked for solutions on how to achieve our final city, and taught ourselves projec- tion mapping," explains Lutz. The shot includes three different 3D cameras set up in Nuke with more than 50 mini-matte paintings by Norman, to create the appearance of a fully rendered city. Lighting also proved challenging due to a number of bugs that popped up. "Our slogan jokingly became, 'We'll fix it in post,' " Lutz says. One of those bugs was a shader issue that prevented them from successfully lighting or rendering any shot for two weeks. "Through our magical IT team and the power of coffee, we trouble- shooted the issue and lit 54 shots in two weeks," she adds. Because the pair wanted to push the film dramatically, they made the story span an entire day. "Setting up a new lighting rig for each scene felt very ambi- tious, but I'm glad we went for it, since it gave us more control over the art direc- tion and color palette," says Norman. In It Together Along the way, Lutz and Norman also encountered non-technical challenges, especially in the way of maintaining a nearly impossible schedule that took a toll on them physically, mentally and emotion- ally, as there wasn't time for anything else other than this film. "It was also a true test of our ability to separate our friendship with our professional working relationship, since not only were we best friends and co-directors, we were also roommates (then as well as now)," says Lutz. Nevertheless, the two have many fond memories from this time. "This was our first film ever, so everything felt magical, special and terrifying all at once," says Norman. One of their favorite moments in- cludes the day they found out this pitch was selected to move forward, as both were convinced that it would be a pas- sion project they would have to revisit later in their lives. Luckily for audiences, this was not the case. In addition to the Student Emmy award, "On the Same Page" was a National Board of Review Student Grant winner, and has received a host of other awards and accolades. "I loved being able to make something with my best friend. The filmmaking pro- cess was hard and fast, and it was great to have someone to trust. We both have such similar tastes and complementary specialties that it was a perfect match," says Norman. "Creating a film is such a unique and re- warding experience, but it's so much bet- ter when you can share it with someone you know so well," adds Lutz. "Creating this story and shaping it and watching the effect it has on our audiences are the most magical feelings in the world."