'Red Dog' Trailer

It feels like it's taken forever, but at last there's some promotional material for 'Red Dog', the latest film from director Kriv Stenders.

It was a pleasure to work on this film and I heartily recommend seeing it upon it's August 11 release.

For now, check out the poster for the film, featuring the titular Red Dog. Koko is just one of the reasons the film is so enjoyable. Everyone loves a good canine thespian, and I predict (should enough people see the film) that Koko will be remembered with the best of them... like Benji!

It's also my pleasure to say that a trailer is also in circulation over on Youtube. After having Koko's 'audition' as the only promo available for the movie, it's exciting for there to be a more substantial look at it.



It's a superbly cut trailer, and gives a great overview of the type of film you can expect to enjoy. Great cinematography, killer soundtrack, fun performances and plenty of Red Dog.

I mentioned to one of my aunts that I was contributing vfx to Red Dog (did you see them in the trailer? No? Good.) and she mentioned that they'd just seen the statue in Dampier. Other people I've mentioned it to have been familiar with the book by Louis de Bernières (Captain Corelli's Mandolin), so it would seems that there is a bit of a built in audience (they should love it in WA). I hope that the film performs well. as it's probably the most enjoyable Australian film I've seen in some time.

What do you think?

Poster for 'Swerve' online

Credit: Duo Art Productions

Hi All,

Just a quick post to highlight the poster for Swerve, Craig Lahiff's latest feature. Since both Sean and myself put so much time into this film, we're both really excited for its' eventual release.

I think it looks fantastic and does a great job of selling the tone of the film. I'm less sold on the 'floating heads' at the bottom of the poster, but I understand that the need to get the actors' faces onto the promotional material.

I really can't wait to see the final product.

Check out the IMDB page for Swerve to find out more details.

Leaving Home

Ethyl Ethlington, the ditsy, pig-tailed country girl is finally Leaving Home. She has found a room for rent with the ubiquitous Chopper Belchamber. A man with an unbridled lust for footwear. Will her size sixes be enough to save her from the horror?

Doing It At 100 megabits

Crazy characters take us through the social aspects of LAN'ing, gaming with friends and LAN hammered antics. A short Documentary directed by Sean Lahiff.

Action!

Here at Heavily Armed Productions, we love a good action scene.

Over the years, generally inbetween projects, we'll shoot a short improvised action sequence. They don't always get finished, and they usually don't make any sort of narrative sense... but we have a lot of fun with them anyway!

Below is a small collection of some of our Action! shorts.

Keep in mind that some of these are .... quite old. Otherwise, click play to see people shoot other people!

Bad Day

Caleb has just lost his girlfriend and his job. Things get worse when he awakens in a druggy haze to find himself confronted by a philosophising doppleganger. The proposal his mirror image makes is intriguing but Caleb's about to find out what it means to have a Bad Day...

Sterilising Sol-3

Claiming potential colonialist space breeds fierce rivalry amongst mercenaries. They fight for the 3rd Planet of Sol. Sterilising Sol-3 is a short science-fiction film.

Directed and Written by Sean Lahiff: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2130439/

Produced by Bettina Hamilton: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2555671/

Cinematography by Nima Nabili Rad: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2636270/

Edited by Simon Herden: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2590528/

Sound by Colin Zammit: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2844962/

The Courier

The tale of an extraordinarily dedicated Courier, and the lengths he will go to make sure he delivers on time. Not even an armada of despondent robots will stop him.

Written/Directed by Simon Herden and Produced by Bettina Hamilton. Designed by Ari Gibson. Edited by Sean Lahiff. Sound by Colin Zammit.

The Courier was an independent short with a production budget of only $250 AUS which then took 1 1/2 years to complete with only one 3d artist and one compositor to finish the extensive visual fx work. Originally designed to function as a pilot, this script was the first of many for The Courier, in which he went on to battle Vampires, clandestine military organisations and Cthulu in comic book form.

VFX Before & Afters - 'The Courier'

Every now and then I feel compelled to revisit 'The Courier' and see what else I can get out of it. I must admit to never being thorough in compiling behind the scenes videos for it, despite having shot a lot of material.

Finally, after finding myself with a serious desire to procrastinate, I ended up completing some 'making-of' material.

I always wanted to put together an extensive DVD for The Courier, but for whatever reason (it seemed pointless for such a small film... and I was lazy) it never got done. However, I always wanted to point out just how much of the film was affected, because I think a lot of people often take for granted how much work gets put into these sorts of films.

So on that note, allow me to present a side-by-side version of 'The Courier'

compositing on 'Red Dog'

In addition to 'Swerve', I was fortunate to work with the fantastic group of artists at Resin on Kriv Stenders' 'Red Dog'. 

It was a much larger compositing job than on 'Swerve' and was a fun challenge. There was lots of rotoscoping and greenscreen and I'm very happy with the end result.

'Red Dog' has been selected to premiere at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival and I'm sure I'll share more of my thoughts on the experience once the film is in the public sphere.

Craig Lahiff's 'Swerve'

Credit: Duo Art Productions

A quick post about South Australian feature film 'Swerve'

Sean has been working as the editor of the film, and through it I got my first compositing job on a feature film. I'll have more to write about the experience (the SAFC funded me as a VFX Attachment) as well as more to write about the film as it gets closer to release.

'The Courier' & FLCL

I'm not going to make any bones about it... this is mostly another opportunity for me to embed The Courier somewhere. However I might as well take the time to do something with this.

One of the reasons I've chosen Jung Justice as a blog name is because as a storyteller I'm heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Jung's views on dreams and art as an important cathartic exercise validate my chosen vocation, so I'm hardly going to disagree and just about everything I've learnt about film and storytelling has come via Campbell's Hero's Journey in some shape or form.

The connective power of myths and legends (and how that interweaves with our dreams and our worldviews) fascinates me to no end and when these colossal elements and themes pervade what appear to be mundane narratives, I'm thrilled.

'The Courier' tagged in a top 10?

'The Courier' is having a banner couple of days, that's for sure! Just stumbled across this link.

http://www.zehn.de/die-10-besten-science-fiction-kurzfilme-im-netz-2456625-0

While I can't read everything on the page (i think its in Dutch... or German), it does look like it says
'The Courier' is in their top 10 sci-fi short films on the internet. That's really awesome, and I'm incredibly
happy with how this film seems to really be picking up steam 2 years after its completion.

I've got a stack of Courier stories waiting to be told. Hopefully somebody out there will get behind it
and help me turn it into an animated series. I've got three 13 episode seasons planned out and I can tell
you Jack Carrier's adventures haven't even started.

Thanks anonymous internet audience!

vfx tests for new film, The Car of Awesome!

Despite all the ridiculous vfx we've tried out in the past, we had yet to do a simple driving scene.

With 'The Car of Awesome!', the first part in a new web series we are putting together, we thought it was time we remedied that fact. And so here is a quick test we did last Friday to make sure we weren't getting in over our heads. The entire test (filming and compositing) was done in about an hour and was very loose.



We're pretty happy with the results for something so quick and dirty, so onto production proper it is!

The Courier - a Youtube Partner?

Very exciting news! Youtube has informed me that 'The Courier' is eligible for the Youtube Partnership Programme, which means that from here on out, it'll start generating revenue!

It won't be much (the film is still at only 3,000 views on the tube), but it's a wonderful start and is extremely encouraging. More important than any potential dollars (going to be more like cents) is the fact that this silly little film is still finding an audience... one that appears to be growing. 'The Courier' was invited to take part in the TFI3 festival in Washington this month, but my own lack of Producer tendencies means I missed the boat. Still it was very flattering to have somebody else find my film and ask me to submit it to their festival.

Looks like there's still life in 'The Courier' yet. :)

Killers update

looks like Chyna has actually uploaded the test shots I did for him.

The quality of source clip was low, and the turnaround was very fast, but I just wanted to show him that clean keys (on the HD source) were doable and to see what some of his shots might look like with a quick muzzle flash.

I didn't quite know what do with them all so I made a quick Shoji background (thanks Samurai Fiction) as it seemed appropriate

Killer of Killers!

So, Chyna McCoy (stunt double for Morpheus in Matrix 1& 2) contacted me the other day and now I'm doing a few visual fx shots for a feature film he's producing and starring in called Killer of Killers.

So that's pretty cool... I mean, it's not every day that somebody who's work you've been appreciating since high school contacts you and says he's a fan of your work.

How could I say no?

Sounds like there's going to be some pretty intense action visual fx coming out of Heavily Armed Productions in the next few months. What, with this and 'The Runner', we should cover just about every trope of the action genre (I can only hope!).

Balfours Showdown 29 - Table Tennis!

Hey all, Simon here.

I've just completed a quick bit of work for Red Bikini Productions in the form of some Motion Graphics for this web promo.

This is the first time I've played around with the Puppet tool in After Effects, and I must say, I am very impressed with its potential. I shall definitely be playing more with it in the future.

stay tuned ...

'the runner' r&d...

Hi All,

Just wanted to quickly post about our upcoming short film 'The Runner'.

'The Runner' is a science-fiction war film about a couple of soldiers having an intense falling out over a question of Faith.

Co-directed by Sean and myself (Simon), we shot the film in December of last year from a script by Joel Shepherd. (http://www.joelshepherd.com/)

To pique your interest, here are a few vfx/costume/camera tests (for achievability, pipeline and look development) that were done prior to the December shoot.

Stay tuned, more on 'The Runner' to come in the days ahead.

sean on detonation films...

Hey All,

Sean just informed me of something fun; In the process of getting a new (and incredibly awesome) muzzle flash element from the guys at detonation films, one of them told Sean they'd already seen some of our clips! Not only that, but he decided to embed a clip of Sean in the Gallery at the Det Films site!

How awesome is that!

So here it is, both a link to the Detonation Films gallery (go there and check out the elements, good stuff)

http://www.detonationfilms.com/gallery.htm

(its the third clip down on the page) and an embed of the the clip itself.

behold: Sean sniping us all!