vi.LLAIN

vi.LLAIN

o le a maua oe i mala

You may think you've escaped this curse, but it will guide you back all the same.

Inspiration

Much of the initial creative pitch came from the actor in this scene, Villa Lemanu, when brainstorming to create a "world" that represented his personal artistic character. This footage was originally used to create one of four trailers for XIII WRLD's "Proof of Existence" event in April, conceptualised by Director Byrin (XIII) Mita. I have since re-worked and added brand new scenes to dive deeper into the world and create a standalone cinematic.

The pitch imagined a South Pacific Island, with the landscape having been built up and industrialised, only to be slowly reclaimed by the land it inhabited. Some buildings remain lit, others have since decayed into shells. The narrative revolves around the island having taken on a sinister presence capable of powerful curses, twisting humans in the same way humans twisted its nature.

When conceptualising the look and feel of this world, I felt very influenced by Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice as its use of conflicting internal voices guiding the player, with the caveat that these voices, too, have been infected by the island's curse. The aesthetic of the overgrown, desecrated cities shown in Planet of the Apes had significant inspiration on much of the visual direction as well.

The filming, editing, compositing, building in Unreal and the sound design were all done by myself.

Process

All of the 3D/background elements were built in Unreal Engine 5.3, the environments consisting of kitbashed assets, Bridge and otherwise. The goal for the first two shots was to create a fairly claustrophobic feeling, with dynamicism to match. Tight spaces, chaotic running camera blueprints, flickering lighting and markings on walls, fading in and closing on you, hopefully achieving this effect. Then cutting into an eerily wide-open street. Nowhere left to hide.

Compositing

The filming was done in a studio that had a rounded cove, which had been painted completely blue for a period of time to film everything. Shooting on a DJI Ronin 4D, and attaching a VIVE Mars Rover to the gimbal, all live camera movement was fed directly into the CineCameras in Unreal Engine. While I operated the camera, Byrin led the movement direction making for a seamless filming process. I opted to key the footage separately in Premiere Pro to keep the foreground and background layers separate, seeing as the camera movement using the Take Recorder was saved within Unreal, leaving me with complete control over the background elements that could be edited and tweaked long after filming. The addition of being able to film synced camera motion did come with the trade-off of motion blur, which was difficult to work with, but hopefully was mitigated as much as my current ability would allow.

Sound Design

The combination of different audio influences made for a difficult balance to strike. Footsteps, heavy breathing and general ambience formed the base. The next layer was to add a constant vague whispering of voices, while making some deeper rumbling sentences more clear to discern. Pitched, filtered and modulated voice clips from a multitude of different sources led to a feeling of having not just one, but many terrifying presences at once all leading you to your doom.

The transformation from human to creature also required some creature-based sound design. Edited sound bites of the Death Angels from A Quiet Place, clickers from The Last of Us, mixed with general zombie-like growling, gave off a grotesque vibe to Villa's exceptional character movement.

A final layer to reference the Samoan influence on this piece involved editing and incorporating clips of shell horns and Samoan fa'aumu to hopefully build a more stylised and unique soundscape.

I have enjoyed every step of this project, no matter how challenging the processes became, and being able to put every new skill I've picked up along the way has been incredibly fun. Every problem small or large had a solution, and making things work that you didn't know were possible is one of the best feelings you can have as an artist.

MANY, MANY THANKS

I want to give a massive, massive shout-out to Villa Lemanu (@villalemanu), Byrin Mita (@xiii_everything), (@xiiiwrld), Raynham Park Studios (@raynhamparkstudios), CG Spectrum, and all my people, for the support, tools, creativity and motivation to see this one through. I'm incredibly grateful to all of you and I wouldn't be here otherwise.

Much love.