Black Nights Film Festival Main Titles

The Black Nights Film Festival came to us with a task to update their main titles. They wanted an abstract story with a contemporary feeling that would convey a message about what the festival stands for.

I was fortunate enough to have a piece of sound to work with and from that I started thinking about an abstract Hero’s journey that the guests at the festival might go through while viewing the obscure films that the festival screens.

Role - Story, Art Direction, Design, Modelling, Animation, Compositing
Studio - Tolm

This project was on the shortlist for Animation in the ADC*E Estonian Design Awards 2017

The journey begins with a falling star. Meant as a symbol, it can take on many meanings - start of something magical, something unexplainable, something thrilling, something to aspire to.
And since the piece is for a film festival, it is also a metaphore for the stars on the silver screen. Our Heroes!

As the starfall intensifies, the Hero is taken closer to the heart of the journey.

As in any great story, there are twists and turns. Suddenly the Hero finds itself in an unfamiliar world.

A glimmer of hope. The Hero must go through many difficult challenges before they can go upwards towards the stars again.

Finally, the Hero has made it home.

breakdown

Cinema 4D’s simple cloner setup allowed me to quickly create the starfall without much fuss.

Compositing was done in After Effects. Lots of dust, particles, glows, blurs and lens effects were used in order to create the final look.

One of the more challenging scenes required me to create a landscape, populate it with trees and add running wolves on top of it.

The swooping climax of the piece was made with a setup of animated splines driven by nulls, then sweeped over with geometry. At the tips of the swoops are more nulls for position data in order to take the scene further in After Effects.