When I was a very young boy growing up in Mexico, my grandfather who was a Belgian immigrant told me a fantastic tale. It was about a late 19th Century British street actor named Garrick who possessed an uncanny ability to make people laugh but was internally suffering from severe depression and an inability to find meaning in his life. Although I was unable to truly understand the full meaning of the story due to my young age, I was so captivated by the tale and the character that I would tell the story to anyone who would listen. I went so far as to even compose music to accompany the story, which I performed at numerous school recitals.
This story has been the inspiration for “Garrick,” the film for my master’s thesis and in many ways I feel that I am producing more than a film. I am recreating a tale and memory from my childhood that has left such a deep impression on me. While I was previously only able to tell this story through words and music, now I can recreate an entire world that was in my imagination as a child. It is often a surreal experience for me to see something that was kept confined in the privacy of my thoughts and have it transformed into something tangible.
Filmmaking has provided me a medium to express an artistic vision that otherwise would not be possible for me to communicate to other people. However, Garrick is more than just an artistic vision. It would not be complete without the technical innovations that are critical components to its creation. These technical innovations include the integration of live action, computer generated imagery (CGI) and visual effects. I believe the intersection of my artistic and technical abilities in the making of this film have allowed me to literally recreate, on screen, the world of Garrick and his feelings.
As a graduate student in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College and a former graduate student in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Harvard University, I was able to experiment and explore the different filmmaking techniques used in the making of Garrick. My course work included Computer Animation, Graduate Studio Production, Graduate Film Production, Classical Animation, Advanced Cinematography, Directorial Studies, and Fictional Narrative. This course work exposed me to the different possibilities in terms of filmmaking techniques and animation.
Additionally, I was employed at Harvard University where my work and research experience involved the creation and implementation of digital media technologies for streaming media over the internet. My major project was to develop the technology and the systems that drive the online education program at Harvard University.
Garrick is an original short fictional narrative. It is composed by live action and captured on high definition (HD) video conveyed with CGI and classical animation. The film includes a total of seven scenes as described in the plot segmentation included in this application. The majority of these scenes are filmed in a studio at Emerson College using sets that employ a mix of green screens for the backgrounds and partially rebuilt locations that depict the period and the place of the piece. The remaining scenes will be filmed on location and won’t require any special effects.
HD has been chosen since it allows for real time monitoring on set and enables the director and the director of photography to see exactly how the footage is going to look and how it can be conveyed with the digital sets and visual effects. Additionally, HD helps improve the performance of the actors and crew on set since it provides them with a better sense of the environment they are working in because a projector is used to display the current take and previous takes. This helps identify directorial and technical issues on set as the film is being made since a big portion of the set is in green screen. I have included some documentation of the production in this application to better illustrate this concept.
Digital sets and their effective compositing with live action is an area that has not been sufficiently explored at the student level. I chose to incorporate them in the making of Garrick because they have been transforming the traditional filmmaking process in the industry. While I have always been interested in technology as it applies to the production of special effects and the creation of digital video, I have also come to recognize that the use of technology can be an even more powerful tool when it is used to advance an artistic vision.