“A Tiny Evolution of An Escapee"

“A Tiny Evolution of An Escapee"

一个生命体的自我演化

A being experiences a new birth through a philosophical mind travel.

This film is a poem in record of the internal changes of me during my past four-year study aboard life.

I used to have many lovely kites planted,

but they were killed by the power of an unknown darkness.

Fortunately, one of them survived and escaped the devastation.

---

He discovered a new world, fancy and appealing.

He decided to explore it.

---

When the world gets silent,

I submerge myself into the liquid of thoughts.

I see endless desert.

I thought the love between two people could be the antidote to this meaningless life,

but I need to breathe.

Every fruit of my struggle seems to be controlled by something,

which still gives me a little freedom,

allows me to experience a certain period of euphoria.

But soon I am swallowed by allure.

I find only death is ahead.

But the fear toward death would be bubbling out if I believed in the power of heart.

Yet absolute passion will eventually make me exhausted and lead to despair.

---

However, the sun is still there,

as is the moon,

they give me magical light.

---

After seeing all of these,

I decide to live concretely, with my thoughts well-contained within the magical planet.

Hopefully I can give life back to some lost kites.

---

I used to struggle to find profound meaning of life in the mind,

but then I realized the importance of the physical body.

And actually, they’re all together.

Inspirations:

This film is mainly inspired by my last four years of study aboard in the United States and how it has changed me over time. I originally came from China, where I lived my entire childhood and teenage period before college. I had a sense of repression in mind almost all the time due to the fact that we were always forced to be unified and regulated at school. However, I heard that people were given much more freedom in United States, I therefore made up my mind and started my study aboard journey. Through various approaches on art making, I was looking for the meaning of life, which caused me to indulge myself heavily in my own mind and sometimes lose connection with the physical world outside. After all of the wild thoughts going through my mind, I realized the essence of life for me is to live concretely in reality with an open mind, which would bring me true happiness.

The making of it:

Honestly speaking, this film was really a big challenge for me, which pushed me to get aboard on multiple tasks in a limited amount of time.

First of all, as a creative artist, besides the concept design part that I was more comfortable with, I have had to deal with many technical difficulties. I’ve had a chance to learn almost every aspect of 3D animation , including modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting and rendering with Maya as well as compositing with Nuke.

Besides the technical aspect of problem solving, I’ve learned the importance of organization, time arrangement and cooperation in film production. Since we only have one year to finish the film, I have to clear plan for my pipeline, rough out the schedule, use my budget wisely and list the people who could help me on specific things. I feel so grateful to our professors at DADA, who had helped me on this film. Since my film is really a fuse of multiple interpretations,  I went to their office hours, listened to their advice and asked for help. Some of them help me on technical sides and some on concept and story.

In addition, it is also my first time working with the sound department, it really opened another world in sound making. In this case, it required me to communicate my vision clearly with my composer and sound designers as a director, and of course, we’ve worked back and forth a couple of times to get things on the right track.

Last but not the least, to make this film also required me to keep a stable and calm mental state to prepare for any unknown problem that may have occurred at anytime. For example, in the middle of scene building, the computers in our cubicle couldn’t support my large files and crushed more and more often, which forced me to learn to work within limits and find an alternative solution to the problem.

Nevertheless, at the end of these difficulties and challenges, when I see the beautiful images rendered out and people enjoying my film, I feel so delighted and all the hardships were worthwhile.

Makar Ke Ma © 2016