Hares & Foxes
Roman Mendez, the Argentinean director based in Dublin, worked along Club Color Studio to carry out post-production and color correction of Hares & Foxes, a short film telling the story of siblings who have a difficult relationship until one day they decide to hunt foxes and set matters straight between each other.
The short film was recorded in a beautiful forest in Dublin. However, since it is an ecological reserve, human presence was evident in pruned trees everywhere. Roman Mendez’s vision was to set the story in a forest that had not been touched by humans. Therefore, all visible pruned trees had to be removed.
This has undoubtedly been the most challenging and demanding post-production project I have ever been a part of. Some shots required a classic After Effects tracking while for others Mocha AE was the best ally. However, there were a couple shots that needed manual tracking which had to be eyeballed.
The most fun part of the project was working with digital birds. I had always wanted to insert 3D characters and this story let me do it. We got an animated model of the crow which I illuminated and texturized with Blender 3D and then I did the composite in After Effects.
We had to add a flock that reacted to a gunshot. We found a system of 2D birds that we could control and send to whatever spot we wanted.
I believe that special effects are more than just an excuse to show off our skills or technology, they should be a tool to help us tell stories. The beginning of the short film had a unique opportunity. Roman Mendez wanted a sky replacement since the sky did not have enough texture. Several zoom meetings led to a powerful insight—the sky replacement should not only help the sky look more interesting by turning it grayer and cloudier; in order to match it to the story, it could forebode the characters’ fate.
The director was very happy with the short film, which premiered in time to be sent to different film festivals. It received 5 prizes some of the most relevant being the Silver Award for Best Crime Short at the Independent Shorts Awards in Los Angeles, and the prize for Best Cinematography at the Istanbul Film Festival.