Godzilla crew screening

Last night I finally saw Godzilla at the Warner Brothers lot. Phones weren't allowed, but there was a keepsake:

The only evidence.

The director, Gareth Edwards, gave a nice intro speech talking about how thankful he was for all the hard work the teams put in. Since he started from a visual effects background, he said he knew what it felt like to do so much work and have so much credit go to another person. Apparently the cast screening hadn't happened yet, and so other than the press, we were the first people it was screened for.

As usual, I can't go into any specifics that haven't already been confirmed by the film's marketing campaign, but I will say that I absolutely loved how it came out--and my expectations were very high going into it. Not only were the VFX jaw-dropping, but Bryan Cranston's performance kept me emotionally invested from the start. What can I say? Working on the movie turned me into a fanboy. When you go see it, be sure to see it on a huge IMAX 3D screen. Anything else is an injustice to the big guy.

Congratulations to everyone that worked on it. The Third Floor team got lots of names in the credits, which was great (you'll see mine on screen left). At the time I was on the project, we were working on the following sequences, with the shots I personally worked on in parentheses:

1. Godzilla approaching the Golden Gate sequence ('boat getting lifted on a big wave' shot, shots of soldiers reacting from the boats)
2. All hell breaking loose on the bridge (kids in the school bus looking out at the military preparing to fight, navy ships launching cruise missiles, soldiers scrambling around while the bridge bets blown up)
3. HALO jump (high angles on the group as they fell)
4. Very start of the Muto vs. Godzilla showdown in Chinatown

We also did some early motion design tests (6:30) of how Godzilla and the Mutos would fight, which was a lot of fun, even though they were animation exercises that weren't for any particular shots in the movie.

A final note to wrap up this post: Back in 2001, after finishing my Softimage 3.7 training in film school, I knew I needed some animation experience with the Maya program. My classmate Sony, a huge Godzilla fan, had built, rigged, and textured two giant monsters and a city block of Vancouver in Maya, and he asked me to animate them fighting. It was the very first thing I animated in Maya, outside of the Salty the Seal tutorial. Who would have thought that all these years later that experience would help to inform the motion of the latest Godzilla incarnation? What a weird coincidence...

La Brea and Melrose,  Los Angeles

Empty Streets Movie Soundtrack Now Available

In 2009, I contributed some graphic design work to Empty Streets, an independent short film made by my VFS roommate Paul Booth and other Hawai'i filmmakers. The movie is about the struggles a returning veteran has when he adjusts to life after the military. It was a passion project for Paul, and it is great to see its continued success well after the filmmakers completed their initial push to promote it. The film has played in film festivals worldwide and continues to raise awareness of how difficult it is for our troops to acclimate back to civilian life after the harsh experiences of wartime. As someone who has a sister in the military, this is a very personal cause for me.

I'd like to take this post to promote the project and include some of the print media/graphic designs I contributed to the project, starting with the movie poster:

Movie poster design.

Although the film did not receive distribution, copies of it are available to check out from the Hawaii, Sacramento, and Orange County library systems. I did the jacket design for the DVD, which at one time was going to be a two-disc bundle with the soundtrack (more on that below). I popped the levels on the oranges from the movie poster to help the jacket stand out more. Apparently it worked, because the film is constantly checked out.

DVD jacket design.

Now on to the soundtrack, which as of Veteran's Day 2013 is now available for sale online. 55% of all sales goes to The Veterans Resource Center at Golden West College, with another portion going to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The musicians on the soundtrack include Grammy winners and nominees, as well as several great young talents. Here is the CD album I designed: 

Album design.

If you would like to support the Veterans Resource Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center and pick up some great music, please buy a copy of the soundtrack or some singles from any of these online retailers:

       

Interview with Influx Magazine

Recently I was asked by my longtime friend, fellow Vancouver Film School grad, and producer-director-film critic (he does it all, folks) Paul Booth to do an interview with him for the online film site Influx Magazine. I've included a link to the full article at the bottom.

"Josh Lange has worked on some very impressive video games and he’s been part of some amazing studio pictures. For me, it’s Josh’s integrity and consummate professionalism that made him an ideal candidate for this series. Josh also has a respect for movies of the past and present before Star Wars or the prequel trilogy. We live in a time of cinema, where many people don’t respect the past. Josh knows his stuff.

Paul Booth: What films or life event made you want to make movies? Past just loving movies?

Josh Lange: The worlds and characters of the original Star Wars films triggered an intense fascination and passion in me early on when I was a kid. As my connection to those movies evolved, I began to learn about the methods developed by George Lucas and his visual effects crew to make their groundbreaking special effects. Since the visual effects were what really made those movie stand out, I started looking at other filmmakers with high standards for the field, such as Stanley Kubrick. I was also in love with the films of Walt Disney as a kid, and as my interests began bouncing between art, animation, movies, and visual effects, I started making small films and taking film courses through the local community college while I was in high school. Senior year I was officially hooked, and it was only a matter of time before I entered film school."

Link to the full article on Influx Magazine.com

List of VFS graduates on The Avengers

Link to the Vancouver Film School blog post is here. Nick and I first met each other there in Class 28, and Aaron was one term ahead of us in 27 (I'll never forget his "vulture burglar" reel). The rest of the names I don't recognize, but I'd like to say "congratulations" to them all.

Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin

Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin. 2001. Maya.

Sony was a classmate of mine at the Vancouver Film School, and asked me to help out with the animation on the intro to his student reel, "Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin" (he handled everything else). It was fun to get more experience with Maya, since my reel was all done in Softimage.

LAISFF Commercial

LAISFF Commercial (Sci Fi Channel). 2001.

Along with Vancouver Film School classmates Ian Cumming (modeling, texturing) and Mark Driver (compositing), I worked on the storyboarding and animation for a promo and commercial for the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. The festival flew Mark and I down to L.A. for the premiere and we got to hear David Hyde Pierce laugh from behind us during the promo.

B-Boy Student Film

So here it is, my student film at the Vancouver Film School. The game he's playing at the beginning is Super Bomberman for the SNES and the song that he dances to is "Voodoo People" by The Prodigy. All of the elements (modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, etc) were done by me in Softimage.

"B-Boy." 2001. Softimage.

Storyboard page/Final Render Comparison for B-Boy. 2001.