DoP, what’s that?
The head of the visual-department. He's in charge of shooting the scenes and applying a gentle layer of photoshop. He oversees all of the different visual stages of the project. In the end, if the movie ends up looking like crap (but of course it won’t), Juuso is the one who should get kicked in the knickers.
Here it comes...
Juuso has done film stuff in the past and loved it, but has always felt that his strengths lies in the still photo department. He gets no kicks from champagne, ‘cos he gets his kicks from photoshop. …As sad as it might sound. His dream is to wake up one morning and realize that he's actually being paid to do projects like these.
How did you end up doing Thesis of Evil?
“I wanted to create something out of photography and over the top photoshop. But just making a series of nice photos wasn't really going to turn anyone's head, at least not for long, so around the end of 2008 I came up with a concept about animating photos to tell a story similar to an animated 3D comic book.
At first I planned to do the whole thing by myself, but now, 2 years and around 20 added crew members later, jeez what was I thinking?! The first person I wanted to hire for the project was Jukka, the Director. I had worked with him on numerous projects before, so I knew that if I got him committed to the project, he wouldn't rest until the film was the best it could be. Also, if he was in my project, I wouldn't have to compete with his forthcoming project, whatever epic blockbuster that would have been (sorry bout that).
The visual style and concept went through a lot of drastic changes and the possible stories ran from film noir adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood to steampunk time machines coming from someone's nostrils. The animation style still had strong references to comic books, so we decided that the story should be something that would actually benefit from the comic book-inspired visual style. What we came up with was something never before seen in comic books; Supervillains!”
Sounds like a crappy idea
Well, if you want to make a successful movie or a short film in Finland it has to include either A) a drunken abusing father, B) a war from Finland's history or C) teens experimenting with their sexuality. Unfortunately me and my fellow crew members aren't that interested in making a film about any of those.
"Let's make a film with a totally ridiculous premise" is probably how all of our projects start out. We might not win a grand prize with this idea, but at least we can say we tried to do something different (although we did win a second prize with our latest film, starring a runaway husband, a nazi and a gimp). When we start thinking about ideas for a script, I want the brainstorming session to end with me pissing my pants laughing rather than crying in the shower scrubbing myself while listening to Coldplay (no offense). “
Free word
“I feel really privileged to be able work on a project with a team like this on my side. A lot of great talent has come together to create some epic stuff, on the artistic, technical and paper-pushing levels. I look forward to seeing what's in store for them in the near future. You're a bunch of great people and I thank you for your motivation towards this project, even though all you’re getting out of this are bags under your eyes.
A wise man once said to me; "your ideas suck". I learned something that day, that my ideas really do suck, but if I stay here at the office 14 hours a day, every once in a while I'll come up with something awesome!
Previous work:
My portfolio isn't up yet, enjoy these flicks for a few months until I get a chance to do something about it.
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