Red Smoke
Red Smoke is an original story set in the Starship Troopers universe.
The film industry has been rough, to say the least, it’s been especially hard hit here in LA. Red Smoke was born from the frustration of a lack of available work, lengthy spells of downtime, and a desire to learn. The short is an original story set in the Starship Troopers universe and inspired by the work of Tippett and the delightfully satirical directorial skills of Verhoeven helming the 1997 picture.
Red Smoke started as a vehicle to learn more about Houdini’s crowd toolset and spiralled into a fully visualised short. The film explores my workflow and how I approach designing narrative, composition, and juggling software while staying true to a script and embracing total creative control.
The film has an accompanying wiki, more accurately described as a personal workflow ramble. I’ve included entries on everything from producing crowd sims, getting animation into engine from Maya, snippets of code, Unreal to bring it to life, forays into colour, and utilising Nuke’s reader node to generate renders for editorial work in DaVinci.
I’m a filmmaker first, telling stories is why I started on this journey. I enjoy using a whole plethora of skills together and I have to create. The industry is in the throes of a death kneel but I refuse to sit by, I will continue to dedicate my energy to learning, making, and staying true to my passion for film.
“Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has.”
For more about the making of Red Smoke, check out the making of here, Red Smoke WIKI