“[..]you don’t have to do everything on your own, you need to have a team and trust your team, have a process in which everybody collaborates. But if you are starting out and nobody helps you, you need to have willpower and find a way to tell your story, there’s always a way.” – Edgar Romero Pérez
Marius: Tell me a bit about your background. How did you get started with film making?
Edgar: When I was 12 years old I downloaded Blender and I spent a lot of time playing with the program, and then started making small animations. It was very interesting for me to discover all the things the software could do.
When I was 15 years old I started taking film direction and screenwriting courses. By that time I was interested in telling a story, not just creating an image. Now I’m 20 and I directed and wrote many short films. I’m still what you would call an amateur, but I had a good start and I believe I’m on the right path.
How did the concept behind Involution take form?
In 2017 images of war were all around social media, the news, and people talked a lot about it. It was a subject that I avoided and was indifferent because I knew I could not do anything about it.
It is very difficult to want to help in some way and to feel powerless. I don’t have money to donate and I do not know anyone in that situation that I can help directly. I only know how to create animations, so I’m trying to use the tools I have to make a difference, no matter how small.
Involution is the way for me, for us, to contribute. We only had a few resources available, and the artistic style was influenced by this fact. There is one location, there are a few characters and no dialogue. But the animation still raised some challenges. The main character had to be a robot, and in the middle of the sequence, a montage with 6 images of a completely digital city appears. Again, this is a short film made with a very small budget and that makes the story minimalist almost to the point of making it experimental. I hope that this also makes it more open for interpretation and prompts people to think.
I like the idea of having Sci-fi elements and a very simple plot that gives me the opportunity to play with the way I tell the story and gives me the opportunity to separate the short film from real war-like conflict. I think that makes the story more universal.
And that’s why I like fiction – because it can have a very universal message while History talks about a specific situation and I think that’s why Aristotle believed that poetry was more philosophical than history.
How long did it take from the idea to completing the short?
Making this short film was a very long process. I first had the idea in 2017 and in 2018 I made the production folder and concept art. In total, I spent approximately one year and 3 months working on the project.
What were the most challenging moments on the way?
I was doing everything on my own and things got complicated when I was rendering the project. Two things happened then: the first one is that I had an orthognathic surgery. My teeth were in a position that could not be corrected with brackets, so they had to change the structure of my face, cutting the jaws and changing their position. The entire process was very painful and time-consuming. I spent days without being able to chew, only ingesting liquids, I was skinnier than normal and I lost a lot of energy. It took a day or two for me just to walk again after the anesthesia.
The second thing that happened was that my computer broke down while I was editing the project. At times it did not turn on, or if it turned on, it only worked from two to 30 minutes and then it turned off again. I still had to render more than half of the short film and the deadlines of the festivals were only a month away.
These two things happened at the same time, I was recovering from my surgery and at the same time trying to fix my computer.
The good thing is that I had the support of my family. They helped me repair the computer, but by that time it was too late to render the whole project. At that moment I remembered that the render farms existed and I saw that as the only option to move forward.
How big was the team working on the project?
We were a very small team. One partner, Alberto Treviño, participated as a photography consultant. My brother made music, another partner helped with legal advice and I wrote, directed and animated the short film.
What were the tools you used for the production?
I used Blender a lot, did a lot of storyboards with it and the final 3D Models used in production.
When it comes to the animation, mountains were made with micropolygon displacements and adaptive subdivision buildings with low poly assets into a particle system. The materials of the robot were simple physically-based rendering materials with different procedural textures (noise, distorted noise, fractal noise, and other textures) and also an edge detection node to create a little rust on the metal parts.
I think the 3D Model had two or three metal materials, a plastic material, and emissions for the eyes and other little lights inside the model.
When the project reached the preproduction phase, it helped to have everything well organized. I started with a logline, outline, synopsis, screenplay and then putting everything together into a production folder.
How important is the budget in creating a short animation?
I think is very important to be aware of your budget in any short film. You need to know how much money you need and how much money you have for all the stages: development, preproduction, production, postproduction, distribution. When it comes to animation, everything is very expensive. Although I did almost everything alone, I have a clear idea of how much money it would’ve cost to do this with a complete team of professionals.
Why did you decide to use RenderStreet for the rendering part? Did it help?
RenderStreet helped me a lot! When I started the short film I had in mind several festivals in which I was interested to participate, and each festival had a deadline. I realized that I couldn’t make those deadlines with my own resources, so I turned to their farm.
The service was very useful, very intuitive; I was surprised by the speed of the process. It would’ve been very difficult to complete the project without RenderStreet.
As this was your first time at a festival, how did you find the entire experience?
I’m very happy I got selected, the short has received a lot of positive reviews. There were a lot of great short films screened at this festival. I summited the short when I finished, but I honestly had no idea what was going to happen, I’m very happy that Involution got to screen in LA and I’m also very grateful to the LA festival organizers! Bob Arentz, the founder and programmer, was very welcoming and nice as well as the entire team from the festival. I saw a lot of short films and looking at all the amazing quality they have it just make me want to step up my game. It was a great opportunity for me to study and enjoy all the amazing films.
Looking forward, I’m also very excited about the festivals in México and my hometown Monterrey.
Will you do it again?
Of course! After this experience, I have added a lot of movies on my study list. And now that I spent a little bit of time looking at other projects, I know what type of project I need to do. I have a better idea about how to improve and I already put on paper a couple of short film drafts. Now I just need to find the right way to make them and of course find a team.
Any advice for other artists that are planning on creating their first short?
It’s funny I think I should be the one asking for advice. For creating a short film I guess I would suggest looking at what you have and understand your resources. This way you will be able to do the best you can with what you have.
For instance, Involution was originally going to be a live-action movie. But we had a lot of complications, budget, dates, and of course, nobody really thought that I was able to do this so all of them quit. And looking at my resources at that point I was sure the best way to do this was animation.
I guess another advice would be, you don’t have to do everything on your own, you need to have a team and trust your team, have a process in which everybody collaborates. But if you are starting out and nobody helps you, you need to have willpower and find a way to tell your story, there’s always a way.
This is a preview of the short. The full version will be published after being screened at the upcoming festivals.
