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Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 1, 2019. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
A boy who likes to draw and build Ferris wheels encounters strange creatures at night that first scare him and then turn his life upside down. “La Noria” is a personal vision about monsters, grief and memories. The story presents interesting fragments that come together in an unexpected way at the end. Carlos Baena wrote the film’s story, directed and edited it.
The subject of monsters has fascinated the 3D artist since childhood: “From Frankenstein’s monster, whose initial innocence ends in tragedy, to an alien survival organism without a conscience: For me, the meaning of these creatures has always changed throughout my life, depending on the situation I found myself in. Sometimes I interpreted them as an emotional release, at other times I explored dark sides of myself with their help. I wanted to show that in the film.” Another core theme of “La Noria” is the concept of vulnerability and innocence. “Everyone knows times in life when everything goes wrong and you hit rock bottom. Then you need strength to get back up again. And in finding your way, you have to face the unknown, which can be very scary. Having been in a similar situation, I always wanted to tell a story about this emotional journey in a visual, dark and poetic way.” Carlos began working on this story in 2010.
At this point, the artist already had many years of experience working on animated children’s feature films. As much as he enjoyed this, he was still looking for a creative change, which is why he wanted to work on a darker film with a psychological tone: “The film doesn’t explain every aspect of the story and a lot is only suggested subconsciously. In some ways it follows a normal storytelling approach, other things fall into the psychological realm.” In the course of the process, several story paths were created, with information being withheld in some cases and added in others. “There are already many wonderful animated films for children. For adults, on the other hand, there are hardly any, especially in the horror genre. That’s why I felt a real obligation to realise my idea to broaden the spectrum of animated films. I found it encouraging that other colleagues took a similar view,” says Carlos.
Carlos initially worked on the plot alone. “Only when I was at a point where I could pitch the story did I get help from friends.” He was inspired by horror films that don’t just rely on pure shock moments, but also have a depth that makes you think. These included Victor Erice’s “The Ghost of the Hive”, Kim Jee-woon’s “A Tale of Two Sisters”, Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”, Peter Medak’s “The Changeling”, Tomas Alfredson’s “Let the Right One In” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”.
International Independent Commitment
in 2011, the project reached the next level when Carlos met producer Sasha Korellis. She was also at a creative crossroads at the time and wanted to do something different. Due to its different nature, no studio wanted to produce the film and the cheapest offer the team received from a CG studio to make it was 1.2 million dollars. The duo therefore realised very quickly that “La Noria” would be a no-budget project. “After my savings of around 150,000 euros had already been used up in the pre-production phase, we first had to find out how we could manage the actual production without financing and studio resources,” recalls Carlos.
The director initially pitched the film idea to numerous software companies. They all believed in the project and therefore sponsored licences. These included Autodesk, The Foundry and Summus Render, a cloud rendering company from Madrid. The 3D community also convinced Carlos Vision and the duo were able to recruit talent from all over the world for the production of the ambitious short film. The only project phases that Carlos and his team were able to realise face-to-face were the story development, sound design and mixing, which took place at the Oriol Tarrago and Deluxe studios in Barcelona. Everything else was done online and remotely.
Carlos and Sasha contributed a total of 200,000 euros from their private budget to the project until it was finalised. In addition, they generated around 65,000 euros via an Indiegogo campaign, of which around 50,000 euros remained after deducting taxes and Indiegogo fees.
Remote pipeline
As the 200 or so artists from over 30 countries had to work together remotely in their free time, Carlos and Sasha created a suitable working environment. Maya was used as the animation software, while the team opted for Arnold and Nuke for rendering and compositing because they had heard many good things about this combination. Once the pipeline was stable, they stuck with the tools. The biggest update to the pipeline was when they switched from Maya 2012 to the 2015 version. This was primarily necessary because of the problem with Maya 2012, where individual shots could not be rendered due to damaged reference assets. “We therefore had to rebuild some shots and update them to Maya 2015, which took several months,” says Carlos.
For the final look, the main software packages were joined by numerous plug-ins such as Joe Alter’s Shave&Haircut for hair grooming and PgBokeh from Peregrine Labs for depth-of-field effects in compositing. Despite the many changes the pipeline went through, the team consistently stuck to the look they had established at the beginning and waited until the last two to three months to render. This maintained visual continuity. The rest was done in colour correction. VFX supervisor Yasin Hasanian created customised launchers to ensure that all artists remained consistent in terms of licences and software versions. The team used two file management tools for the organisation: First, an early alpha version of a software now known as Artella. The team called it AMP at the time. It accompanied the process from modelling and layout to animation and lighting. For compositing, the team used a standard solution called Box, which could also be used to write tools for the compositing pipeline.
The film was rendered online with the Summus Renderer. Carlos particularly appreciated the personal support and direct communication: “They were always willing to help us until we figured things out. I would recommend Summus to anyone in a heartbeat.” The team initially used Skype for the regular web conferences. However, because the tool did not offer enough options for adding multiple users and sharing screens, they switched to GoToMeeting for a few years. in 2015, they ended up using Zoom and communicated via Slack for the last three years of the project process.
Horror protagonists
One challenge was to make the film, especially the child, visually photorealistic without entering the Uncanny Valley. To avoid this, the team carried out numerous rendering and shading tests in the pre-production phase. “The previs characters of the boy and the monsters were very roughly designed because we just needed something for the purpose of the previs. Meanwhile, we were still developing the design of the characters,” explains Carlos. In the Previs phase, a fully rigged 3D model was therefore used for the boy character.
In order for the final CG boy to show the wide range of emotions such as fear, sadness and much more, the team studied various references from both the animation world and the live-action sector. The eyes in particular were an important factor for the emotionality: “Having no dialogue in the film forced us to develop a visual eye expression,” explains Carlos. The artists stylised the eyes slightly to avoid creating an uncanny valley effect. They also identified specific non-animation elements that added life to the boy’s eyes, such as a tear film, refraction and highlights.
There are numerous 3D monsters in the film. However, one offered a bigger rigging challenge than its creepy colleagues. Because the rig became far too complex during the process for what the monster in the film should have done. But rebuilding the rig wasn’t an option, explains Carlos: “Unfortunately, that would have been more work than just going straight to animation instead. For the animators, working with the rig was a big challenge. But at the same time, you learn to appreciate any help with a project that’s born out of pure passion.”
Scary backdrop
The set dressing also turned out to be much more complex than initially expected. Some of the animation artists therefore helped out with more complex shots during set design. In the end, 206 props and decorative elements came together for the final film, all of which are visible to the viewer. Numerous tests and research were necessary during the preparation phase before the team knew what they wanted in terms of lighting. In the end, key lighting elements, localised lighting, falling-off lights with low depth, low tonal value and high contrast, volume and much more were used to achieve the desired horror look. DOF in particular played a key role in making the lighting feel more cinematic.
Until the next milestone
In total, it took seven years for Carlos’ “La Noria” project to be completed: “After a few years, I realised that I couldn’t think about the finish line, but had to approach it like a marathon and work towards the next water break.” Above all, it was important to keep up the motivation – not just their own, but that of the whole team: “I think the most important reason why so many people were willing to help us was because we were present at every meeting at any time of day or night. No matter how tired we were: We got up every day and every weekend and got the job done.”
Carlos does not yet know when “La Noria” will be released online: “The film is currently being shown at festivals all over the world. After that, Indiegogo supporters will get to see the film before anyone else, as they helped us complete it. We wanted to make a film with an unusual narrative and we hope that the audience enjoys the film as much as we enjoyed working on it.”
