WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL
Role: Cinematographer, Concept Artist, Compositor
Company: SCAD
Published: 2018
The mission of the world science festival is to create and cultivate a general public that is informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.
We put together this project during our tenure at SCAD, with the aim of experimenting with various multimedia techniques to create a world around a well-known brand like World Science Festival. It was a very fun project that involve wearing many hats and learning a lot of new techniques amongst a collaborative and incredibly talented group of three amigos: Zach Herdman, Billy Woods, and Nestor Tomaselli.
OUR HYPOTHESIS
Our title sequence is aimed at taking the viewer on a visual journey through the major branches of science by displaying the connections between the microscopic to the astronomic. This concept follows suite with the World Science Festival because it attempts to spark and cultivate interest in science and create an increase in understanding the world around us.
SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
The main document behind the planning of our scientific research - our storyboard, aimed at following the journey of a particle in its different manifestations - an atom, a blood cell, and a neuron, each in its own unique setting. As we follow these distinct micro-organisms, we come across their macro-counterparts, ranging from a super massive black hole, to the all-knowing human brain. This juxtaposition of imagery gets to our aim of creating awareness within the viewer that science is the key to creating connections between even the most distant concepts in our Universe.
3D PHYSICS
We built our main 3D assets on Cinema 4D, taking inspiration on spherical objects to draw the parallels between the micro and macro in our lived reality. Our 3D engines allowed us to go into the depths of the human body and outer space, and swing our digital cameras around like scientists peering through a microscope.
FIELD RESEARCH
To create an instant sense of immersion, we wanted to open a door into the Universe of the microscopic expressed through the rich detail of slow-motion. We filmed these live-action scenes with the purpose of re-creating the same sense of wonder found in decades worth of National Geographic and Discovery documentaries. Shooting with a Sony FS5 provided exceptional clarity to our shots, and gave them the 'documentary feel' we were looking for.
As an observant in this experiment, I was personally amazed by how much can be gathered about life's elegant simplicity in the split second that a drop of water hits the Earth.
As motion designers playing the role of scientists, we felt the need to conduct our own experiments. We ran several tests over a weekend trying out many ways of filming light and projected images through a prism. The idea that began to form in our heads upon experimenting was that of multiple realities taking place inside the refractive interior of the prism. The formal test of our hypothesis involved projecting our sequence on a clear plexi glass screen, and filming through the mirrored universe inside the prism.
The finished results appear as brief 'ghost glitches' on the 2D fabric of the sequence, as if the viewer were offered glimpses into a parallel Universe.
SOCIALS
Once our main experiment was composited, rendered, and finalized, we mocked a series of bite-sized social posts that would represent our brand across Instagram. We combined our 3D experimental approach with real life pictures of our selected speakers to make it feel like one were to be looking at the pages of a reputable editorial.
CREDITS
Creative Director: Zach Herdman
3D Modeling & Animation: Zach Herdman, Billy Woods
Cinematography, Compositing, FX: Nestor Tomaselli
Storyboarding: Nestor Tomaselli
Music & SFX: Zach Herdman, Billy Woods