Chainsmoking Seagulls

Overview

Postcard home from English Bay is a video poem based on the poem of the same name. We aimed to create a surreal satirical video to match the vibes of the poem, and just trying to have fun with what we could create. Visual effect graphical fidelity really did not matter for this project.

Contribution

- Directing
- Cinematography
- 3D VFX

Tools

- Maya
- After Effects
- Premiere

Collaborators

- Jonathon Newman (Editing, Sound)
- Alyssa Umbal (Cinematography)
- Russel Yuen (Editing, 2D VFX)

Festivals

Word Vancouver Festival 2023 - Moving Words in the City
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2024
Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2024
Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen - Played daily from March 2024-2025

Post-production

I used basic green-screen playblasts to create the seagulls in Maya. This is extremely low fidelity, but it's fine because it's funny.

An advantage of playblasting was that I could import a playblast file in After Effects. If I modified the Maya file and playblasted it again, it would immediately update the video with the new playblast, which made adjusting the project much easier.

If I didn't like the camera angle of a seagull here, I could simply playblast a new angle and it would automatically update.

To create water effects, I learned how to use Maya's Bifrost to create fluid simulations. It was a steep learning curve but by the end I had a much stronger understanding of how physics simulations work in general, including other rigid body simulations.

To create the flooded streets, I modelled the general layout of the street as seen from the camera angle.

Creating a digital street to create water simulation

Overlay with video. The water splashes against the sidewalk.

The pig took the longest to render. Making water look realistic at a large scale requires significantly more computation power.

Test simulation, High vs Low particle count

A Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) takes videos or photos to create a virtual model of a scene. This allowed fast camera movement of the statues that would normally be impossible without expensive equipment. I took hundreds of photos of the location, created a NeRF with them, and used Luma AI to create camera movement with it.

The sky breaks the illusion that this is a digital scene

To create the particle explosion, I used After Effect's particle system.

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Our group took inspiration in making this film from seagull of noon, which was made for a a montage assignment.

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