Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: EXT
Genre: Science-Fiction
Date: February 2019
Director: Adrian Bobb
Producers: Zeus Kontoyannis, Jon Hutton.
Writer: Adrian Bobb
Cinematographer: Bob Gundu
Editor: Name
Composer: Name
Production Company: Zeus Pictures, Exocentric Productions,
Budget: The budget was roughly 20000CAD
Financing: From Zeus Pictures as well as some of my own money.
Shooting Format: RED DRAGON
Screening Format: a ratio
World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (Animation Day)
Awards
Website
indieactivity: Tell us about yoru film?
Adrian Bobb (AB): EXT is a story that takes place 300 years after humanity has abandoned the real world for a digital one. Due to the immortal nature of digital existence, stagnation has since thrown the three immortal generations into a heated civil war that has mysteriously spilled out into the real world now known as the EXT. Called back into action, an ex-internal affairs agent must figure out how to deal with a threat alongside 4 other multi-generational teammates.
While there’s a lot of analogues for the story that are inspired from real life, I often cite Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai” as a template-story about a changing world and the need to bring together the young and the old to defend a community under siege.
Tell us about the festival run, marketing, and sales?
Adrian Bobb (AB): We’ve been blessed to be a part of over 50 film festivals world-wide from all over North America, Australia, and Europe and have won dozens of best of show awards in Science-Fiction categories as well as animators! It has also drawn interests from multiple producers and animation companies and I am currently working hard adapting it into a series format!
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
AB: In the snow-covered ruins of 24th century Toronto, AEGIS, a humanoid war machine, leads a team of five similar yet unique machines into the real world to retake an enemy-occupied server installation vital to the survival of their digital homeland.
During an attempt to ambush a large pack of enemy-controlled war-drones, AEGIS recalls a previous interrogation with the enemy’s founder, a purist extremist named KYM MINAMOTO…AEGIS’s mother.
As AEGIS fights for her life in the real world, she recalls the emotional fight for her identity in her digital homeland as she and her mother argue over the true nature of humanity and AEGIS’ role within it.
Development & Financing?
AB: I originally wrote EXT as a feature about my honest thoughts and feelings about what interesting stories could take place in a post-singularity world. What happens after most science-fiction stories dealing with the possibility of “digital immortality”, end? Mixed with a massive dose of concept art, 3D models, and storyboards created by myself, the world of EXT began to solidify into something presentable and that’s where my producer, Zeus Kontoyannis came into the picture.
After meeting online, we both began to discuss the next steps, and eventually, we came to the harsh realization that as a feature, the project was simply too expensive for us to make…a proof-of-concept short on the other hand was entirely doable with a minimal budget and could possibly help in generating interest from producers/streaming services/animation houses, etc.
Production?
AB: Pre-production and post certainly were the longest aspects of the film. And because it’s about 20% Live-Action and 80% Animation, the animation segments took a lot more time to storyboard, model, rig, animate, and render. Luckily we did this even before we shot. So while working on the VFX elements we held auditions for the roles of the creator of the digital world Kym Minamoto, and the hero of the story, her daughter, and ex-Internal Affairs agent, Aegis Minamoto. Toronto has no shortage of talented actresses and while it was a difficult decision we were lucky to land on Zoe Doyle for the part of Kym Minamoto, and Cara Gee for the part of Aegis.
The next part was assembling my crew which actually came together quite easily through friends of friends. The second producer on the project, Jon Hutton was able to suggest Bob Gundu who is a phenomenally talented cinematographer with a history in VFX making it very easy to communicate the project’s fragmented style.
First, we needed to shoot our live-action plates in a wintery environment. You’d think this would be easy in February in Toronto, Canada, but that year it simply didn’t snow…so we decided to wait…and yet again the weather didn’t seem to want to cooperate. So we decided to drive up north to a small town called Coldwater where luckily it did snow, and over the course of a weekend, we were able to gather all of the references and plates we needed.
Once it grew warmer we were able to shoot our actors on a green screen studio in the outskirts of Toronto. Also a weekend shoot, we managed to get everything we needed with our wonderful and talented cast and crew.
Over the course of about another year, I and a skeleton crew of animators and compositors put all the pieces together all while working full-time jobs in the VFX and animation industry.
We also were able to gain the help of Rapier Wit, a fight choreography company, to help stage some of the fight scenes with the company’s trained owner Daniel Levinson, record his moves from multiple angles, and use the info to better refine our animation.
For some of the more subtle movements, I would go outside personally and record myself from multiple angles for the many different robot characters in the short.
After a lot of rendering and detail nitpicking, we were finally able to edit the film (Jennie Ziemienin) and add sound (Matt R. Sherman) and music ( Dillon Baldassero) which was one of the speedier parts of the project and having worked with Matt and Dillon on previous projects I had very little doubt they would bring their A-game!
And yeah! It was finished! About a 1 year and a half of production and immediately as it was entering its festival run (50+ so far!) I applied so much of what I learned on this project to my next projects and I can’t wait to show them sometime late next year!
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
AB: Blood in the Snow Film Festival in Toronto, Canada certainly gave us a nice boost last October and we were luckily able to meet a lot of great talent and producers that I’ve since been collaborating with on my next upcoming projects! PR began earlier than that however when we had our World premiere at Cannes Animation Day Showcase where we were able to get the film mentioned in Animation Magazine which also gave us a huge boost in notability!
The Release?
AB: So far the film has only been shown in festivals and hasn’t been released publicly. Luckily we’ve been able to travel to a few festivals in 2019 before COVID and we were able to watch the film in some fantastic locations on the big screen which as a film maker is always a delight. Through the digital festivals however there is a great feeling of getting the film seen by a world-wide audience which certainly has its own perks!
Advice from the Filmmaker?
AB: Don’t take no for an answer. Find a way to make your project. You’re going to hear a lot of people telling you you can’t and it’s up to you to prove them wrong. You may have to dial some things down. You may need to find alternate routes within your story. But YOU need to find a way to make it happen. If you don’t know how? Learn. If you need equipment? Ask online. Join FB groups. Go to festivals. Build your network. It’s all possible and so is your film.
The official trailer for EXT a Sci-fi short film written and directed by Adrian Bobb
Tell us what you think of EXT What do you think of it? Genre? More genre? Let’s have your comments below and/or on Facebook or Instagram! Or join me on Twitter.
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