For more than a century, visual effects have greatly enriched cinematic storytelling. But can the kind of magic found in movies like “King Kong” and “The Terminator” be part of mobile moviemaking? See for yourself in Brian Vowles’ “Robot Attack.” You’ll find an interview with the Ontario-based director below.

Interview

MMM: How did you develop your filmmaking skills—film school? books and online tutorials? apprenticeship?

Vowles: I came to this from a different direction then most people I think………. growing up I was a huge special effects nerd and always wanted to do something with creatures. To be a Ray Harryhausen or a Rick Baker. The first magazine I ever bought was the making of Gremlins. I studied as an animator and that’s what the last 15 years of my career had been. Working in Production you are always talking about shots and composition and just wears off on you.  I remember when DVD came out I went crazy on commentaries and special features because that was a new thing back then.

MMM: Are there any filmmakers whose work inspired you?

Vowles: I’m an 80’s kid so that’s where most of my inspirations come from.  Speilberg,  Lucas, Cameron. I love Sci Fi action and creature movies and growing up through the 80’s and into the 90’s was an amazing time for that.  I got to see the peak of Stop Motion in “Clash of the Titans” and then lived through the early CGI era—”Max Headroom,” “The Money for Nothing Video”—and slowly into the 90’s with morphing: “The Abyss,” “T2,” and “Jurassic Park.”  I like big wide shots that just let us take things in. I don’t know if its my age, but the pace of editing in some movies today really pulls me out of them.

MMM: How did you come up with the idea for “Robot Attack”?

Vowles:  I filmed a little laser shootout with the boys in my backyard and I filmed it in about ten minutes with no planning.

Vowles: They had so much fun rewatching it on the TV, I got to thinking, maybe I could make a cool little action short that would be fun to do. It would give me a chance to learn some new things I wanted to know more about. Could I make a decent live action short?

MMM: There’s a lot of movie magic in “Robot Attack.”  Could you tell us something about how you achieved a few of the major effects or, like most magicians, do you prefer to keep your method secret?

Vowles: Sharing knowledge is the best way to go.  I did stuff in this movie that I learned off of the ALIENS DVD Commentary.

MMM: How about some specifics?

Vowles: I filmed on really dark  days because I figured that would get me 90% of the look, plus I thought it would be easier to integrate all the elements if the shots were mostly overcast. Otherwise, I would be wrestling with different light directions and intensities. On an overcast day the lighting looks the same at 10am as it does at 4pm, which helped me a lot.

MMM: Where did you find all those ruined buildings?

Vowles: Most of the background stuff simply required exhaustive Google image searches for War, Accidents, Car Wrecks, Disaster, Abandoned, Demolition.  I would cut bits and pieces and just slowly mash it all together with Nuke and Photoshop. I did all my 3D work in MODO by the Foundry. I have been using that program for about ten years now and its a fantastic program for a one man show like me. The Robot was modelled, rigged, animated, textured, lit and rendered out of Modo.  Editing was done in Adobe Premiere.

MMM: Was there any danger in filming that trestle sequence?

MMM: Speaking of your actors, how did you persuade those talented boys to participate in your movie?

Vowles: The main perk about being the father and the director is that you can say  “Action…. or your grounded”.  I’m actually really happy with how their performance came out because I’m not a director and they are not actors. They were so young when we filmed it that they had no clue what was going on. They had never seen a movie with soldiers walking in a formation so even the smallest direction was super confusing to them. I was pulling from 40 years of action movie references and they had a couple years of Nickelodeon under their belt.

MMM: Were there any tricks you used to get such really moving and realistic performances from those two boys?

Vowles: The key was to break the scenes up into little digestible chunks.   Like I would say, “Run along to the end of that wall and pretend you’re afraid.”  The directions were alway really simple. If you look at the movie, it’s a lot of them just walking in one direction. Also, my being an animator helped.  I knew what performances I wanted and I could just say, “Look meaner. Open you mouth slowly and make your eyes wide.” At that age they were kind of like stop motion puppets. I would pose them and say, “Ok, stay like that.” I kept all the hardest scenes for the end because by then we had a bit of a groove going and they had a better understanding of the process.    They still looked at the camera, just not as much.

MMM: You wrote that the production  took four years.

Vowles: I thought this was going to take three months!   No matter how long you think things are going to take, there will be non stop disruptions and technical issues.  Just from doing this goofy little film, I have a whole new appreciation for what a real movie must go through. It’s a miracle that anything ever gets made.  You need to know that you will go through times when you hate the project. It’s impossible to keep that level of excitement up from beginning to end. The beginning is so full of excitement and potential and all of the happy stuff. But the production part is a slow grind with only little glimmers of hope sprinkled along the way. Some days you’ll wonder, “Why bother?” I found that taking breaks actually helped. Coming back to a shot after being away for a couple weeks gave me fresh eyes and always made it better.

MMM: Were there any major challenges that you had to overcome?

Vowles: The absolute biggest challenge was the weather. I started filming in early 2015 but it was still too cold or sunny. It was very rare to get a warm enough overcast day. Then spring started happening, which screwed up everything. By the end of production all of my cool “Post Apocalyptic” trees were full of life and vegetation. You can literally watch them grow in the first cut of the movie. So one of the biggest VFX in the film was replacing all of the green trees at the and of the film. I’m hoping it’s the one effect that nobody notices.  My biggest regret was saying, “I’ll fix it in post” rather then use the green screen because I was just racing against the clock. By skipping the green screen,  I added about five months of rotoscoping to the project. And the weather also affected my actors. During the face-off, boys had to remove their equipment because they were dying from the heat.  So I made up the mano-a-mano strip down scene, which gave us bit of a break in the action,   built the tension, and fixed the heat stroke issue. I’m happy with how that part came out……

MMM:  Why did you use a smartphone rather than a traditional camera?

Vowles: I chose the iPhone because that’s what I had. I shot some tests, and I was really happy with the results. I figured if I could get big clean images that would be good enough for me. Plus  I’m not a cameraman. There was a moment when I was looking into the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. But the more videos I watched about it the more I realized that I’m too dumb to be using a camera like that. I just needed simple and easy.  Once I got the Moondogs Lens adapter and started using Filmic Pro, the whole process became  more fun. The footage felt a lot more cinematic and less “check out this cat video.”

MMM: Did the movie come out the way you wanted?

Vowles:  I’m pretty happy overall, but I do wish I collaborated with a sound person because a sound person could have ready made the visuals pop. The mix would be much better.  Also, if I were to do this again I would hire a designer because the amount of time I spent trying to bang the robot together was lame.  I’m happy with this design in the end, but it was a long slow process that a designer would have done better and faster.

MMM: What advice could you give someone who is just starting out?

Vowles: Find a project that you are super into and start it.  Get some material together and get it out there.  Post it online and try to build a tiny group of followers. Social media is usually a bummer, but for this project it was amazing.  You have a few people that are into what you’re doing, and it helps your brain to put something out and hear something good about it.

MMM: How can people keep up with your work?

Vowles: I really like the simplicity of Twitter —@Brian_vowles. I can also be found on Facebook and at my YouTube channel.

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“Robot Attack” was chosen by the editors of MobileMovieMaking.com as a “Mobile Movie of the Week.”

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