Matthew Benson
Technical Director
Introduction
Students at Savannah College of Art and Design are required to create a senior thesis before graduating. Students Majoring in Visual Effects usually pick something related to their focus (e.g. shading or lighting). Myself along with 7 other students decided that rather than create separate projects we could collaborate with an animation student and all work together to create a short film that would showcase all of our talents. NO-A was the result of that effort.
Role
NO-A provided a great opportunity to see a project through from early story pitches to final frames. Although I was involved early on with the story and organization of the film, as well as coordinating rendering efforts in the later stages of the film, my primary role was being the FX lead. Over the course of 20 weeks, I performed a variety of tasks: from ensuring that our FX pipeline worked well with the other departments, to creating easy to use rigs (such as the gun shot rig) that we could easily propagate to many shots throughout the film, to assigning 1-off shots to the other FX artists we had working on the film.
Reception
For a Student Project, I couldn't be happier with the reception it received. It became a Vimeo Staff Pick within a week of it being uploaded, and quickly received over a million views on YouTube. It was an Official Selection at the Rain Dance Film Festival, and Winner of a Red Dot award for sound design.
