Christian’s Guide to Filmmaking During a Pandemic

Kidnapped and held hostage in a high-speed elevator in a 120-floor building in Shanghai, Aria Wolf (Charlotte Best) has no memory of her past, who her captors are, or what they want from her. Pushed to her limits, she begins to realise she has incredible powers within, kept secret to protect her and her family. Now, unlocking these powers is her only chance to save both herself and her father.

It was Stage 23’s pleasure to work on Ascendant with Antaine Furlong; a boldly creative new director with an appetite for novel, exciting ideas. Ascendant started out as a relatively simple project for Stage 23; around 50 VFX shots for a feature film. That was in 2019. By early 2020, those 50 shots had become over 400 – a mammoth undertaking for our relatively new production company. Then, in February 2020, Covid-19 forced the world into lockdown. Suddenly, the director could only communicate by video call and most of our artists had to work from home. As the world slowed to a halt, in little rooms around the country, or in our office in Fox Studios, our small team of artists persevered. Now, in 2021, Ascendant’s theatrical release is only a month away, and we couldn’t be happier. Stage 23’s Creative Director and co-owner, Christian Debney, reflects on the journey to get this film to the screen.

‘It was a big job, over 400 shots of photorealistic animation and all sorts of particle effects. A very ambitious film,’ says Chris. Chris and co-owner Jonathan Hairman of Stage 23 were involved from the outset, guiding director Antaine through the VFX process from his initial concepts, through to on-set supervision and finally to post-production. ‘Ants a great guy to work with. We worked very closely throughout the whole process.’

An important part of Stage 23’s ethos is personal involvement with the creative process. Creative development isn’t delegated; it stays in the hands of Chris and Jonathan. ‘I single-handedly created about 40 minutes of previs in about six or seven weeks, while our 3D team were building and finalising the assets,’ Chris tells us. This hands-on approach allows Chris and Jonathan to leave their personal mark on every single shot. That’s not to say that the rest of the team don’t have their own input. Stage 23 employs a core team of talented and experienced artists. ‘We recognize that a lot of artists wish to have more creative input in the filmmaking process and that is something we like to encourage. As a company that’s been created by artists, it’s something we respect.’

As development progressed, Antaine realised that VFX were becoming an increasingly important part of the film. ‘We started to realise that the 3D and VFX were a big part of the story. A character in itself almost, even though it’s largely an environment,’ Chris tells us. The environment in question was colossal – the interior of an enormous elevator shaft that took months of building. ‘The scene was very big, complicated, and highly detailed. It was the largest scene I’ve ever worked with.’ The film was to also feature multiple particle effect shots. These would end up being some of the most complex in the entire film. ‘We had some geniuses with Houdini on the team who handled the bigger particle effects. I also created some in 3DS Max with the TyFlow plugin.’

It was in the midst of all this that the pandemic began creeping across the world. As the virus spread and countries went into indefinite lockdown, this challenging task became increasingly imperilled. ‘It was a pretty emotional time for everyone involved. We had no idea what was going to happen,’ Chris reflects. Stage 23 has always prided itself on forward thinking, and had initially set the company up to have many employees working remotely. ‘We think this is a fresh way of doing things in our industry. Covid only proved how right we were. Everyone’s doing it now.’ In addition, 3D renders had been set up to work with cloud-based render service Chaos Cloud. VFX artists weren’t tethered to a cumbersome render farm of multiple powerful computers. Once uploaded to the cloud, 3D shots and assets could be shared and rendered from anywhere. Again, this was a perfect system to adapt to remote working, and the project was able to continue.

Stage 23 operates a small team of talented, independent artists. Chris and Jonathan try to offer a home to senior artists who are tired of working for big companies. ‘We employ a great team. Really the best in their fields. There were only about 12 of us; 2D and 3D.’ The core team remained at the Stage 23 headquarters in Fox Studios, and with so few of them, social distancing was manageable. Co-owner and VFX Supervisor Jonathan stayed at the office to steer the company through the crisis. ‘He was determined to stay with the ship. He wasn’t going to let it go under,’ Chris recalls.

On top of all this, Chris’ partner was several months pregnant. ‘It definitely added to the drama,’ Chris explains. With Chris and most of the team working remotely, they could only put their heads down and get the job done. ‘We just tried to get through it. The director was very understanding. It was just something that was out of our control.’ As it all began to come together, enthusiasm grew and momentum picked up. ‘The render’s that were coming out looked great. Everyone was very positive when we finally saw what we’d spent all this time making.’

Now in February 2021, lockdown in Australia is mostly over. Chris is now a father to a healthy baby daughter, and the release of Ascendant is finally upon us. The pandemic has disrupted cinema across the globe, but with a lot of hard work and a little luck, Ascendant will finally be gracing the big screen in Australia and New Zealand on April 8th. ‘We managed to get through it. It was tough, but we actually learned a lot.’ Filmmaking will most likely be forever changed from the disruption of the last year. Remote working and cloud based workflows were not just a band-aid solution – they have become an integral part of the process. ‘We just had to adapt,’ Chris tells us. ‘It’s what the industry is all about.’

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