American Cinematographer - February 2010 - 16

Clockwise from top left: Smit demonstrates the helmet-cam rig he used to capture a first-person perspective; created in 3ds Max, this gunship proved to be one of Smit’s biggest visual-effects challenges; the director's concept art for a soldier; two soldiers as they appear in the short. sound fills the air, and the soldiers double over in pain. The scientist escapes out the vehicle’s back door and runs down the street; suddenly, two rocket-propelled missiles tear through the sky and obliterate a house at the end of the block. A gunship descends, spewing hot lead into the street. The scientist ducks into an empty house, but not before a soldier tags him with a bullet. “For the running scenes, we had the HC1 mounted to a stabilizer,” says Smit. “It was a simple system, a combination of metal rods and weights, that we built in a couple of hours. It looks like a ‘T’; I just mounted the camera to the top of the horizontal bar, and I’d hold [the stabilizer] out in front of me. That restricted me to one arm [to use in frame], but it gave the running shots a bit more steadiness.” The gunship, created in 3ds Max, 16 February 2010 proved to be one of the most challenging effects elements. “The majority of the effects are 2-D, because I’m not so skilled in character animation or making 3-D models, although I knew specific effects would call for that,” says Smit. He learned to use the software by taking advantage of Internet tutorials and instructional books; in the latter category, Deconstructing the Elements With 3ds Max, by Pete Draper, was especially helpful. “I researched the artists that inspired me and just kept practicing,” says Smit. The only other element of What’s in the Box? that utilized a 3-D model is a woodshed that the scientist uses for shelter before it’s blown open by the soldiers. Smit took digital stills of a real woodshed and built its crumbling counterpart in 3ds Max. Using the SR5, he shot the smoke and dust elements against a greenscreen American Cinematographer set up in his back yard. Visual-effects composites and editing were then performed in After Effects. For post work, Smit downscaled the 1920x1080 footage to 960x450 to “put less strain on my computer.” After it was uploaded to YouTube, What’s in the Box? soon topped 1 million views, and Smit has since received offers to expand the project into a feature. In the meantime, though, he’s busy keeping up with viewers’ demands for more, creating puzzles to unlock new content on the film’s Web site, www.whatsinthe box.nl. As for the master’s degree in nanoscience, he says, “The things I want to do in the future are not related to physics at all. The knowledge I’ve gained at university helps me think about things and understand them better, and that definitely helps me as a director.” ●

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American Cinematographer - February 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2010