TDuring the Imagine Film Festival, a very special film will premiere. It’s about A Final Transmission, a no-budget animated film made with technology normally used for games. If you can’t see the film this week, you can still see it in December.
A Final Transmission is a sci-fi film in which the last two surviving astronauts on their space station are attacked by a vicious alien species. The astronauts try to escape, only to discover a dark and disturbing truth, and the very survival of humanity is at stake. In order for at least one to survive, a bitter sacrifice must be made.
Movie with performance capture
The film was made by Kelly Klingenberg, previously the 2DOC Only with Jenever made. She made this project in collaboration with filmmakers and students from the Breda University of Applied Sciences, without a budget. But perhaps even more special is that performance capture technology has been used, which, according to Klingenberg, rarely happens in the Dutch film industry.
Performance capture – or motion capture – is often used in games, but also for large productions such as Avatar and The Planet of the Apes. In other words, this often requires a large budget. The technology works like this: actors get a suit with motion sensors, after which they act out the scenes. The data from the sensors is then converted into hyper-realistic 3D animations.
“None of us have ever made a film like this before,” said Klingenberg. “The processes of games development and conventional filmmaking are different and we had to find a way to develop a film remotely and without any funding at all. In all those months we only saw each other physically once and that was during the filming. The actual shooting took less than two hours, but that’s when the real work started.”
Behind the scenes and premiere
The film itself will premiere on November 1 at 7:15 PM during the Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam. For those who miss it, there will be another screening later this year, namely during the It’s The End Of The World As We Know It Film Festival in Amsterdam on December 17.
But if you are especially curious about how this film was made, you can watch it from the comfort of your home. A behind the scenes video was made, which was shared on Vimeo.