Production
In the 2016 indie project "Compass of Imagination," the role of Director of Photography was undertaken to oversee color grading, lighting, and set design for a co-written TV series pitch aimed at Netflix. The project, co-created and directed by Louis 'Yosh' Bolivar, immersed itself in the realms of a Spielberg-class 80s magic-style fantasy thriller short, as portrayed in the gallery. The overall production time was about 3 months of planning, a week to shoot, and about 18 months on post and visual effects.
This comprehensive depiction of the project includes exploration of the color palette, behind-the-scenes production photos, work-in-progress CG, and a link to the screenplay. The gallery encompasses props, HDRI reflection probes utilized for the compass and composition, before-and-after images demonstrating raw versus final stages (if applicable), an explanation of the production process, a map of the Compass world, and photographs showcasing the integration of compasses into the overall work. In terms of written material, besides the graphic novel and initial screenplay, there's actually three seasons worth of story. But due to time and budget constraints, the web comic served as a prequel and preview of what's to come.
Scene 2: BARF (ROUGH CUT)
The following was a scene after the trailer. We attempted to produce the first episode but stopped short due to complications with scheduling and budget. The scene was shot in a day and took a few weeks to plan for. Location scouting and prop hunting were the most time consuming. Starring Brandon Quan as Max and Joey Sinko as The Sailor.
It was supposed to take place in the middle of the ocean among islands and at some point will need to have some elements composited out, other in, and probably replace the compass itself since it doesn't match the one from our trailer. But at least you get to see the next scene and where things were headed.
For the full episode, if you're curious, check out the Episode One Screenplay.
Pre-Production
While currently on pause, the collective experience of working on this project proved enjoyable and insightful. Due to an overwhelming passion for games, it was put on hold in the short term with the aspiration to potentially assume the role of showrunner in the future, should the opportunity arise. It was originally conceived when Louis 'Yosh' Bolivar attempted a storyboard animatic for Dreamworks. While it wasn't accepted, it inspired us to push it further into a full blown epic.
Characters & Concepts
A packet was made as part of the pitch for the project. Here you can see examples of our world map and some of our storyboard roughs with the goal of making it into a series for Netflix. The Character bios were written and composed by Louis 'Yosh' Bolivar.
Novel
We also wrote a 300 page novel for the project, unpublished. Due to scheduling conflicts, and the soul searching desire to focus on games, we had to hit pause on this. While we plan to publish it someday, most efforts in this direction went toward the comic, since it would allow us to share the full vision of the story without worrying about budget. Here you'll see some of the covers for the novel and some promotional material created for the project. Most of our work was in the graphic design layout while the illustrations were done by various artists we hired for marketing and promotion.
Admittedly, had we gone in this direction, we felt the project could've been a huge hit. All of the work for this had been widely well received. Ultimately we had to make a tough choice. Move forward to become a showrunner or focus on games.
We chose games.