Habitat - Horror Short Film

As a big fan of cinema, I knew early on I'd like to make movies and visualize ideas, but my career just had not yet connected with that world thus far. Until me and my friend Eurico decided it was time to take on a challenge: Be selected (or better yet, win) the 2023's MotelX Horror Film Festival edition.

The only issue? Applications closed in about 3 weeks from there, and we had no script, not even an idea.

We scrambled to write a script. Simple, but effective. Making use of the constraints we had (no budget, no location, no crew).

Once we'd come up with a script written at a coffee shop inside the mall, we started doing pre-production. Finding location was fairly easy, as an acquaintance offered his place, which felt the vibe we had in mind just perfect.

Once we locked in the dates for shooting, just one saturday, we started looking for a crew. We know we couldn't afford a lot of people, so we had to rely on the kindness and will to help of our friends. Lia Rodrigues came in clutch with her AD skills, and managed to save us from a messy shoot day (which is still was, but could've been way worse!)

For the second of the only two actors in the short, we got Justino, a family friend who had some experience working in portuguese film. For sound, we managed to connect with a new, very talented artist called Nuno Henrique.

We we're set. We knew we wanted a VFX shot. That would be the way to stand out and a way to apply my professional skills on this new project, so I started figuring out compositions, lighting, 3D models.

Using blender and a still frame from the shot, I projection mapped Justino's face onto a 3D model which I sculpted roughly into the shape of his face. Far from the "correct" hollywood workflow, but looked great, even on the big silver screen of Cinema São Jorge.

We were looking for a cosmic horror-like feel, and we ended up testing many approaches. In the end, the final version which you can check here landed on a more grounded, more brutalist style.

In the end, we got selected as finalists, and that was exactly the goal we set out to achieve. We were very happy with out work and were very excited for future projects with this new knowledge and confidence we'd gotten.