Sault boys win American Pixel Academy Platinum Award

NEWS RELEASE

LEE CHAMBERS

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Sault boys win American Pixel Academy Platinum Award

Book and movie trailer wins international computer effects award

RennerVFX was recently honoured with a Platinum Pixie Award by the American Pixel Academy for their Hollywood-style cinematic teaser trailer for the novel and planned movie of The Pineville Heist.

Currently in the financing stages for big screen treatment with Twilight Saga star Booboo Stewart, The Pineville Heist thriller is also a bestselling eBook, audiobook and paperback.

Writer and director Lee Chambers and screenwriter Todd Gordon (both from the Sault) teamed up with RennerVFX in Thunder Bay to produce a 30-second spot that is 95 percent computer generated.

This creative collaboration took a staggering two and half months and has now won the team the Best Use of Visual Effects.

The American Pixel Academy honors outstanding creativity in motion graphics, effects and animation.

Chambers explains the reason for the length of time for development.

"The realism of each shot is near perfect and there are over 300 standalone pieces in this trailer with each one having to be meticulously built up, layer upon layer."

To further explain the process of the computer generation involved in producing the trailer, VFX guru George Renner explains: “We looked at numerous real school hallways before crafting up our virtual environment using 3D Studio Max, Syntheyes and Fusion to create over a thousand frames. Even after six weeks of building the framework, rendering alone took over three weeks and multiple computers to complete the final version. The rendering process happens one frame at a time, sometimes taking over 2 hours to render each one out.”

Chambers commissioned Fabio Acri, an award-winning musician to compose music specifically for the trailer from his studios in London, England, while Dan Gold in Los Angeles provided the flawless voiceover.

The only ‘real’ element in the spot was Canadian actor Tanner Drabick who appears in the virtual world as the on-screen bad guy.

Chambers advises: "Animating an actor as well would have doubled the time it took to produce the trailer. Cinematographer Kevin Fratpietro shot that particular scene using a Red Camera, and then Renner VFX seamlessly incorporated this single live-action element into the trailer.”

The Pineville Heist

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