For Makeup Design grads Harris Haralambakis and Sarah E. Jordan, the past four months have been like a real-life fairytale.
After their intense year at VFS, Harris got hired almost right away by Greek makeup and visual effects house Alahouzos Studio, while Sarah nabbed a job there a month later – and now the pair have been doing makeup for everything from movies, commercials, and theatrical plays to video clips and fashion shows.
How they ended up working together is almost too good to be true. Sarah never expected that visiting Harris in Greece would land her her first professional job.
As Harris describes, “The ‘problem’ [with Sarah's visit] was that I had to spend all day at the shop because it was very, very busy with the [zombie] movie [we were working on] and some other smaller projects. So I asked for permission to bring [Sarah] with me to the shop, and of course she started helping immediately. It was perfect timing for everybody. Out of nowhere, we found ourselves working for an Fx [Effects] Workshop, and they found some extra help in a very busy period. The even better part is that they wanted us there after the movie was done!!! Yeah!!!”
“I could not have planned it any better,” says Sarah. “Who would think that a small trip to see a friend would change your life?”
“Now, we have been working with the Alahouzos brothers for four months, and … [have been] involved with all the different stages of the procedures, including starting and finishing sculptures and moulds, fabricating prosthetic pieces, and using all different kinds of products and materials,” Harris says.
“From the shop… we had to fabricate and apply prosthetic pieces, ventilated hair pieces, and teeth, and of course do many beauty makeup jobs. It was also a great experience that we were co-makeup artists in one of the biggest fashion shows in Greece [for clothing company Lakis Gavalas, with Manos Vynichakis as the Key Makeup Artist], for which we did the makeup for over 20 models in a full day.”
The two recently took a week off to go to London for the I.M.A.T.S. [International Makeup Artist Trade Show], but their story and their work with the company looks as though it’s only just begun.
“I would say that everything is a bit more than perfect so far,” says Harris. “If the craft was an alphabet, I would be between A and B, but still I think it’s a good start.”
For Sarah, it’s the beginning of life in the working world: “At school you have so much help and support to get things done right, but at work you have to kick you own ass. I would not be here without VFS.”
The VFS family has lost one of its own. 21-year-old Andrew Gawley, a graduate of our Acting program from 2007, passed away this week after a long and incredibly brave battle with injuries he sustained in a fire. Andrew was a talented, driven young actor. He was truly loved at VFS, and he won’t soon be forgotten by our faculty, staff, and his fellow graduates. Our thoughts and condolences are with Andrew’s family, friends, and anyone who knew him. See two of Andrew’s performances from when we at VFS were blessed with his presence:
In 2008, inspired by the project’s subject matter, a group of VFS students and grads made Soundscape Vancouver: in essence, both a documentary about a documentary and a self-contained exploration of sound in the city, produced with the blessing of the filmmakers’ respective VFS departments. “The project started out of my own necessity to describe and ‘organize’ all the sound layers around me,” explains director and Film grad Kathrin Krückeberg. “When I came to Vancouver to start at VFS, I was able to see the big differences between cities, not only on the landscape and on the look of the streets and the buildings, [but] also how different they can be on the sound level.” Sound designer Nigel Frayne is one of the experts interviewed in the film “I’m not a musician or a sound designer, but still I am very connected with sound, and I think it’s very important to talk about it from different perspectives.” Although Kathrin had graduated by the time she started directing the Soundscape Vancouver documentary, Sound Design grad Andres Santana came on as part of his final VFS project. “I was looking for my final project to work on – my idea was not to get an animation… [but] something that I can share with other people and they will get something from it. That is what the project means for me.” Before coming to VFS, Andres was a sound engineer in Colombia, where he worked with Digital Design grad Ivan Mosquera. Andres had an interest in sound post-production, and Ivan recommended the school. For Andres, the appeal of the Soundscape project wasn’t just in the technical scope of the original work, but the broader implications as well, including “acoustic contamination, the silence, and also why people use headphones so constantly in the cities.” The famous Gastown Steam Clock is a familiar part of Vancouver's soundscape Kathrin’s back in her native Germany, where she worked on the Wachowski-produced Ninja Assassin, and is now stationed in a Hamburg production house. Soundscape Vancouver is still on her mind. “I’m still working on the Soundscape project, finishing and promoting, and looking for the new location to do the next chapter.” She promises us to keep us posted about the project’s future: festivals and screenings are on the radar. Keep an ear to the ground!
Digital Character Animation grad Bastiaan van Rooden is the kind of guy who doesn’t get hemmed in by borders – he simply creates his own. And people seem to be responding well to that. His VFS film Border is making its way around the web. It’s been featured on Motionographer and xplsv.tv – and now it has its own website. Check it out, or watch the film here:
I live here, front and centre at Sophia Books, a block from the Digital Design campus. The Digital Design program is excited to have Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons teaching “Creating Online Magazines”. The pair is renowned in the industry for their creative work – print (such as Art Direction at Adbusters Magazine), interactive, and even combinations of the two. Most recently, Paul and Michael co-created (with Mia Kirshner and J.B. Mackinnon) the book I live here – sometimes described as a ‘paper documentary’, sometimes as a ‘multimedia journal’, but intriguing to everyone who picks it up. I live here tells personal stories of those in distress in four different countries: Chechnya, Burma, Mexico, and Malawi. Paul and Michael were kind enough to answer a few questions about the genesis of the project, as well as their thoughts on design today. Tell us about the impetus for creating “I live here”. Mia Kirshner approached us at Adbusters Magazine, where we were working as Creative/Art Directors. She proposed a book project that would focus on unseen corners of the world, in an assertive, creative way. Of course, we were interested. Over the course of the next 5 years, we worked very closely to shape the books into the visual/textual hybrid they eventually became. We commissioned artists to produce some amazing graphic novels, and asked a group of well-known writers to contribute to the creative non-fiction text. We were lucky that J.B. Mackinnon, whom we’d worked with at Adbusters, agreed to come on and help keep the stories on track. You’ve both worked in print as well as online environments. Why does one project take a print form, while another becomes an interactive experience?
Sometimes, everyone wins. When Classical Animation grad Pedro Eboli won Channel Frederator’s Quarterly Prize for Cartoon Quality (a Cintiq tablet!) he responded in a way that benefited us all – by giving us a little more of the down-on-his-luck pug from Pug’s Life!
After Judgment, a complex, post-apocalyptic series, is the brainchild of L.A.-based VFS Film grad Michael Davies, Jr. One blogger calls it “easy on the eyes and tough on the brain,” which is about as good a description as we’ve seen.
Well, news came down the pike this month that Davies’ Captain Films has inked an online distribution deal with Koldcast TV – great to see this series getting the attention it so richly deserves!
We first introduced you to Jeff when the concept he pitched for Rainmaker’s Reboot Reborn contest won his team the chance to put together a webcomic based on his vision for rebooting the series. Now Jeff gets to bring life to his visions for video games in a role that allows him to pursue his two passions of writing and game design, evident even in his screenplay for his VFS final project – the love letter to the 8-bit era Would You Like to Continue? He obliged us with a continuation of his post-VFS story. How did you get the job? This is a bit of a long story… Zeros 2 Heroes, a local social media company, got in bed with the National Screenwriting Institute to create a contest/program called ‘playWRITE’, a one-week course on writing for video games. Basically, I applied to NSI with a small package of my work, which was evaluated by numerous video game developers. Of the 300 odd applicants, I, along with nine other lucky writers, was selected to receive the course. By the end, I’d met several representatives from local and national game developers. After a short period of in-person and phone interviews, I eventually received two job offers, one of which I finally accepted. Now I’m a Narrative Designer for Propaganda Games. What does your job entail?
As the short’s Producer, Film grad David Sanderson, described: “Shooting a short feature in six days was always packed and sometimes crazy, but the entire cast and crew were fantastic. VFS’s alumni and students were fantastic, with some already having picked up more work through the keys of their departments.” Among the VFS people involved were instructor Megan Bodaly as Editor, Ben Graeme and Jax Defa as ‘A’ and ‘B’ Camera Operators, Kyle Hagglund as First Assistant Camera, Braden Croft as Art Assistant, Hyacinthe Carle as Lx Swing, and Max Marois as Boom Operator. According to David, one Film Production grad really stood out: “Peter Leung [the film's Production Assistant] in particular really blew peoples’ socks off. Not sure if he knows it yet, but he has a small group of pros now committed to finding him more work.” Congrats to Peter and everyone else on the team!
“I’m happy to have worked on [The League of Super Evil],” she says. “I definitely liked this particular project because the show is very funny! We watched the new episodes that were finished with post-production about every two weeks during dailies, and I really enjoy this show.” She worked as a compositor the whole time she was there. “Compositing is putting together rendered 3D images and doing necessary treatments to achieve the final look – like color correcting, tracking, rotoscoping, finding illegal colours, banding, crashing, or reporting animation or render errors,” she describes. “I found the job very easy since it was work that I have trained myself to do at VFS.” “The experience at Nerd Corps wasn’t a big surprise because the [VFS] 3D program is structured like a studio environment. [Nerd Corps] was very similar in that a lot of your coworkers are in a big room like the Ant Farm, where you all work together.” “It was a good learning experience. First jobs aren’t supposed to be glamorous,” Daphne reasons. “It’s a first kick in the rear so that the next one doesn’t seem to hurt as much.”
Remembering Andrew Gawley
S.G.S.K.O.A.M.
By Its Cover
Soundscape Vancouver
In 1973, a group of composers and academics at Simon Fraser University took to recording and preserving the sonic landscape of Vancouver, as part of the World Soundscape Project. It became known as The Vancouver Soundscape, and in 1996, it was revisited by one of the original project’s guiding forces, Barry Truax.
Border Meets Success
Collaborating on “I live here”
A Pug Returns (Briefly)
Film Grad Inks Web Distro Deal
Colby Johannson isn’t the only VFS grad choosing to make an impression with an episodic web series.
Writing for Film & TV & Video Games
Our Writing students come away with skills that extend far beyond the realms of film and TV. Just ask Writing grad Jeffrey Campbell, who’s now a Narrative Designer for Disney’s Propaganda Games.“Open Mic” Opens Doors for VFS Students and Grads
Filming for Open Mic – a tribute to T. Paul Saint Marie, a giant in Vancouver’s spoken word and slam poetry scene who died suddenly last year – took place in a whirlwind six days on Granville Island, with 60 to 70 people on set every day. The end of the film’s production only meant the start of new projects for many VFS Film Production students and alum.3D Grad on “The League of Super Evil”
Ironically enough, 3D and Foundation grad Daphne Angela De Jesus has no qualms about using the skills she honed at VFS for evil – The League of Super Evil, that is. She spent the fall doing contract work on the show (currently still in production) as a Compositor for Vancouver’s Nerd Corps Entertainment Inc.