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Home » Reallusion’s iClone Helps Pull Together Indie Feature “Plato’s Reality Machine”

Reallusion’s iClone Helps Pull Together Indie Feature “Plato’s Reality Machine”

Plato’s Reality Machine – which screens in New York tomorrow, July 1st as part of the Manhattan Film Festival – solves the problem of delivering high-production value on a tight budget by tossing in a combat-style video strategy game to the more tame on-camera confessionals and standard dramatic setups, all of which try to make sense of a group of six young New Yorkers who hookup, argue, love, find another hookup, get tossed out of bars, and so on. Heading up the cast of relative unknowns is Trieste Kelly Dunn, with a number of Indie credits as well as a part in the new Cinemax series Banshee.

(Interested in tickets to the one and only screening in Manhattan on Tuesday, July 1st? Click here!)

Written and directed by Myles Sorensen, the film is a first feature from this experienced, New York-based editor, whose credits include The First 48 and Celebrity Ghost Stories.

With a budget that Sorensen estimates at around $60,000, you don’t script too many live action sequences that could quickly move your budget out of reach. But what if you created a lead actor who obsessed over a first person shooter video game, and show it full screen throughout the movie? Suddenly, you have more options.

The character Red Sophia brings an edge to what at first looks like just another video game.

“I was actually inspired by the early, text-based games, which can have a spooky feeling about them,” says Sorensen. “But I realized that the audience wouldn’t be interested in reading all of that on the screen, so I needed a more proper-looking, animated game.”

Making an animated, 3D game can be done with Autodesk’s Maya or Side Effects’ Houdini, of course, but not if you want to work fast and stay inexpensive. That’s where apps that deliver real-time, Machinima-style animation excel, such as Moviestorm (by Moviestorm Ltd.) and Reallusion’s iClone. While the results are much rougher looking than what you’ll see in the latest Transformer epic, such software finds regular use for previz or wherever that funkier, 8-bit look can work.

Trieste Kelly Dunn’s character may — or may not be — turning up in the video game.

iClone, now in version 5, has been gaining adherents quickly. Like Smith Micro’s Poser, the app has gained a worldwide following, which in turn creates digital models, props and even mo cap sequences, all for sale.

The resulting film looks good. DP Dagmar Weaver-Madsen employed the Arri D21 (the Alexa wasn’t available when production began), with a Canon 7D brought in to handle the low-light scenes. While it might be a micro-budgeted Indie project, Sorensen may be part of a trend as he went wide, pulling in help from a distance: the composer is London, animator in Kentucky, color correction comes out of Oregon, with the final audio mix done in LA.

Still in talks with distributors, Sorensen plans a VOD release, even if standard distribution doesn’t pan out. Plato’s Reality Machine, after all, already has a lot of do-it-yourself cred. It originally began as a Kickstarter campaign, one of the first films to go this route, said the director. “Or we might (distribute) it on our own,” says Sorensen. “I like the idea of building our fan base along with our social media presence.”

Spoken like a true independent.

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

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  1. Reallusion’s iClone Helps Pull Together I... says:
    07/01/2014 at 2:19 AM

    […] Director-writer Myles Sorensen used Reallusion's iClone to create an old-style game within the narrative.  […]

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Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

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Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

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To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

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For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

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To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

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Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

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In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

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Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

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Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

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In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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