Description:

For Metanoia we set out to create an abstract, non-narrative story about ego death using environmental design to represent the inner workings of the character's mind. The inspiration for this project stemmed from all of our personal interests and experiences, intertwining into one cohesive idea. Chris' personal experience with ego death and interest in liminal spaces, Amani's personal interest in creating a one shot film using 1917 as reference, as well as the technological innovations which the show The Mandalorian uses, and Felix's interest in the dreamscape genre and anime inspired scenes all contributed towards the project's identity.
Our workflow also made the environment creations simple. In the early stages of creating our animatic we already had our levels made, it was only a matter of texturing, and asset placement, along with lighting for some, and with the capability of photo scanning, a whole room existing in real life became a level within our project. As we learnt moving forward, finding the right software allowed us to cut out long processes like, modelling, lighting and camera tracking whilst also retaining some originality. So instead of producing a full CGI scene manually, we were able to customize properties of photo scans or analyse them, allowing us to focus more on bringing out our creativity and imagination, whilst simplifying the technical aspects. To be clear, Metanoia was not easy to make. Learning things outside of what we were taught just makes the aspect of creating another project much easier. We hope to represent the changing of oneself through a creative process, just like the meaning of our film, exploring the abnormal and abstract may seem unsettling, but at the end it brought out each individual set of creativeness. Whether it be through its technical, narrative, or emotional aspect. Metanoia was a great experiment and we hope as more people see it, they feel inspired to explore and change.