The Lost City Of Aztlan

Film Synopsis - In 1921, apprentice archaeologist Thomas Clarke is on an expedition to discover the rumoured Mayan civilisation hidden in the jungles of Guatemala. However, curiosity about riches and artefacts hidden in the temples gets the better of him, and he risks his life to make a name for himself.

The Lost City of Aztlan is a short film made by a team of third-year undergraduate students at Escape Studios in London. We made the entire film, from concept to final, in fourteen weeks as a collaboration between the 3D VFX, and 2D VFX departments.

Film Location 

Location - Our film was shot in the Chistlehurst caves in southeast london. 

Previz

We created a previz to block out the shots and to help us achieve a visual understanding for our film. 

3D Assets 

These are the interior and exterior 3D models we used for our film created by our 3D artists: Mariam Hussein, Adikah Patterson & Sandeep Tuladhar.

Breakdown 

3D breakdown of one of the skulls that are seen in the interior shots created by 3D artist Mariam Hussein.

SpeedTree

Adikah Patterson used Speedtree to create the vegetation for our first and second shots, we also used references online to help us achieve a realistic outcome.

2D Breakdowns

A breakdown of the first shot created by Pierrick Hausler our 2D Artist.

A breakdown of the second shot created by 2D Artist Callum Reeve. 

A breakdown of the sixth shot created our 2D Artist Michael Vodden.

A breakdown of the last shot created by 2D Artist Harry Havens. 

Roto & Keying 

For every VFX heavy shot we had to remove the blue LED tracking markers that were placed on set. 

We created 2 full body rotos for the shots with tracking markers, as the markers covered a large proportion of the screen combined with the CG we split this work evenly amongst the 2D team to get the prep finished asap.

Shot 02 required a combination of Keying and Roto, we provided a toolset for this including pre processing to make this process more efficient and quicker, this was created by our 2D Artists: Harry Havens & Callum Reeve. 

Director & Writer: Mariam Hussein 

Producer: Michael Vodden 

Director of Photography: Pierrick Hausler

Edit & Sound: Michael Vodden

Composer: Ben Morales Frost

Lead 3D Artist: Adikah Patterson

3D Artists: Mariam Hussein, Adikah Patterson & Sandeep Tuladhar

Lead Compositors Harry Havens & Pierrick Hausler

Compositors: Michael Vodden, Daniel Brooks, Pierrick Hausler, Harry Havens, Callum Reeve & Daniel Brooks 

Special Thanks: Jonathan McFall, Allar Kaasik, Callum Walters & Jack Neale.