Film_02 : Fish

Pre-Production

It's Christmas 2025, and I'm out in Nanaimo for the holidays.

I was at the beginning of Film_01: Spirit, and was mentally on the hunt for any cool things I could film. I visited my friend Dez for Christmas on his shift working as a sea taxi skipper. City lights across the water, the roar of a motor putting across black salt spray, waves lapping on old wooden docks gave a gritty atmosphere I just had to do SOMETHING with. So I take some photos and begin brainstorming.

It's so tempting to do something with a freaky sea monster, so we just lean right on into it, and start drafting up some story ideas.

Production

I'm on a ferry back to Nanaimo, and it looks like I'm gonna have to scrap my initial idea of using the docks. I meet up with Dez at a Starbucks, grab ourselves some hot beverages, catch up, lay down the lay of the land, take inventory of what we have, and start brainstorming where we can pivot to next. Our biggest asset: Dez's family boat that's parked in their front yard.

We can film with him in the boat.

We put up a screen so I can pull him and the boat from the footage and do something with it.

Don't know what, but something.

We buy shower curtains, a lamp, a painfully expensive mediocre tripod for the camera I'm borrowing, and RUN as we scurry last minute onto the Gabriola Island Ferry.

For the rest of the evening, I play catch up with my friend's family, swap stories, and go for some late-night walks with my buddy where he tells me of some of their seafaring misadventures that are remembered with much wider smiles.

Day of filming!

Starting with a slow morning waking on a couch in yesterday's clothes, we grab a good cup of coffee paired with some oats and start writing the final draft of the story.

We're gonna do something "paper collage style."

We're gonna tell a whole story from only one angle about a sailor running over an anglerfish, fighting the fish, getting stranded at stormy sea, and the fish saving the day.

We set the scene with some honest MacGyvering of two shower curtains stitched together, hung up with rope tied between a tree and a ladder held down with some unpaid sibling labor.

Post

Getting home, I started pulling together some ideas of what I wanted the final result to look like.

And this eventually evolved from paper cutouts to a puppet show. I can build out the stage and more fully utilize my 3D skill set, along with it being a good opportunity to work on some environment and props.

Building out the stage

Making the Angler Fish

I started the anglerfish before I started filming. Using ZBrush on my iPad, we've been whittling away at this fella on the train while commuting to work.