Directed and Produced by Double Negative’s former Artist: Luan Nguyen, Cố Du _ Essence from the Past is a video sequence that revives part of the daily life of the aristocracy in Vietnam under Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945). This is an experimental individual project of him, produced entirely with the purpose of recapturing the spiritual legacy that have been broken and lost over time as well as the historical changes of the nation. CG Record is honored to speak with the author to understand how he brought his long experience while directly involved in the production of leading Hollywood movies and his dedication to making films, priceless cultural values have been fractured, eroded over time as well as the historical fluctuations of the nation.
- Please tell us a little about yourself and the Short Film: Co Du. What ideas led you to produce a short cultural film?
I started my CG career as a 3D generalist 13 years ago in Singapore. In 2010, I joined post production industry and since then, I have been working as a concept/matte painting/3D environment artist for feature films included Harry Potter and Deadly Hollows 2, The Hunger Games 2 & 3, Fast & Furious 6, Godzilla, Thor2 & 3, Alien: Covenant, Tomb Raider (2018)…I am also a part time lecturer doing short course training for digital matte painting. After many years working in different countries and also traveling the world, in mid 2018, I decided to return to my home country, Vietnam, to start a new chapter in my life.
While struggling with the transition and changes, I suddenly had the intention of fulfilling my long-held desire to make a short film set in the context of old Vietnam in the pre-French colonial period, before the western culture made a tremendous impact on its traditional society in late 19th century. After the script was completed, I realized that with such a scale of the story, I could not bear the production costs myself. So, I decided to downsize the project, change the content, only shoot certain segments to make a video sequence, and that was how I came up with Co Du: The Essence From The Past.
Co Du is a short cultural video sequence that revives part of the daily life of the aristocracy in Vietnam in Nguyen dynasty era (1802-1945). I can say this is an experimental individual project, produced with all my deep love and obsession with the spiritual legacy that have been broken and lost over time as well as the historical changes of my homeland
- Why did you choose the context of the Nguyen Dynasty? Why is it the life of the aristocracy? What beauty would you love to describe?
Nguyen dynasty or the last imperial rule in Vietnam had almost four hundred years of volatile history. This is the last stage of development of Vietnamese indigenous culture, receiving, reforming and multi-dimensionally influencing with other cultures in the process of expanding the territory to the south. That era is also not too far away from the one we live in right now. There are still many documents, records and especially countless numbers of existing paintings, photos and relics around, all of them are helpful in the process of recreating the era as much authentically as possible.
Aristocrats played a major part in creating and forming cultural norms, their lifestyles over time have greatly influenced every aspect of the ordinary life. The aristocracy heritage is considered a high point in a society that later generations have always admired. I have obsessed with the delicate sculptures carving on the wooden pillars and beams inside old mansions, with the elaborate embroidered patterns on ceremony costumes, or even with the colorful but well blended layers of their daily wearing. Those things keep inspiring me to go further on my study about our traditional culture and reflexing them through my artworks, especially this film, is the way I chose to awaken our national identity which has been forgotten for a long time.
- One of the most memorable impression when watching the movies is how you save every second to bring viewers back to the past that not even the professional filmmakers in Vietnam can do! Perhaps it is due to the experience of working with blockbusters from Hollywood. Please share more about how you use your experience in producing this short film.
One of the advantage of being a vfx artist is the ability to observe the world. We are responsible for creating seamless effects and merging them together with shooting footages in the way that the audience cannot distinguish which one is computer-generated. In order to do so, it is necessary to take countless hours for observing real-life phenomena and physical properties. You can also do it anytime of the day by observing your surroundings and it will gradually become a habit of accumulating knowledge of how reality should be in order to convince the viewers that what they see on screen are really existed.
For many years now in filming industry, there is a strong bond between production companies and vfx houses for CG heavy shows. Despite the fact that I have worked on more than thirty movies and TV series, each project had its own endeavor. It is the same for Co Du. The only two applicable things from what I did previously are the workflow and the methods of solving problems. “Bringing viewers back to the past” does not completely depend on the prior experiences I learned in production but on “how much I understand the past”.
- Tell us about the difficulties while producing this short film.
The biggest difficulty is funding. Since this is an independent, non-commercial project, I did not have any sponsorship or financial support. The whole production cost was on my own. The process was also headache because there is no manufacturer in Vietnam providing props, costumes and filming sets for such kind of film. So, we had to use real antiques for setting and film in different historical places which are quite far away from each other. There are also many restrictions when shooting inside heritage sites. You cannot freely place your camera wherever you like to, so we had a lot of limitations in choosing camera angles and movements. Besides, most of historical monuments in Vietnam were devastated or heavily damaged. Numbers of them were improperly restored with incompatible substitute materials, causing distortion on both facade and structure and losing the ancient charming aspect of the entire complex. Therefore, I have no other choices but to fix or completely rebuild them in post-production to return their original appearances.
- You are always known as a world-class artist. Please share a few techniques you applied to the movie
- When you are a technical expert, you will benefit from your own technology but at the same time you have to balance to not be too abusive technically. In this short film is the delicate harmony, can you share how do you get done with a great result?
- What is the meaning of this movie to you? If you had a next project what would it be?
The amount of CG work is also another great concern. Almost every single shot in the film has CG involved, some of them are even full CG. Unfortunately, I am the only vfx artist in the entire team so that all of the work fell on my shoulders. I had to carefully consider how far that I want this project to go and customize my workflows accordingly in order not to overkill myself. Otherwise, it would take forever to finish.
As you can see, almost all the vfx work in this short film are set extension and environment creation. There are two types of extension here: replacing green-screens with digital backgrounds and adding additional elements in an existing scene to enhance it or to fix inappropriate parts in the context. Each shot has its own way of approaching, depending on the scenario itself. For 2D matte painting, I used Photoshop for photo bashing and manipulating, camera projections were set up in Nuke. I also built 3D assets in Maya, with the help from Mari for texturing. Big plants were generated and animated in Speedtree and all the small greeneries were created in Maya. All the 3D renderings were done with V-ray and comped inside Nuke. It was also my first time playing every role in the pipeline, I even tried certain jobs that I have never done before such as rotoscoping, cleanup and fx simulations.
I always remind myself not to be too dependent on technology while working, not only in this film but also in other projects. At the end of the days, computer soft wares can only provide you tools to do your work. It is you yourself, not the computer that decides the final result. So, when starting this project, I tried to minimize the use of CGI, only apply when absolutely necessary. I decided to shoot on real locations as much as possible, though I knew it would cost much more than filming in a studio with full of green-screen setting. It not only helped create the ambience for the acting but also later became a benchmark for the CGI quality to be judged.
This short film means a lot to me. By challenging myself both personally and professionally with new roles: producer and director, I really had a chance to do different things, to overcome new obstacles, to explore different areas that I haven’t been to and most importantly, to find out other potentials in me. It is really a memorable milestone in my life.
For the time being, I definitely stick with the vfx industry. Meanwhile, I am still looking for funding to start my feature film.