Dear Toby Nalbandian and Greg Schmidt.
Damon Island is a film produced here in Sydney in early 2021. It runs just a little over 30 minutes and cost around ~$25,000 which was entirely self financed.
We are just entering into the Sound Design phase and are coming close to completion. I am personally starting to feel very confident in what our team has created and for this reason, I am very excited to share this with you.
I’ve been following Truant Pictures since it’s inception and I am optimistic that you might see something mutually beneficial in what we’ve created. In short, this is a low budget film relying heavily on suspense and tension with a very diverse cast and crew. I believe there is a future for this project as a low budget feature length film, and I hope to be able to share it with you.
Thanks for your time,
James Choe | james@exjupiter.com | 0411963670
Director
Here are the things I hope to cover below.
2. Synopsis/Logline
Damon Island is run down and is on its way to being entirely evacuated. Cassie and Abbie (sisters) are one of the last remaining inhabitants who are on their way to evacuate the island. This become almost impossible when Abbie is kidnapped by a group of bandits. In Cassie’s attempt to rescue her sister, we are also confronted with a supernatural presence and demon possession that looms over Damon Island.
3. STILLS
4. PreProduction Process
I thought it would be interesting to show a bit of the preproduction process prior to production. Long ago, I came to realize that storyboards were incredibly deceptive and did not accurately communicate the flow of a sequence. As a result, I’ve come to rely heavily on very rough animatics - which you will see screenshots from below.
On the one hand, the ANIMATICS served the same purpose as storyboards - in communicating to the team the vision and intention in production; but more importantly, this animatic was crucial in problem solving several factors. Problems in story which were not immediately obvious when reading the script became very visible in the animatic. As a result, prior to production, a total of 4 completely new animatics were made. I would say that the movie was almost written more through animatics than in the script itself. In the process of making the animatic, each location was also created in 3D and as a result, we had a floorplan of the sets. How we would maximise the production design from certain angles; how the actors would move throughout the space; where the camera could be.
Below is some concept art made prior to preproduction. I found concept art less necessary for helping in the actual production of the movie since most things were communicated in the animatic. However the concept art was very useful in motivating and getting the cast and crew excited about the project. For that reason alone, it was invaluable.
5. ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
exJupiter commercial for Frederique Constant in Korea, July 2020.
I run my own studio called exJupiter and we specialize in making commercials for luxury watch brands. Some of my highlights is getting the chance this year to create a video for Louis Vuitton; and last year, having had the chance to have one of our commercials on billboards in Korea.
Prior to running my own agency, my background was in preproduction art (storyboarding and concept art) for commercials and films. Clients include Nutrigrain and Coates Hire.
Thanks to my background in CGI product visualization in my commercial work, I’ve been able to create a large amount of VFX for Damon Island whilst keeping the budget low.
