Patient 239

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In his spare time, RSC Motion Designer Steve Savalle worked with Rocket Popsicle on the short, “Patient 239”, which won best genre sci-fi and best special effects for the 48 Hour Film Project.

The Rocket Popsicle team, headed by Ryan Beltzer, had only 48 hours to make a movie had only 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and score the movie. The writing team really liked the idea of the lead character’s eyes turning black as a startling visual device to emphasize her “possessed” state. Once the group determined the two scenes in which this effect was necessary, Scott Dodoro (DP) and Savalle agreed it was better to have the lead’s eyes begin black rather than actually changing to black. Savalle added more detail by increasing the glossiness of her eyes and by keeping the white light reflections. After many hours of roto and manual tracking, he perfected the look.

Steve also design the quirky little intro bumper – animating the popsicle in what Steve calls a “cheesy, corny, heavy cartoon style.