LCIFF - Desert Bloom

Promotional video for the Las Cruces International Film Festival’s (LCIFF) 2021 festival.

Due to COVID, LCIFF had to downsize this year, so the piece actually didn’t end up getting used, but the festival asked for a full branding package based on this initial video for 2022.

Background

Taking place in Southern New Mexico, LCIFF is, in their words, “the showcase of the southwest for independent features and student films.” It very much tries to put forward an image of a true independent film festival with a focus on the craft of filmmaking and the people who practice it.

Focusing on what makes the location unique, the festival’s aim of uplifting young and independent filmmakers, and the fact that LCIFF is typically help each spring, I created a promotional video based around the theme “desert bloom”. As a relatively young and small festival, LCIFF’s first impression is its brand and design, so I set out to create a promo that felt both professional and engaging with a relatively handmade, painterly style. I drew mostly from Southern NM landscape and wildlife photography to highlight the local aspect of the festival while also avoiding more cliché film imagery.

(Very) Rough Storyboard

Style Exploration/Tests

It took a few tries to get the right look for this piece. At first, I played with detailed, pencil-style renderings, but it felt a bit too stiff and overwrought. I eventually landed on a more impressionist painting look, which even still took several iterations and experiments with different Photoshop brush combos to get just right.

“Final” Styleframes

I knew I was going to build out these scenes in After Effects, so these styleframes were more like base scenes to import and lay out, light, rig, etc. in AE.

Process

Most of the landscape shots were pretty straightforward PSD layers to parallax setup in AE. I ended up using some back lighting to make the oranges pop a bit more and to enhance the feeling of being in the mountains at sunrise.

The nopal cactus flower was a little tricker. I used the Bend Layers plugin in order to get each petal to actually bend in Z-space and achieve a faux-3D look. Because so many comps are being referenced back and forth via Bend Layers, it can get a bit heavy for such a relatively simple-looking result.