Fremont, CA (October 31, 2022)—Filmmaker Patrick Kalyn, an Emmy Award-nominated VFX artist and Visual Effects Society Award-winner, posted a new sci-fi/horror short film using Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve Studio, including Fairlight audio software.
Kalyn, whose credits include Deadpool 2, Blade Runner 2049 and Avatar, created the two-minute short film to dive deeper into the craft of acting, “which in turn, makes me a better director when I’m behind the lens,” he noted. “SpaceX Final Transmission was inspired by the idea of colonizing other planets, making the human race a multiplanetary species.”
In the short, Captain Taylor (Kalyn) transmits one final message from a doomed camp on Mars, warning an incoming ship that peril awaits and hinting at a crew gone mad. “It was the perfect project to put Resolve through its paces,” explained Kalyn, who used the software for editing, grading and visual effects as well as audio post. “I shot it in my living room with a few lights and a green screen since the film is told through a video message sent by Captain Taylor. The short is part of a larger story that I’m currently writing.”
With compositing done in DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fusion page, Kalyn relied on several tools for the VFX environments. The effects continued into audio post, for which Kalyn made use of DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight page.
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“After I worked on the dialogue, it was a matter of layering in sound effects and music from my sound library. I had separate tracks for SFX that happened inside versus outside the observation deck. A heavy low-pass filter on the outside tracks’ EQ made it sound like it’s coming through thick walls,” he explained.
“I mix as I edit sounds by setting the volume of each sound on a per clip basis,” Kalyn continued. “I used the volume sliders for more macro adjustments to the entire track. I love the DIM toggle near the volume slider; it comes in super handy when you’re auditioning sounds, so you don’t shock your ears with loud SFX.”
“The big takeaway from doing this VFX short from end to end inside Resolve is that a filmmaker has everything they need to produce exceptional, high-quality content, all inside one software,” he concluded.
