“Atormentada” (“Tormented”) is going 3D

The short film was originally planned to be in Stereo. However, many things stopped us from it.

But now, the film is being reworked to be what it was meant to be. More about that on The DO-Cave team blog (our studio blog).

And the winner is… "Atormentada"

The Ícaro film and video Festival, in its 12° edition was held in Guatemala, and its the most important and most prestigious festival in Central America. El Salvador submitted 59 works into different categories, and only two managed to win the great prize. One of them is our short film “Atormentada” (“Tormented”), selected by the jury as the Best Animation in the contest.

Unfortunately none of team members was able to travel to Guatemala. However, the statue was received by the Ambassador of El Salvador: Silvio Mora Mora, who was there representing the director.

In the animation category there were 4 short films from Costa Rica, 3 from El Salvador, 2 from Guatemala, and 1 from Nicaragua.

The jury nominated 3 finalists: 2 shorts from Costa Rica and ours, selecting “Atormentada” as the winner.

We’reextremely proud of our work and also happy for this victory.

The project was made possible thanks to the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation, Escuela de Comunicaciones Mónica Herrera, Pro-Art and all the members of the production team.

So now… to celebrate!!

For more info about the Icaro Film Festival click here. The winners list can be found here (we need to clarify that Giovanni Fabietti is not the director of "Atormentada"; that’s been a mistake made by the organizers of the Festival, who have been notified but who haven’t fixed the issue yet; the name of the director is Sergio Rosa, as can be seen on the image above).

Tormented travels to Guatemala and opening night

This Saturday Cinepolis El Salvador held a private screening organized by Festival Icaro 2009, a film festival that takes place in Guatemala this November.

The films screened in that event are the ones selected to represent El Salvador in the Festival in November. The good news is that our film “Tormented” was selected as one of the 4 animated films that will be screened during the festival.

You can find a link to the newspaper announcing this on the link below:

Presentan la muestra oficial del Ícaro 2009

Since a lot of you may not understand spanish, I took the time to make a transcript in english:

Festival Icaro El Salvador 2009 was held in Cinepolis. The best productions made in El Salvador were carefuly selected by the international jury conformed by Ana Xóchitl Alarcón, produced and educator; Juan Grillo, movie critic, and Guillermo Escalón, filmmaker and director of photography.

The films that will compete against those from the rest of Central America and the rest of the world in the Festival Icaro XII are varied. In the documentary category you can find "No te aguebes," by Benjamín Romero; "Acaxual," by Julio López and David Gallardo; "La Ciudad, la traición y la fe," by José Angel Mejía; "Flor de piedra Lily," by Marvin Aguilar and "Contaminería," by Juan Abrego.

In the long documentaries category, the films selected are "Llevarte al mar," by Jorge Dalton, and "colima," by Oscar Orellana. The featured projects in the short films category are "Bebé a primera vista," by Francisco Cáceres and "Parapsi," by Miguel Villafuerte.

Even if the feature films category received no entries, the animation category includes films like "Historia de un dolar," by Erick Alexander Renderos; "Cuidado al volar piscuchas," by Silvia Callejas; "Tough time for a tortoise," by Héctor Palacios, and "Atormentada" by Sergio Rosa.

In the "experiments" category you can find "Imágenes contemplativas I y II," by Alexia Miranda; "T.A.C. Trastorno Amoroso Compulsivo" and "Inclusión juvenil en el país de la salvación," by Sarbelio Henriquez.

Finally, in the news reportage category the selected projects are "Edwin, niñez sin rostro," by José Angel Mejía and "Angie y Kelly; mucho amor, poca comida," by Ernesto Villalobos.

Now the second thing I’d like to talk to you about. We finished this movie four months ago, and since then many have been wondering when they will be able to see the movie. Well, I just got an email anouncing that the opening night will be on October 22 2009 in Cinemark La Gran Vía.

This will be a closed event, obviously, reserved for the filmmakers, actors and crews of the different films. However, the movie will be available to the public the next day, October 23, so if you live in El Salvador (or happen to be in the country during that date) make sure to go to Cinemark La Gran Vía and grab a ticket.

We’re more than excited. Not only because this will be the first time one of our movies will be screened on the silver screen, but also because “Tormented” is the first 3d animated movie, made in El Salvador, screened on the silver screen

“Animados made in El Salvador”

That’s the title of a note recently published on the local digital newspaper “El Faro.” The whole thing is a video interview held by Diego Murcia. You can watch the video here (spanish only).

Dark eyes upon us, AKA no news for today

A lot of people are wondering when the film is going to hit the theaters. Unfortunately we don’t have that information yet since we’re waiting for the movie theater to provide the definitive date.

We hope it will be soon, as we really want people to see what we’ve done.

“Tormented” in the news

Just because the film is finished doesn’t mean we don’t have anything else to share!

Last week a local newspaper made a coverage on our short film. At first I thought this would be one of the “small side news that get posted somewhere,” but it turned out to be a full-page coverage (and also the main page on the “entertainment news”).

Here’s a scan of the newspaper page so that you can take a look. It’s in spanish but at least you get to see the page

A transcript in english is found below. Keep in mind this is not a word-by-word translation but rather an english “interpretation” of the article:

The producers of the short film expect the film to be accepted in the festival "Animadrid" in Spain, as well as the "Icaro film festival" in Guatemala.

The production house DO Studio, under the direction of Sergio Rosa have made an CG animated horror short film titled "Atormentada," with the participation of the Film and TV workshop from the school Monica Herrera. Around 2 months ago they finished the horror film that runs for 9 minutes. It’s about a woman named Mariana, who is trapped inside a haunted house, and who tries to get out over and over against all odds.

In order to bring the characters to life, they used 2 different software packages, Maya and Cinema4D. The work is time consuming but it’s worth it once you get to see the result. "This is the second animated short film we’ve made. I’ve always been keen on movies and visual effects. The project was made with 6 other people and with the support of a few private entities" said the director.

Producing films in El Salvador is a real challenge, and the director is very aware of that. "Getting the funding for the cinematographic projects is very difficult here, but I hope things will change as more people create more and more films."

The film will open by the end of this month, but the place and date haven’t been set yet. In the meantime movie fanatics can watch the movie trailer at http://tormentedfilm.worldpress.com

By René Quintanilla, Diario El Mundo

Tormented pre-release webatrical trailer

Link to the trailer on Vimeo

We’re two weeks (or so) away from the opening night, so we decided to raise the expectations by creating a new webatrical trailer.

Unlike the previous (teaser) trailer, this one shows you a little more about the film, the story and everything else. So far, people have liked what we’ve done here, and hopefully they will also like the complete film.

Remember, if you live in El Salvador, this short film (and a handful more) will open in nearly two weeks.

So, what’s next for “Tormented”?

We finished production approximately 2 months ago. The film workshop held a screening of the 6 projects on the 30th of June, so we got the chance to see what all the projects look like.

Regarding our film, there were some minor details that had to be fixed (the monitor belonging to the guys doing the final editing was not correctly calibrated, causing the film to look too dark… needless to say the final product included some “tweaking” on the levels and that resulted on a washed-out image when you watched it on the projector).

Luckily the film is fixed now, and everything looks and feels fine (as fine as possible, considering we barely finished on time).

It turned out “Tormented” was the shorter short film of all, running for only 9 minutes, while the others ran for 20+ minutes, and yet it was the one that took the more to produce. Not strange at all if you consider “Tormented” was the only animated short film of the workshop.

So, what’s next? We’re already working on the “Director’s Cut.” We’re pretty much going back to the film, fixing everything that needs to be fixed in both the animation and storytelling realm. The whole thing will be a little longer, although we don’t need to add another 9 minutes just to tell the story.

Some of the renders don’t look as good as they should either, so we’re fixing those. Then there’s the audio, and also the deleted scenes. Since we had to finish on time, one way or another, we decided to remove some of the scenes. Unfortunately, the story was affected by this decision but it was either finish on time or taking longer to produce it (which was a big no-no).

In the end the film wasn’t 100% what we expected but at least we DID finish on time, and that was more important that having the coolest movie ever but that nobody will ever watch because it was never finished.

And that’s where the Director’s Cut comes in. We will be finishing this one by late October, but we won’t be releasing it till July the 1st 2010 as right now the school has the distribution rights.

In the meantime, we’re already working on our next project (well, more like “planning the next project” than actually DOING it…). More on that when we have something to share

Wikipedia entry

I just wanted to let you all know about our Wikipedia page. We’re currently working on setting up an IMDB page as well.

Atormentada featured on the Renderosity front page

This week, our short film is being featured on the Renderosity Front Page. Interview/article by Ricky Grove. You can read the full article by clicking the image below:

Atormentada is El Salvador’s:
-first professionally made 3D animated short film
-the first non-kids-oriented animated short film (the original idea was to have a film that is not considered a kids movie)
-the first one to use semi-realistic characters
-the first one eye-candy enough to be in par with productions being made elsewhere in the world