PLAYGROUNDS
PLAYGROUNDS is a short film that travels back to the early '90s, lost deep in the suburbs, absent parents allow forgotten kids to escape to other worlds where they can't be found.
Genesis
Created out of the desire to connect with memories from the '80s & '90s, where nostalgia reigns supreme, and the adolescent self escapes to other worlds, while unknowingly on the forefront of what we now know as the digital frontier.
The '80s & '90s have always been psychologically associated with the rise of video games, the home personal computer and nerd culture, and many people from that era hold these things close to their hearts, us included, with these things helping to shape how we identify ourselves, and one of the main reasons we felt so strongly about this subject.
We've all experienced going back to the road we grew up on, everything always feels so much smaller, while our reminiscing nostalgic brains always deceive with memories of scale and grand archways, it was early on we decided that the scale of the room needed to be from the perspective of a toy, the plastic toy soldiers serving as our reference point of view, creating an area that felt more expansive, with the whole room feeling more like a fun fair at night, than a traditional bedroom.
Process
Working on this film allowed us to develop new workflows while also applying what we've learned from working in Interactive, Commercial and Hollywood Movie VFX Production, fusing them into a kind of Guerrilla CGI production. The Process video below takes a look behind the scenes, where we documented some of the workflows and process behind the creation of PLAYGROUNDS.