Danse Macabre is an animation short film by director Hisko Hulsing and tells us the story about an apocalyptic nightmare of war and destruction. The film was based on the 2nd movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’ 10th symphony and is a collaboration with studios in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Hungary, all working on different pipeline tasks. Next to director, Hisko is also a painter. Thanks to this profession, Hisko has handmade paintings for all shots in the film, both for concepting and the final product.

After all YouTube and student projects, this might just be the first real short film I got my hands on. However, I did not animate this time. During my internship at Skerm West, along with a fellow student/intern, I was allowed to work on the compositing for the film. Therefore, this was not only my first real short film, it was additionally my first project where I was a compositer. Where I usually do my compositing work in After Effects, that is not a standard tool for compositing in the film industry. That is why I got my hands on Blackmagic Design’s Fusion. I was familiar with working with node-based tools since the start of my digital arts curriculum. Nevertheless, this was a completely new experience and has increased my interest in becoming a compositing artist as well.

Note: I have no screen recordings of the shots I worked on, but to give you an impression what I have done, watch the video below, explained by Stijn Calis, the founder of Skerm West.