Entrevista con Sebastian LABAN

Hello Everybody, I'm sorry for the late, I needed time to rest so I have taken a week like vacations watching movies, walking in the supermarket, playing whit my dog, and the best has been to spend time with my girl.

In this Demoreel from Sebastien LABAN we can see the animation of the machines and the characters, how are the work behind the scene, I think that this show us the 3d world like it is.



Well I give to you the Interview with Sebastian LABAN, this let to us to know an exelent CG Artist and their work, enjoy it!.

1.- At first of all i'm glad to talk to you and i'm thankful with you because you give us this time and to be patient to make this interview, i will try to be brief and that all we enjoy this?

Well I’m really happy to make my first interview with you! Conversations over msn are quite short, I’ll take some time to answer all of your question! :o)

2.- How did begin your liking for the animation and special effects, and when did you start in this profession?

I’ve always been interested in movie making. I just love how you can in 1 or 2 hours tell a complete story, and go from emotions to emotions, or go from the birth of a character to its last days… or even futher. And there is so many ways to tell story.

So when I was a kid, I was writing my own stories with a good and a bad guy, drawing some storyboards of potential film I would love to shoot. But since I was very young, and I didn’t have the money to make those kind of film (I was a kid, so lots of them had a lots of action on it, with explosions, gunshots, etc)

The easiest & cheapest way to tell a story, other that drawing a comic, was creating a world entirely in 3D. This way, I was able to rent (copy/paste) a helicopter with no cost, place the camera wherever you what (without dollies), blow up an entire home (and do it as many time as possible until I have the correct take).

3.- Do you have some specific goal or objective that you want to reach?

I have 2 goals that I don’t know how I want to rank them. Live Director or Director of Photography.

On one hand, I love Lighting & Composition, I have a camcorder, and I love playing with it, finding the proper yet original shot, shooting something a certain way to make it more intense, or attractive. I enjoy finding the things that make a shot a good and appealing shot. It’s amazing the infinite ambiances you can create by keeping your camera still and only play with you lighting rig, or vice and versa!

On the other hand, I would love to be a (live) Director. Why not CG? … I love actors. I often watch movie that I don’t really like but as long as the actor speaks to me, that saves almost the film for me. Human expressions are something so interesting, so complex, so unique and so subtle that I don’t feel like it’s possible yet to be portrayed with on CG films without losing the subtleties. You can fake subtleties, but the real complexities are lost. But of course, it works like magic for CG cartoon characters. :-)

4.- How much difficult it have been for you to learn the use of your work tools?

I don’t feel like it has been difficult. As long as you love doing what you’re doing, it was learning while I was playing, a win-win! I’ve been doing computer graphic imagery for 6 years now. I’ve started with small project like testing shader on a sphere, mixing with a background, then I tried to lit the scene with shadows, fill lights, gobos so that it would make a much interesting image whatsoever. Then it naturally came to me ‘why not make an original and coherent composition’. When I needed to accomplished a certain technique, I would go to the internet, watch a specific movie or read interviews to find the proper knowledge I was looking for to go from one step to another.

As long as you’re not giving up on the first wall you’re gonna be faced with, that you’re fighting with enthusiasm your way to avoid or break that obstacle, I believe, you’re good to go!

5.- What would you like to be instead of be CG Artist?

Director of Photography or (live) Director. I don’t consider myself as a CG Artist. I do live photography, I do live video and I recently finished my first professional video clip as both Director and DP, with a real actress/model, real lighting rig, and an real camera. That was one of the best experience of my life! It was so exiting to be in charge of all that, focusing on the character I have shooting, working without the use of the undo button, finding the solution on the spot! … but most of all, when you have your character on the camera, when you’re playing with her or him, asking her to do certain move, or that she/he do something totally unplanned and that works… that’s when you ‘really’ love your job! It’s always about your characters!

6.- About your short film "Running Away" what kind of difficulties you had in the process and how did you solve it?

For a long time I wanted to create a full animated short film. I wanted it so much! So when I had the serious opportunity as a school project to make a short film, I tried to plan every thing during the pre-production. That was hard not to jump directly into the production to see what the result would look like. So the pressure was growing inside me but I didn’t want to rush things and the motivation was held this way.

That was very hard in the beginning. As I went deeper into “Running Away”, there were a lot of technical troubles that popped up to my head, a lot of problems I needed to go through : how am I going to make all the special effects, what about the animation I’ve never animated a character. What about that shot there will be so many elements to take care of.

With the use of storyboard, I tested multiple ways to express the same thing, and I validated the one that was do-able. :-)

7.- What kind of improvements do you wait for "Meet Meline" with respect to "Running Away" and "The release"?

As for “Running Away” or “The Release”, I’m trying to make a ride with every movie I make. What I mean by a ride is that you, the audience, will never want to go from one sequence to another because you are bored by that shot, or you’re thinking that sequence is too long etc. I’m trying to make a complete shortfilm that works as a whole. A great example that illustrate this feeling is that for every Steven Spielberg films I come across the middle of the diffusion on TV, or I want to watch an extract, I always end up watching the full movie.

I want people to see this movie not as a technical shortfilm, but as a human experience.

8.- "Meet Meline" looks promising, what would you like to get with this short film?

What we’re trying to get with “Meet Meline”, or should I say with Meline herself, is to focus on the emotions a girl of her age is having. A kid playing, a kid moving, a kid looking, a kid thinking is something that can’t leave you indifferent. It’s so full of life, of joy, it’s like a magic box that lives on its own. Even when they are not happy, or that something is bothering them, a kid is so fascinating to look at! They are quick, eager, lively; They are very expressive, you can literally watch them live or think. That’s what we’re trying to create here.

9.- Are you working in another CG project at the same time of "Meet Meline"?

No there is no other CG project in the making, but I like to say that even when I’m not working on something specific, I’m learning for the next project, or the project after. I really like this quote from Walt Disney : “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

… but as for a live action film, that’s something else :-)

And Virginie is currently finishing “Alone in The Dark” a NextGen Video Game for XBOX360 and Playstation 3. She is responsible for all the 3D Sets. The game will be complete for then beginning of June, so she is working a lot right now! :-)

10.- How Virginie GOYONS influences your personal life and how she do it in your work aside from helping you with modeling and texturing of "Meet Meline"?

Virginie is not helping me with the modeling and the texturing process, she is doing it completely on her own, and that’s a lot of work. We’re putting a lot of detail into every shots of “Meet Meline” and Virginie is doing an incredible work with that as she is putting a lot of effort trying to put life on every single objects. Her father, a big fan of vintage cars, has an old garage with a lot of tools and weird machines. She took multiple pictures of all that mess. We also went in the country, visited farms with old barns to get inspired.

We also worked together as we were making the script or making the storyboard. We were throwing ideas, miming actions while writing the story. That was a very funny and interesting part! We also help each other to see our work from another point of view as we go deeper and deeper in the project. We share a lot, try to see things from another point of view, we propose an idea, then give our opinion, validate and forget about it, then work on the next shot. We give each other a fresh new look.

11.- How do you visualize the FX industry in a near future in France?

I feel like the FX Industry is very stable in France. It’s not going as fast as it’s happens in the united States for instance. A lot of thing are going on in France, but nothing is really creating a huge jump. It takes times, Pixar or ILM wasn’t created in a year, but I feel that this industry is stuck into sand as the Motion Picture Industry is too.

12.- Tell us your five favorite movies and why do you like them?

My favorite movies are Schindler’s list (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Forrest Gump (1994) and at last but not least Titanic (1997) :

- The Schindler’s List, for the amazing script, direction, actors. I consider this film as a sort of benchmark of movie. That’s the kind of film that I was talking about earlier. When you look at a sequence, you can’t turn the player off because you remember the next sequence is very intense and and that you want to watch it again too, and so on…in the end, you end up by watching the ending credits.

- Saving Private Ryan is fantastic because Spielberg again, managed to set the rules of cinema and influenced every war movie that were created after. I really like how he’s trying to re-invent something on the film he’s working on. As for the actor, Tom Hanks that I really like, is a wonder! The scene when he talks to Tom Sizemore in a church by night is one of my favorite scene of the movie

- I almost compare Schawshank Redemption with Schindler’s List : Great actors, amazing script, and brilliant movie directing by Frank Darabont on a film that may look like a simple movie. The “Less is More” quote works like magic here.

- In Forrest Gump, again with a great actor that is Tom Hanks, the storytelling is what impresses me the most. I just love the 2-ways lecture of the story. A kid that watch “Forrest Gump” will see the story from a certain point of view (mostly funny) and the adult will follow a complete new story that is more a dramatic, related to true historical events.

- Titanic. I like to watch it from director James Cameron’s point of view. I love to think about what he was thinking during the shooting of the film (including pre and post production). The guy written, produced and directed ‘alone’ his own movie that was the biggest success in the history of motion picture. I love this idea, I would have killed to be in the editing room of Titanic.

13.- In order to finish, this question is out of the subject, but i would like to know what do you think about the global warming and how would you help to improve the situation?

Hum, who would have known… That’s a very good question :-) I guess we, the common world, just learn about that issue. Now that we’re inform, we still don’t do every thing that experts are telling us, but I at least we’re doing something. The world is changing. As long as we don’t forget about that and that it’s starting to be embedded in our life so that it becomes a reflex, we’re good to go.

14.- I'm glad to talk to you, thanks for spend this time with us, we appreciate it a lot , and we want to tell that we admire your work, and we will waiting for "Meet Meline".

We’ve been keeping a blog since he very beginning of the pre-production of “Meet Meline”. A lots of people can then leave a critique or a comment, and the experience is wonderful. A lot of people have been following us, encourages us with so many great messages. When you work like crazy on a short film for more than 1 year and a half now, it’s very comforting to know that your work is liked by people all over the world! Like this interview for example : knowing that some people are interesting on how you’re working, why you’re doing this or doing that, wonders how we managed to find the should of “Meet Meline” etc. Thanks Ivan and Thanks Everyone! :o)