<Projects
HIKE (2021)
Writer/Director/Actor/Animator/Editor: Josh Lange
Time on project: August-September 2021

Announcement  |  Week 0  |  Week 1  |  Week 2  |  Week 3  |  Week 4  |  Week 5  |  Week 6  |  Final Thoughts

So with all the play-by-play over, here are some final thoughts on the Fellowship experience:

Biggest Challenges

• The Clock. In one of our Week One "Coffee Hour" sessions, our instructor Peter Lish remarked to us that "to me, the biggest obstacle you all have is time. I don't think students can fully understand how much of a challenge it is to complete a film in six weeks." Boy was he right. I felt like I was putting in a full 100% of time and energy every day of the fellowship, and it was still a battle to end up with a film I could stand by.
  
• Personal Standards. I did not see this as a no-pressure situation where I would be happy with my final film no matter how rough or simple it might be. Instead, I imagined judgment I might receive in the future from visualization colleagues. It feels petty to admit, but I wanted to use this as fuel for me to be ambitious and make the very best thing I could. Thankfully, the support of my family and members of the fellowship helped prevent me from collapsing under that self-imposed pressure.
  
• Split Focus. My wife and I had been house-hunting all summer with no luck, and in an example of tough timing, we had put a bid down on a listing during the first week of the Fellowship. To our surprise, the offer turned out to be accepted! Although I was overjoyed and pretty confident that I could handle the fellowship and all the escrow paperwork simultaneously (thank goodness school was in session yet), I nevertheless prepared to step up my game to make sure no mistakes would be made while handling them both.
  
• Creative autonomy. Although I have made a lot of personal art in my spare time, the fellowship came at a time when it had been a while since I did this purely for myself, instead of  for the purpose of better understanding a subject in a professional project I was working on, like dog anatomy and movement for Cruella. Over my animation and visualization career I have had the privilege to often rely on talented directors and supervisors  to determine whether an idea or piece of creative content is good enough to be considered "approved" to proceed with. The drawback to this creative dynamic , however, is that it can somewhat stunt my intuition and confidence when determining  if my own work is truly worthy of being deemed "final." I think the good side of having this creative experience is that it is second nature to me to look to others to see when something is "working" or not. If we work in isolation, it is more than likely that what we think of early on as dynamic and exciting may in the end feel cliche or unclear to others. Constantly requiring
  
• Workspace. My home office area was fully cramped with boxes and other miscellaneous items as we packed during the Fellowship. Along with this clutter taking up the background of all my behind the scenes footage, this significantly reduced the size of a mocap volume that I could rely on for performance capture.

Highlights

• Having fun with my kids as we learned and used the technology. Whether it was playing around with the Metahuman characters, recording their voices, capturing their lip syncs in the iPhone, or doing mocap shoots with them, it was a lot of fun.

• The Fellowship Community. What might have been the most remarkable aspect to the whole experience was how connected and supportive the instructors, mentors, and fellows was for one another. We were put into a pressure-cooker with people we'd never met before, and by the end it felt like everyone had my back.
• Creating something new of my own.  Most of what I do in the entertainment industry is helping others realize their stories. It's a satisfying job, but I'm never the one with the final say when it comes to the creative calls--that always falls on the director. So to have a project where I could make every call was thrilling. And when I think of all the different family members and Fellowship members who nudged the film in one direction or another, it's a final product that really took a village, which is filmmaking at its best.
  
• Having the support of my company. This experience would have felt very differently had I not been sponsored by my company MPC. It was a massive show of support from them, and I will always be grateful to Katie Hooten, Mary Loibl, and Patrick Smith for arranging it.
  

Lessons & Advice if You  Are Picked for the Fellowship (or Mostly for any Creative Project)

• Commit to a healthy life balance, especially if you doubt it will be possible. Things will come up in your life that will pull you away from having 100% focus, but try to put them off for the future. This is an opportunity you won't want to regret splitting your focus on. That being said, I never felt it necessary to put in any all-nighters, because in my experience you need that rest to recharge and come back stronger the next day.
• Follow your intuition and solicit lots of feedback from trusted sources. When you begin, your own excitement and curiosity are the best indicators of what direction to go, but the reactions of others to your ideas and work are usually a great barometer to improving the quality of your work. If an idea doesn't "do it" for you, skip over it, but if others are seeing things in your story that you hadn't noticed, give those observations a fair chance to be examined. We were recommended by my mentor David to present our stories to the full fellowship as early as possible, and I'm glad I did.
• Keep the story in the driver's seat. After you have decided on your inspiration and have crafted an outline or "beat sheet," you might get inspired to go in new directions or have an instinct to explore new ideas. Don't ignore these impulses! They are the story talking to you and showing you what it needs next.
  
• When directing child actors, consider using the tips in this video, which helped me a lot.
• Enjoy the journey!

Conclusion

Looking back, the Unreal Fellowship was exactly the right training and experience I needed to advance into the next chapter of my career. The people I met were amazing and I am grateful for the incredible connections that the program provided. It was a great adventure in unfamiliar territory but with guides and guardrails that ensured success. I will always look back on it fondly--and with relief that it all worked out!