5 Questions with Christian Chapman and Paul Jason Hoffman
Paul Jason Hoffman (left), Christian Chapman (right)
A psychedelic journey told from the perspective of a dog, “Dog in the Woods,” by directors Christian Chapman and Paul Jason Hoffman, is a visual feast of unknown worlds and unseen realms. We asked Chapman and Hoffman how it began, how they incorporated extensive VFX, and their favorite recent films…
1) Can you talk briefly about your backgrounds, and how you first got interested in movies?
CC: I got started with iMovie when I was 12 or 13, animating LEGOs and forcing my family to act out gloomy ghost stories. P.J. and I met in 7th grade, watched a lot of horror films together, and made two of our own that we were lucky enough to screen for our entire school: The Guest, a two-part feature-length, bloody, snowy epic in which P.J. eats my Dad’s guts, and Le Boulanger, a controversial French-language short about a serial killer who crams baguettes down the throats of his victims.
PJH: Ya, middle school is when it began. Every Friday after school, I’d wander through the aisles of Media Wave, our local video rental store in Fairfield, CT, and pick out films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Apocalypse Now, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance etc. I was hooked. And around this time, maybe a little later like 9th or 10th grade, our French teachers started showing us French New Wave films, and that really expanded my perspective. I also remember watching Jackass on MTV, and thinking for the first time that filmmaking didn’t need to be exclusive to the likes of Scorsese and Kubrick and Tarantino. We just needed to assemble a camera and a few friends. So that’s what we did.
2) So, how did this project come to be, what’s the origin story? What was the first element in place, and how did you build from that?
CC: P.J. and I were living in New York working on docu-style branded videos and really needed a passion project that was creatively limitless. We met a guy from Japan who whipped up incredible psychedelic particle FX on his laptop and applied them to live action footage in minutes – which blew our minds and filled our souls with foolhardy ambition. An idea popped up to imagine and animate the invisible dimensions that surround us, and what better subject than a dog, an animal that perceives the world through its nose and ears. My black German Shepherd, Alice, lived back home in Connecticut and spent most of her nights romping around the woods behind my house – so she was ready to go. With the goal of exploring canine consciousness, we would film Alice acting naturally, and figure everything else out in post.
3) What about the visual landscape - can you talk about your process there, in terms of how you mixed live action with the VFX? Any particular challenges that you didn’t anticipate, or lucky accidents?
CC: We had zero VFX supervision on set. Our shoots were focused on making surreal images of Alice roaming the forest, capturing her perspective in as cinematic a way possible. We cut our first draft of the film before designing any VFX, then drew designs on top of still frames, and compiled inspirational reference images, to create a “VFX Direction Storyboard.” Once that was ready, we began the months-long task of scouring the internet for the wizards who knew how to bring the concepts to life.
A happy accident occurred during the shoot where Alice walks into the wide, “moonlit” clearing. We had spent the better part of the day roping up china balls to light the area, but we didn’t have a plan to prompt Alice to enter the scene naturally. She would stop at the edge, sniff around, sit, walk away… it was very frustrating. Then, during one of the takes, she waded right out into the middle... and this loud bellowing sound (probably a deer) came from deep in the woods. She stopped in the perfect spot and stared into the darkness in the direction of the noise. Later, this would give us an opportunity to insert an effect in the direction of her gaze – creating the illusion that she’s stopped to watch it float through the air.
4) What’s your favorite film, new or old, that you’ve seen so far this year?
PJH: I had never seen Interstellar, Moon, or The Master until this past month. Wow. These films contain some of the best performances I’ve ever seen. I was particularly inspired by Moon because first-time director Duncan Jones was able to take a modest budget of $5M and turn it into this psychological slow burn that stuck with me for days. Normally, we think of sci-fi space films as requiring massive budgets and tons of VFX, but Moon was a reminder that it all starts with a clever, original script.
CC: Very hard to pick just one. Two films I caught this year that really inspired me are Mandy and Birds of Passage. They’re both packed with beautiful energy and legendary imagery and colors that made my eyes bleed (happy tears).
5) What’s next for you?
CC: We’re writing the science fiction series of our dreams, and also looking to write a few narrative shorts that are manageable enough to independently, quickly produce. We also play many freelance positions, so please reach out if you like our work!
Contact Info:
Resonator Films:
Email: info[at]resonatorfilms.com
IG: @resonatorfilms
Facebook: Resonator Films
Christian Chapman
IG @chapandcompany
Facebook: Christian Chapman