“The production was very long, about 4 years between the first idea and the finished film,” Victor Haegelin said of his short, “Captain 3-D.” The first idea came when he was asked to write a scenario for a commercial in which he’d take advantage of shooting with a smartphone. “You have to be in the context of 2011,” he told us, “where phonecams were not all as good as nowadays. So I suggested to make a 3D film using 2 smartphones stuck head to head. Then I wrote a story using a lot of 3D effects and Captain3D was born.”

Finally the phone company decided not to make that film. But I really wanted to make it! So I let 1 year pass and suggested to my producers, Gizem and Nathalie, to find a way to do it–after 2 years of searching for funds we succeed to start the production!” This is no surprise, coming from an animator and director with a career spanning ads for big names from McDonald’s to Lego, Renault, and more, plus music videos such as Wire and Flashing Lights for instrumental-EDM extraordinaire Professor Kliq.

For the piece,The Captain, The Girl and the Monster were built in Brittany at JPL Studio over 4 months time. The film itself was shot during a single month straight through, including weekends, at Paris’ Manuel Cam Studio. “It was very ambitious because my keyword during all the production was “HO-LLY-WOO-DIAN!!” the exuberant director gushed. “I wanted a lot of camera movements, helicopter and chasing shots. So we used a lot the DitoGear and the Dragonframe tools to configure the moves…and all had to be shot in 3D! So we had a MarkRoberts slider under the camera, and Dragonframe was very useful to it too.