Dancing Leviathans
Overview
Dancing Leviathans is a short film that was developed by me and 4 other friends for our cinematic project. The short plays out in the style of a nature video with no dialogue and is focused entirely on the animal. The animal in question is on a lone mosasaur, who prowls the waters and will have a chance encounter that will change his life forever.
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The goal of this film was to portray these gigantic sea reptiles in a different light and to break the stigma of them being seen as vicious killers. The film was made using Unreal Engine 5, which allowed our short to be more visually advanced compared to if we used a different engine such as Unity. We also managed to implement 2 original soundtracks in the game.
Responsibilities
​​Narrative Design
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Conceptualized the main idea of the cinematic
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Drew the Storyboards
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Guided the team on how shots should play out
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Lead the team as the director
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Sound Design
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Found references for the audio lead to use for the Mosasaurs
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Found underwater ambience
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Composed 2 original soundtracks for the short
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Research
When we began brainstorming for ideas, I knew that I wanted our cinematic to stand out from others. I then suggested to my team that we should do a nature documentary. The goal was to portray these giant marine reptiles, not as the vicious killers that media often portray them, but as animals who simply live and interact with the environment.
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The majority of our references came from the BBC and AppleTV. Blue Planet gave us a scene of 2 hump-back whales engaging in a mating dance. I knew once I saw the video that it was the perfect reference for our cinematic short.
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After that, I needed to find a reference for our animators so that they could animate the mosasaur. Prehistoric Planet had just released and we based the movements of our subject on the one in the documentary while also changing its behavior to be similar to that of a whale.
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With everything in place, we could move forward and get to working on the cinematic.
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Storyboarding
Once we had a general idea for how the cinematic would proceed, I took to storyboarding. The storyboards were done in Figma as it allowed us to easily edit the frames and use already existing templates.
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The short needed to have a build-up. The first few scenes shows our Mosasaur prowling in the waters, acting as a menacing predator. When he encounters a bigger female mosasaur, the shot makes it look as if they might go into conflict. They circle one another and size each other up, almost as if performing a threat display.
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The twist comes when instead of fighting, the two begin a beautiful and emotional dance in the deep. They twirl and spin around, not showing any aggression just like whales.
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One difficulty was conveying emotion without the use of dialogues. As the subjects were animals, we had to rely on body movement, music, and lighting to convey a sense of majesty and grandeur as the interaction.
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Original Soundtrack
Once that was done, and the team had a clear path in moving forward, I could turn my attention to making an original sound track for the short. I decided to use MuseScore3 to create the music.
The piece had to sound like a gentle and grandeurs waltz and was meant to convey the emotions of majesty and awe. It needed to be epic in a sense, but not to stir conflict. A combination of the piano and the cello was used to mix the notes together.
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While creating the music, I directed the team on how the shots should play out, how the mosasaur needed to move as well as the direction of the camera angles.
I also helped to find sound references for our audio lead which he could put into the short and managed to create a second shorter track that would play during the ending scene.