Bert Vandecasteele

Category: Blog

  • Cars. Guns. Women. Spectre?

    Cars. Guns. Women. Spectre?

    (Mathijs, you warned me!)

    SPECTRE.

    I had high hopes for SPECTRE. I mean, they capitalized the 24th Bond movie’s name and everything! That could only mean it would be awesome, right?

    I mean, come on. Just read that out loud.

    SPECTRE.

    Rawr.

    Only the thing is: SPECTRE is a disgrace – a low-effort Bond movie created by a director whose default mode of filmmaking is the shrug and an actor so cocky the interviews make it sound like he made this display of blandness entirely by himself.

    Capitalization tricked me. In what follows, SPECTRE will be refered to in a more fitting typesetting, spectre.


    Here’s a trailer because you might not know what a Bond movie is.
     

    spectre starts out incredible – an unbelievable long take featuring an elevator, a hotel room, a rooftop and, oh, just about a hundred extras dancing around a plaza in Mexico City. This sequence is amazing: Action! Humor! Sexy times! It’s all there.

    Then Sam Smith’s horrible falsetto theme song starts.

    After that, it’s about ninety minutes of typical cock-tease bond: spectre introduces Ralph Fiennes, the new M, but doesn’t do anything interesting with him. spectre introduces Andrew Scott, who plays C and previously played Moriarti on Sherlock, and doesn’t let him do anything interesting, either. Then finally, spectre introduces Christoph Waltz, the villain, and doesn’t let him do anything interesting, either. Monica Bellucci shows up, doesn’t do anything interesting other than sit on a bed in underwear, and to add insult to injury spectre‘s inane plot quickly throws her in the garbage for the much younger Lea Seydoux, who does super interesting things!! — but only when there’s no bad guys around. Cars are raced, but not very fast, Bond’s head gets drilled into, but not very deep, and big explosions follow small explosions for no reason because, shrug, spectre.

    Then, the credits roll, and lo and behold, no actor has done anything remotely interesting, safe for the overly cocky and at times scarily unlikable Craig and Ben Wishaw (Q), who’s transformed from sexy geek-chic to MI6’s closeted nerd who does all his top-secret development in an Austrian ski lift on a laptop that’s at least ten years old.

    Everything in this movie screams of low-effort. Interesting callbacks happen, but that’s all they are: Callbacks. Nothing interesting is done with the ominous white cat, with the mysterious organization that ties everything together – not even with the Bond girl, who can’t show her amazing qualities or ditto sideboob and is thus reduced to an insultingly bland blank slate. Sure, Bond objectifies women, and it’s kind of disgusting – but in spectre, the Bond girl ceases to be a woman in favor of a plot device whose only defining factor is that she, surprise, needs saving!

    Craig, Mendes, come see me after class, because I’m seriously disappointed in you.

    SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED.

    (And that’s how you use capitalization, hah!)

  • Six cameras, one computer – and whole lot of sick moves

    Six cameras, one computer – and whole lot of sick moves

    Sometimes, unexpected things happen. It’s one of those cool things of being a writer – like going to Austria or accidently being in LA when your short film is in theatres. And that’s how I found myself in a photo studio in Kreuzberg doing motion capture for a video game.

    Now, you might’ve seen professional motion capture – actors in spandex suits covered with Styrofoam balls, running around and overacting like they’ve just been cast in the next silent comedy.

    You know what? Turns out that costs a lot of money!

    Until I learned about this:

    That’s right. Markerless motion capture with a handful of Playstation cameras. Seriously. The whole thing is probably the nerdiest thing ever – I mean come on, you don’t even have to change out of your Firefly shirt!

    This is what the set-up looks like:

    IMG_20151023_112635550The process was pretty straightforward (and that’s coming from someone who barely knows two lines of C): You set it up, calibrate the room, and then start capturing. We ran into a couple of issues distinguishing parts of our bodies from the floor, but after the computer model magically stopped locking its hands to its crotch, everything went swimmingly.

    So yeah. Here’s me.

    IMG_20151023_174018373My sick moves have officially been downloaded to the computer. Pretending to run around in a white room might be one of the geekiest things I have ever done – but seeing how I had an absolute blast, I guess I should go full-out geek more often.

    At the risk of making this whole post sound like an advertisment: If you wanna know more, here’s a link to their website.

  • Nashorn in Galopp

    Nashorn in Galopp

    Hey everyone, especially everyone who loves to procrastinate!

    Office colleague and director Erik Schmitt has finally uploaded his award-winning short film, Nashorn in Galopp (Rhino Full Throttle), to YouTube!

    I remember my first time watching this short. I was fresh off the dffb boat and completely frustrated with German movies. German movies were dry, overrationalized pieces of shit with no self-reflection or emotion – and they weren’t exactly funny, either.

    For me, Nashorn in Galopp was a breath of fresh air in a dusty room: It’s self-aware, created with gut feeling – and it’s hilarious in its own special way. Erik is one of the few German directors I know who can strike the tender balance between being weird without losing track of the story’s strong, emotional core.

    And as a guy who had just graduated by putting a bunch of animated guys on top of a mirror, it taught me a simple lesson:

    Quit fucking whining about Germany.

    Watch the film here! It has English subtitles and comes highly recommended.

  • Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition

    It’s back, and even better than before!

  • An Abundance of Trailers

    So I was browsing the web, and I came across the first trailer to “Master of None”, the Netflix comedy by Aziz Ansari.

    So I figured: “Hey, this shit is crazy good, I gotta post this on my blog.” Only then the related links took me to the trailer to Shameless’ sixth season:

    And I was all like: “Holy shit, fuck Aziz, I gotta post THIS!”

    But then THIS MOTHERFUCKER happened:

    Jessica! You just beat everyone.

    Jessica Jones.
    Shameless.
    Master of None.

    The amount of good TV streaming into my life is crazy.

    P.S.: Sorry Aziz. No hard feelings, k?

  • Another tiny game

    Another tiny game

    Hey everyone,

    I made another tiny game thanks to the wonderful tutorials on the Unity website. This one was slightly trickier than the last, but I had tons of fun making it. I’m currently trying to figure out how to best proceed in this direction – how to move away from the tutorials and really start making my hands dirty.

    About the game: It’s a 2D roguelike (i.e. randomized game that’s out to kill you) in which you gather food and dodge zombies. So many tropes! I feel like a regular indie developer!

    • Play the game in your browser (unless you use Chrome): Click!
    • Download the game on your computer (unless you use Mac): Click!

    I’m really sorry, Mac users who browse with Chrome. You and I, it just wasn’t meant to be.

  • Shovel Knight – Plague of Shadows

    Shovel Knight – Plague of Shadows


    Please play this in the background while reading this post.
     

    Remember Shovel Knight? You know, the one that ended up taking the gaming world by storm, making a tiny underdog into an Indie hero that ended up getting its own Amiibo?

    Of course you don’t, that’s why I keep this blog.

    Click!

    That’s better.

    Actually, I had forgotten all about Shovel Knight myself. After all, the game was two years old, and I had sucked every droplet of sweet delicious gameplay from its interactive cadaver – what else was I to do but move on with my life?

    Time went on, and I went to enjoy other platformers. I rekindled the flame of my childhood crush, Super Mario Bros. 3.  I enjoyed both young and old hedgehogs in Sonic Generations. I explored Spelunky’s caves multiple times, finding them refreshing and new every time. It was a time of wild experiments, of insatiable hunger, of being lost.

    Then, one day, I booted my computer and was greeted by an unexpected message. Shovel Knight had updated. Shovel Knight? Surely that blue armored hero rang a bell?

    I hovered over the PLAY button, unsure what to do. Sure, I could click it and return to my old love. But what if things weren’t like before? What if he had changed? And worse: What if I had?

    Reluctantly, I put it off, minimized the Steam window and went about my day. Shovel Knight was in the past. I tried to distract myself as best I could.

    I made it seven minutes before I caved.


    Artist’s rendering of what followed.
    So apparently, I did change. And so did Shovel Knight, who bravely stepped aside for a new hero to take the spotlight: The maniacal potion-chucking alchemist, Plague Knight, a glass cannon antihero with great movability, who makes am already hard game into an abolute deathfest.

    Immediately, I fell in love once again – but differently so this time.

    Shovel Knight was silent and stoic and told his story in pictures – Plague Knight is an awkward geek who can’t stop yapping. He is a text-heavy hero with a text-heavy story, but one that once again grabs you in the chest with its absurd honesty. Plague Knight is the perfect fairy tale for geeks: An awkward romance starring a regular guy who wants to take over the world.

    Plague Knight is an amazing unicorn in the games world. It’s the white whale of DLC: Free, long, absolutely different and yet somehow the same. It should not exist, and yet here it is: A whole new way to fall in love with a wonderful classic all over again. Get it on every platform that matters for next to no money. You won’t regret it.

  • Panta Rhei

    Good news everyone!

    Panta Rhei, an animated short I’ve been writing together with director Wouter Bongaerts and producer/studio Creative Conspiracy, has been granted development funding by the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (VAF). This means we’ll be able to continue our hard work on the screenplay for what will hopefully be another kick-ass story.

    Here’s the story’s logline, courtesy of Wouter:

    Stefaan is tormented by water that keeps seeping into his life. A flooded basement, leaking faucets, endless rain. He tries to flee the water – just like the stranded whales he studies.

    And here’s a piece of breathtaking art:

    12144936_10203924212826009_8247531981635616655_n

    Of course, the road ahead is long, but just for a moment, we get to take a tiny breather and enjoy a tiny piece of reassurance. Someone out there supports our work – and we’ll work our butts off to make them happy.

  • Austria

    Austria

    People often romanticize being a writer. They think it’s just chilling in a log cabin somewhere in the mountains, sipping from a steaming cup of coffee and letting the words flow onto the virtual Macbook paper while people outside wait eagerly to devour what you’ve come up with.

    The truth, unfortunately, is slightly different: Mostly, writing is sitting in your office keeping warm on instance soup, trying not to browse Youtube as you wonder what will kill you first: The cold or the existential angst of being a failure in life.

    Mostly.

    Sometimes, you actually do get that cabin in the mountains. And when you do, you have to go for it. That’s how I ended up in Austria, near the border to Italy, surrounded by four dogs and a whole lot of mountains.

    And that’s where I was that guy. The romantic writer in the cabin, sitting at his computer and writing, developing something cool with colleagues, petting dogs, baking cakes, watching Star Wars and then going out to watch the actual stars.

    Okay, I was that guy plus baking and geeking out.

    Pretty cool, nonetheless.

    IMG_20151003_124418093

  • Mia on TV

    Mia on TV

    It’s been a bit quiet on the Mia front – which is normal, seeing how a) we’ve been hard at work at our next project and b) it’s been two years since the short was released.

    (Jesus? Has it really been that long?)

    (You’re growing old, man.)

    Mia, however, is not dead and buried. A while ago, we were surprised to see the short pop up on Belgian on-demand television. And now, I’m proud to announce that Mia will be screening on actually, non-demand TV next Sunday!

    So check your TV guides, get a tiny bag of potato chips and enjoy those nine minutes.

    In the meantime, here’s the trailer: