RIFT PRODUCTION.
Animation continuum
Bridging Unreal Engine and DaVinci Resolve, director Haz Dulull broke the mould with new feature film Rift. Its exciting workflow is more efficient, supremely collaborative and carries pure transmedia potential
WORDS. Lee Renwick / IMAGES. Hazimation
H ow does a big-budget, live-action script become a multiplatform animated offering, created by a crew of just a dozen? Introduce one global pandemic, let the creative mind of a director loose in a powerful game engine, add one editing platform utilised from end-to-end and you’re on the right track. This is the origin of Rift . While it’s a shame to miss out on the multiverse- hopping thriller as it was originally intended, the final result is undeniably exciting. Not least for its innovative means of creation. Helmed by Haz Dulull
– seasoned director and co-founder of Hazimation – the film’s reimagined workflow might be seen as a small-scale success story for larger things to come. Relying on cutting-edge tools and valuing creativity over cash, Rift is very much a sign of the times. “When the pandemic hit and live action was put on hold, I asked myself how I could keep telling stories,” Dulull begins. “I called my producing partner, Paula Crickard, and said we should make an animated film. It takes years to develop a solid script, so we looked in our vault. Rift was always meant to be the kind
PLAYING WITH FIRE Not only a feature film project, Rift used its Unreal Engine roots to grow into a video game, too (top)
25. SEPTEMBER 2022
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