Filmmakers Tim Cole and Alexandru Popescu won the first-ever Unreal Engine Short Film Challenge. Here’s how they did it. 

When thinking about the future of filmmaking and what the production process could look like, several things come to mind: higher resolution, wider color gamuts, HDR, cloud-based file transfers straight from set, and augmented reality. But workflows are already much more sophisticated than that today.

When the original Avatar came out, the attention went to the innovative 3D technology used to film the actors. Since, we’ve seen Spielberg use VR in Ready Player One, Scorsese de-aging actors for The Irishman, and dozens of projects from Rogue One to The Mandalorian using Unreal Engine to create life-like sequences through virtual production.

Tools like Unreal Engine have become the backbone for many large-scale productions, but it doesn’t take a Hollywood-sized budget to use them, or a tremendous amount of know-how to start creating captivating projects with them.

Filmmakers Tim Cole and Alexandru Popescu are perfect examples of that as they created the short film Cassini Logs, a story that follows Cassini, a 60-year-old scientist alone on one of Saturn’s moons trying to understand her parents’ sudden disappearance. After completing a two-week course to learn how to use Unreal Engine, and taking six weeks to complete it, the short won the top prize in the first Unreal Engine Short Film Challenge.

The two creators spoke with No Film School to share some insight on their process and what it’s like to use the program for independent projects.

No Film School: There are so many different areas of the creative process people can jump into. What drove you to the visual effects side?  

Tim Cole: For me, I’ve always loved the immediate results of working on computer games and real-time rendering. I am also a big film buff, so I feel pretty lucky to be alive at a time where technology is advanced to the point that game and film are merging and overlapping. To me, it sort of feels like new mediums of storytelling are emerging, and I find that really exciting.

Alex Popescu: The passion for visual arts and technology was what pushed me towards the visual effects industry, and I’ve been fortunate to work on some fantastic projects throughout the years. However, when I first started playing with a game engine, I realized it is such a great opportunity to practice a different side of filmmaking, and at the beginning, it was all about cinematography and editing. But as soon as I introduced characters into my sandbox, the storytelling aspect became addictive, so I started to write small pieces and try to direct them. After a few years, taking on the challenge of increasingly complex projects, I am starting to feel like it’s all coming together, and I’m really keen to see what will come next![…]

More: How Two Filmmakers Used Unreal Engine to Create a Gritty Sci-Fi Thriller