CGSociety :: Production Focus
21 April 2009, by Margaux Durand-Rival

Preproduction
When we made 'Machu Picchu Post', we were three students at the 3D school Supinfocom Arles in France, in advanced computer graphics classes: Clement Crocq, Margaux Durand-Rival and Nicolas Novali. As usual in the school, the last year of study is for making a full 3D short film in groups of three or four students, from the idea to the final compositing.

Close to the end of our first year in advanced CG at Supinfocom, all the students had to make up a synopsis for the final year’s short films. The ‘Machu Picchu Post’ synopsis was based on a simple concept. A young Peruvian boy and his lama are sitting, bored, and a mail plane loses some letters over the boy's house. The boy takes a letter, makes a paper plane and starts to play but everything he does to the paper plane happens to the real plane, until a final psychedelic trip in a fantastic Inca world occurs when the boy decides to paint on the paper plane with paint pigments.

We felt it had potential for strong and delirious graphics, a good directing challenge (connecting the world of the boy, of the pilot, the psychedelic trip) because we wanted something dynamic and fluid, and a good opportunity for making something fresh and fun.

We spent the summer researching: clothes for the pilot; the plane; lama and the boy. We explored pictures of Peru, Machu Picchu and all the Inca cultural towns, statues, paintings and divinities, also psychedelic artists, movies and other influences. That was intense but in fact was useful for the rest of the production.