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VOTD: Rendezvous With Rama Short Film

Posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 by Peter Sciretta

Rendezvous With Rama Short Film

The Pitch: Last week it was revealed that David Fincher won’t be directing a big screen adaptation of Rendezvous With Rama after all. We used an image for our blog about the news which we just assumed was included in one of the many editions of the book. Apparently not. Longtime /Film reader Aaron Ross e-mailed to inform us that the image is actually from his short film. Ross directed and animated the short in 2001 while attending Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. We get a lot of VOTD submissions from film school students. As you would expect, most of them are horrible and never make it to the site. But every once in a while, a student short films surprises me. This is the case with Ross’s Rama-based short. You can definitely see the inspiration of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Aaron Ross has since been hired by Blue Sky Studios, and has worked on Robots, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Horton Hears a Who! and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

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Video of the Day is a daily feature of /Film showcasing geekarific video creations. Have a video we should be feature on VOTD? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.

Comments

menotrouble

I was impressed by the visuals of this. so I checked on imdb.com - to find out mr ross has a nice career in big budget animation movies and visual effects now. congratulations. nice to see that young talent sometimes gets a chance to earn some money.

Andreas Climent

Very impressive! It looks like Ross has a lot of potential as a director!

Aaron

Wow. That was extremely good. It was starting drag at the start of the short but most likely the reason for that is I just woke up lol.

Chris

Wow.. impressive. It got my attention and makes me want to see more!

Nish

If David Fincher doesn't want to direct it, then we've found someone to step up to the plate.

OhNoItsGojira

Not bad at all.

Steelo

I agree with Nish, but then maybe he tried and it fell through still

TheMarquis

"As you would expect, most of them are horrible"

I find that comment very deprecating towards film students. As a recent graduate of film school, I can say from personal experience that there are myriads of fantastic student shorts out there...insofar a there is stiff competition to get them into festivals. Even Sumner Redstone, head honcho of Viacom, finds them of high enough quality to set up and fund the Redstone Film Festival for student shorts. As a film fan and film site, one should always be on the lookout for new talent--- insinuating that most of the work put out by new and burgeoning talent is horrible is a pretty big cold shoulder to all those who have sought your support for their films. Even a simple comment like this might discourage the readership from going out and finding many of the wonderful student films that are bouncing around the internet.

In short: Support student film makers. If you care to look, there are some fantastic movies out there.

Peter Sciretta

TheMarquis: Most big directos will tell you their student short films were horrible. At that stage you're still learning. Most of the time I notice that student short films are trying to mimmic the work of established filmmakers rather than be themselves. We've featured a bunch of student films in VOTD, and I'm a supporter of the student filmmaker. But to be honest with you, student films are like spec scripts. Only one in one hundred is really good. Learning is a process you must go through to become great. Chances are, your first film will not be incredible, or even good. You need to work your way up to that. Thats realistic.

mudywaters

Wow that was really good. How much do you think that cost?

@TheMarquis

Absolutely support student film makers!

Aaron

@Brian Rodden

It cost 5K. Most of that just went to renting the greenscreen soundstage in NY.

Greyson

So who or what is Rama? I'd look it up but, I check here more than I check Google.

FAP

Reminds me of the Eon trailer.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?...

Jami B.

Hey Aaron,

I'm embarrassed that Ihaven't seen this (I'm a Tisch '01er, too).

Really nice!

Best,
Jami

Ron

Wow. could definitely watch more, I think i'm finally going to have to read this book.

Steve

Just curious where you picked up the Red Planet suit? After the abuse we put those through back at the time, it's nice to see one still intact (and even looking pretty good)...

Nice work with the vid...

Aaron

I rented it from Warner Bros costumes for $200 / week. We hooked up our own batteries to run the fans inside the helmet. That thing got really hot.

Chen Pelled

Aaron Ross, this is very impressive, well made and pro.
watching your incredible work @ 'Blue Sky Studios' and now this!
super inspirational
can't wait to see more of your work

Thank you!

Biff Fearless

Very intriguing opening. Would like to see more 'hard' sf made.

DELTA

I just hope Rendezvous with Rama is brought to the big screen someday and that Arthur C Clarke's vision is done with honor and dignaty.

Thea

Josh Nussbaum shot this short for Aaron Ross while the two were students at NYU Tisch. Afterwards Josh was interviewed by American Cinematographer Magazine regarding the techniques he used to create the images. Josh is currently a DoP living in Denmark. Check out his World Diabetes Day project for Novo Nordisk and his two commercials for the Copenhagen Metro.

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