Two Gamers battle it out in a light hearted action film.

Director's Statement

Hi, I am Lachlan Familton the director of Smite: The Movie. I was born on the 7/5/2008 and have loved film making from a young age. When I was younger before I could remember I recorded an unedited documentary of my families skiing trip and since then I have constantly worked on new films (even if the quality wasn’t so good). I believe that as all young children do, I didn’t really have a clear idea on what I wanted to be when I grew up. But by around the age of 10 I settled on film making. My favourite director and the one I aspire to be like is Petter Jackson. He too started filming with his friends when he was younger. And like him I hope to become a successful movie director. I am currently trying to pave my path to a film director by YouTubing. I currently make stop motions when I have time and am also working on making a script for a live action series. I plan to use this channel as a sort of resume so I can join a film and help produce and then eventually get funding for a film that I direct. 

One day my mum told me there was this film course at NIDA and I new instantly that I wanted to go. There I teamed up with Jacob Love and Iago Simili to produce Smite: The Movie.This movie was very fun to produce and I learnt so many tips and tricks to making movies while in the NIDA course. 

This is how the film was made. First we had to come up with an idea, originally we where in a group of six but due to way too many ideas being thrown around the group separated in two. Once the group split took place we all agreed that we wanted to make a light hearted action movie. I really liked this idea because fight scenes are my favourite part of film. Since the idea we wanted it to be a simple movie it kind of depended into humour. The good thing about making a light hearted fight scene is that there are only really three steps in writing. One is to make a reason to why the fight occurs. The second is to write a cool fight sequence. The third is to escalate the fight, this step can be repeated multiple times if needed. After developing the reason for the fight, the rest of the time was spent writing the fight. The only part that was fully planed was the laser part of the fight as I find things like a sword fight much easier to figure out on the day when you can actually visualise it. Then filming was in my opinion the best part of the process as we got to see the idea come to life. Then it was editing, I have some experience editing and so once I got some sound effects from Jacob and Iago I edited the clips together and the sound effects on the last day of the NIDA course and then the lasers and explosions in the weeks leading up to the submission day. The lasers where made using a technique used to make a lightsaber by masking it out and then adding a glow. However easily the most time consuming thing to create was the explosion effect as there are no easy ways to do it without paying for a pre-made effect. I ended up making a sort of sun/fireball effect that I think matched the lighthearted video game tone. The health-bars where also difficult to mask so instead I used multiple different photoshop designs that I would change when damage was taken. All in all, I am incredibly proud of the end result not to mention that the film was selected for the finals.

Jacob also wrote a small bit on his experience, 

I am the guy playing games in the film. I have limited experience in filming but I decided to give the camp a go. Since then, I have done work on silent films in drama at school and other fun stuff. Filming was quite a fun experience and it taught me a lot about how movies are filmed and how much work it takes.

I have also sent an email to the third member of our team, Iago, however he hasn’t replied yet. If he does reply I will send it straight away. 

I have sent an mp4 vision of the film in addition to a small collection of outtakes and behind the scenes via WeTransfer.