A girl wakes up trapped in an apartment with no recollection of where she is when she discovers that she’s being slowly consumed by a White Substance.

Director Victor Velasco already got us used to some weird and surreal films that are at times mind bending and inexplicable. His latest short, The Other Side continues along the same lines where we stumble into a rather bizarre and unusual situation. The main protagonist, Julia, wakes up in an apartment with a massive headache, stumbling around trying to remember what happened before. She can’t open any window or door in this place. Julia is trapped in this apartment. Frustrated, Julia punches the window. She notices something on her left index finger. A “Substance” is consuming her. The “Substance” is like clay, she can create forms with it. Now she has to figure out what’s the link between the “Substance” and her forgotten memories.

It Starts With a Spot. We Don’t Know Where It Ends.

THE OTHER SIDE is a film in which (after a personal experience) we tried to demystified death as a phenomena of spiritual rebirth and cast a rather linear perception over it. Reality continues but only different and death is in fact the process of naturalization in accordance with the new reality. That’s what actually happens with our main character in the other side – the new reality, her new nature is taking over bit by bit.

From a technical perspective, we tried to challenge the general notion of what to expect from a vfx in a film. Does a vfx in an existential drama has to be realistic? Why limit ourselves like this? Why not make it look rough, 2d, but still with an artistic sensibility? That’s what we tried to achieve with THE OTHER SIDE.

The Substance is one of the protagonist of the film. it was made with traditional frame by frame animation in Photoshop and then composed in After Effects.Each frame has 4 passes: The white flat background, the dark outline, the shadows and the chalk texture. They worked with the animation at 17 fps, this means that each second of animation has 17 drawings! In total, there are more than 3000 frames in the film. This unusual mix of live-action with animation along with a synth-matching soundtrack let’s the film ease into the unknown, creating a rather delightful experience.