Friday, April 19th, 2019 Posted by Jim Thacker

Discover how to make an indie short with over 200 VFX shots


The Beacon, Chris Staehler’s sci-fi short, packs in over 200 VFX shots. Next Thursday, 25 April, at a free event at Gnomon’s Hollywood campus, he will explain how he managed to create them on an indie budget.

Part of the talk will also be streamed live on Twitch: you can watch it via the player embedded below.

A textbook example of how to create professional VFX on an indie budget
A case study in how clear art direction, planning, and coordination can take a small team and tight budget to stellar heights, award-winning short film The Beacon packs in over 230 VFX shorts in just 27 minutes.

During his presentation at Gnomon, director and VFX supervisor Chris Staehler – by day, previs supervisor at Pixomondo – will take an in-depth look at the project from start to finish.

As well as revealing how new digital technology helped to cut down on production time, Staehler will be discussing more low-tech solutions, like throwing flour on actors to simulate snow.

For anyone planning to tackle their own indie visual effects project, the session should provide plenty of invaluable practical tips and tricks to help bring a film to completion.

Free to attend, but register online in advance
The Beacon: Pushing the Limits of Indie Filmmaking takes place at Gnomon’s Hollywood campus from 7.30-10:00pm PDT on Thursday 25 April 2019. Entry is free, but you’ll need to register online first.



If you can’t make it to Hollywood in person, the making-of part of event will also be broadcast free on Gnomon’s Twitch channel. You can ask questions via Twitch chat.

Because The Beacon is currently showing at film festivals – it won Best Film at the Los Angeles Film Awards – the screening of the short itself will be exclusive to the campus audience.

Read more about The Beacon: Pushing the Limits of Indie Filmmaking on Gnomon’s website


Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.