The Prophecy

featuring Tyler Cruz

Near the end of COVID, the folks over at Critical Role produced a 4-part miniseries called “Exandria Unlimited: Calamity.” It was an apocalyptic actual-play game run by Brennan Lee Mulligan, and I maintain that it’s some of the best storytelling I’ve ever had the privileged of witnessing. There was a moment of prophecy that the story hinges on, but is never actually experienced in the story,. I was getting into 3D animation at the time, so I made a 3D temple set in c4d, phoned a good friend in the acting program, and shot a first draft on green screen. But sadly, I was asked to work 3D content on The Kite Runner for its broadway transfer, so I had to shelve the project for the summer.

Fast-forward to the top of Spring Semester 2023: I was TA for a course on virtual production that Shieva Khalily was running, and that summer project seemed like a perfect piece of workshop material. I rebuilt and relit the temple set in Unreal Engine, and reshot the short in front of a projected virtual production space we built in a classroom out of a spare VR headset and a few other things we had lying around.