Echoes.
Displacement · Destruction · Storytelling
Nuke
DaVinci Resolve
Overview
Echoes explores realistic everyday scenarios gradually disrupted by an effect distorting the surrounding environment — a symbol of the destruction caused by war. Each scenario represents an essential aspect of human life that is lost in conflict: education, community, art, and safety. In the film's final moments, the distortion is revealed as the foreshadowing of a missile heading for a civilian building, and the last shot captures the full extent of the devastation.
Process
The project began with storyboarding to synchronise the narrative with the emotional rhythm of everyday life being disrupted. Visual effects were developed in Houdini to create the distortion effects that symbolise war's destruction. Rendering was handled in Houdini's rendering systems, followed by colour grading in DaVinci Resolve — with all elements and environments composited in Nuke.
In addition to handling three shots, I created a Houdini Digital Asset providing a consistent displacement effect across the film, designed to intensify as the video progressed. I began by transferring the curveu attribute to primitives, building a user-controlled 0–1 gradient. From there, I developed a flexible tool allowing users to define direction, rotation, animation speed, falloffs, and more. A key quality-of-life feature was real-time guides for curves and displacement direction, letting users preview changes without recomputing the full effect.
Complete
Making Of.
A full walkthrough of the production — environments, VFX, rendering, compositing, and the combined effort of the entire team.
Learnings
Key skills developed and deepened over the four months of production.
Management