SEMO professor, students to screen their 3-D film tonight

Most school projects only last a semester. A short 3-D film by a Southeast Missouri State University assistant professor and five students took a year and a half.

"Death to the Different," about a 13-year-old boy who must kill a dragon to become a man, will be screened at 7:30 p.m. today at the Rose Theatre on Southeast's campus.

Peter Chanthanakone read three stories from a colleague, David Hayes, in April 2008 while he was teaching in Phoenix. Among them was "The Last Dragon."

"That was the one that really touched me," Chanthanakone said. He adapted it to make "Death to the Different."

He signed a contract that same month to come teach in Southeast Missouri State University's Department of Industrial and Engineering Technology. He started teaching in the fall of 2008, when he also received grant money to pursue the film project.

People can spend $60,000 to $80,000 for a short 3-D film, Chanthanakone said. "We got a small fraction of that."

Instead of a team of professionals, he recruited students from his 3-D modeling and animation class to work on the film using the technology for creating 3-D movies, shows and video games. "Death to the Different" could be viewed in 3-D, but the department does not have the proper projecting equipment. Today's show will be screened like a regular film.

The eight-minute 53-second film was an accomplishment nonetheless, Chanthanakone said.

"The quality is not super-high level," he said, but with the students' help, enthusiasm and effort, "we got pretty close."

Senior Michael Freezeland, senior Osby Tomlin, junior Kirk Lohmann, junior Chris Northcutt and Southeast graduate Tyler Paneitz worked with Chanthanakone on the film.

"I liked being a big part in deciding what the movie timeline will be," Freezeland said. During part of the film, the boy's father reads him a story, and Freezeland designed what that story would look like and helped figure out where it would go.

Chanthanakone said the students had "a huge role" in getting each step done. Movies are made like a pipeline. Filmmakers complete one section before moving on to the next. Students helped with character design, modeling 3-D characters, lighting scenes, texturing characters, settings, voice over, compositing and background.

Making the film helped the students learn the technical skills they'll need to design anything from 3-D models to video games to other 3-D films.

Chanthanakone started working on another film last fall with a production team of 10 students, some the same and some new. That film, about a futuristic robot jukebox living in an abandoned theme park, should be finished in May 2011.

"It's exciting, this contagious effort," he said.

charris@semissourian.com

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