Adobe Design Achievement Award winner Varathit Uthaisri’s short film, Surface, shoots from a perspective not commonly taken in film--underneath. The whole of the short gives the viewer the feeling of looking up, into the world. “My first inspiration came from seeing the footprints on the dirty street of Bangkok and wondering what would happen if we could see the 'live footprint'. This simple curiosity lead to a question: What would a world be like from an underground perspective? The question opens up many interesting discussions on human identity, how we see the surroundings and the point of contact.” said Uthaisri.
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Uthaisri is now an art director/designer based in New York City. He has experimented with various design fields such as print graphics, illustration, motion graphics, broadcast design, and live concerts. Surface was created as a thesis piece while studying at the prestigious Parsons School of Design where Uthaisri received a Master of Fine Arts degree in design and technology. The piece was part of UND-VIS, an under vision experiment exploring the visual language of an unconventional perspective from below.
To achieve the unique point of view for the film, Uthaisri used a variety of tools to get the effect just right. “The visual idea came from a customer entering the translucent platform at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York. I took the idea of the translucent platform of the store and created a big table that that the actor/actress could walk on while I captured footage from underneath. . It was a long process of experimentation because, instead of shooting directly from underneath, we put a big sheet of mirror acrylic on a 45degree angle and shot at the mirror. With this technique, I could capture the most area of the table without having to raise the height of the table. The downside of this technique was the deduction in quality of images filming through the mirror. All the footages were live captured in the hard drive using Adobe Onlocation CS4.
