Dante Falls is a USC graduate thesis film directed by Nancy Lin. This spooky film takes place in a graveyard, where you may or may not get possessed if you aren’t careful. I was not originally the VFX supervisor for this film, in fact I was pulling focus on set, but during post I was asked if I could take over for the previous artist and crank out some shots on a tight schedule and I said why the hell not. I did a number of smoke simulations to portray the evil spirits escaping their magical containment box and flying about.

During one particular scene, one of the ghost hunters is ambushed by a spirit that crawls up her leg unnoticed. The spirit takes over her mind and causes her eyes to glow demonically.

The situation reaches a climax as the evil spirits are exorcised with holy water, causing a violent convulsion.

Smoke simulations were done in Blender 3D and composited in After Effects. Don’t play in graveyards kids!