GODSPEED:
ONE SECRET LEGACY

The universe is at war... Garud'Zbel, leader of the El'Thanat and bearer of darkness, launches his final attack on L'Voh'Dan, the home planet of the El'Djinn. Somewhere on that doomed world, a man tries to save his daughter, Kira, and protects her in a secure bunker. But all his efforts are in vain.

The mighty El'Thanat weapons reach the underground shelters. Radiation transforms Kira into a being of immense power, capable of confronting Garud'Zbel and bringing peace once again to the cosmos.

FROM INDIE SHORT TO TV MOVIE

The origin of this ambitious project stems directly from my original indie short film. A producer acquired the rights to adapt the concept into a feature-length TV movie. The opportunity was so immense that, with only a few months left to finish my Higher Degree in Advertising Graphics, I dropped out to join the production full-time.

Pre-production began by setting up a robust local render farm. We assembled a localized network of eight high-performance workstations, controlled via a KVM switch and dual monitors, creating a formidable rendering powerhouse that pushed the absolute bleeding edge of available processing power in 2007.

A HYBRID ANIMATION PIPELINE

The animation process was a complex hybrid. Martial arts expert Nacho Serapio choreographed and performed the combat sequences using a primitive motion capture (mocap) system. Importing these raw BVH files into Poser and Daz Studio was a technical nightmare. The software and character rigs were not natively designed for mocap integration, requiring extensive manual cleanup.

Furthermore, this was the pre-Avatar era; our mocap system did not track fingers or facial expressions. Every micro-expression, muscle twitch, and subtle hand gesture had to be painstakingly keyframed by hand. While an external 3D studio handled the vast space battles and ship designs, our core character pipeline remained heavily manual, requiring hundreds of hours of meticulous, frame-by-frame adjustment to bring the cast to life.

The environments were constructed using Vue, mirroring the pipeline of the original short but scaled to new heights. Because characters and environments were rendered separately and meticulously composited in post-production, the final film achieved a highly stylized, cinematic aesthetic reminiscent of classic matte painting techniques, giving it a distinctive visual signature.

SOUNDTRACK, SFX & ASSEMBLY

I composed the film's original soundtrack using FL Studio. However, recognizing my limited experience at the time, we brought in the brilliant pianist and composer Dani Espasa. He took my electronic foundations and elevated them with masterful musical arrangements, giving the score the cinematic weight it desperately needed.

Beyond the music, I handled the entire Sound FX design using extensive audio libraries, and executed the final film edit and montage in Premiere under the director's precise instructions.

THE HOLLYWOOD VOICE CAST

Despite its experimental animation, the film boasted an all-star Spanish dubbing cast, featuring the legendary voices behind Hollywood's biggest stars: Jordi Boixaderas (Russell Crowe, Daniel Craig), Pere Molina (Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman), Joan Carles Gustems (Alan Rickman, Sylvester Stallone), Núria Trifol (Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley), theatrical icon Joan Crosas, Pep Torrents (Al Pacino), Montse Miralles, Ivan Labanda (Chris Hemsworth), and the acclaimed Catalan singer-songwriter Lídia Pujol.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Written and directed by Jesús Manuel Montané.
Co-produced by The Invisible Zing Zang Zoom, Alguienvoló, Grupo Estudio, and Televisió de Catalunya.