Sam Directed by Kyle Winkelman

In the distant future of a galaxy very dissimilar to our own, an otherworldly janitor named Sam begins his duties at the cargo distribution center of WGA-Minora Biocybernetics. In the midst of cleaning up debris and longing for a life other than his own, Sam is suddenly presented with an unsupervised cargo plane, a disk containing all the knowledge of the cargo pilot and the opportunity for the misadventure of a lifetime.

US, 2005, 5:30 minutes

www.superwinkel.com

Biography of Director

SAM (2003) is a student film written and directed by Savannah College of Art and Design graduate Kyle Winkelman. Winkelman began development on SAM during the summer of 2002, focusing on the concept of a cybernetic janitor breaking free from the one task for which he was designed. As Winkelman's vision for SAM became increasingly ambitious, he realized production would need to transcend the typical one-man student project and grow into a team of specialized artists; by fall of 2002, Joshua Merck (animation), Ginka Kostova (lighting and compositing) and Raphael Phillips (modeling/texturing) had joined the SAM 3D-VFX crew. While SAM came together on the visual front, sound designer Robin Beauchamp took the reigns on the project's audio, producing an original score and the sound effects needed to bring SAM to life.

In early spring of 2003, the SAM crew celebrated both the short's completion and its acceptance into Siggraph 2003's Animation Theater. SAM has since been featured in numerous festivals and publications, among them the Savannah Film and Video Festival (where it garnered a “Best Student Film” award), Millimeter magazine, and the book, Inspired 3-D Short Film Production. The crew has gone on to such prestigious studios as Disney, The Mill: NY, Electronic Arts, and Rockstar, where they have contributed to the films The Day After Tomorrow and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the video games Medal of Honor and Grand Theft Auto, among other projects.

CREDITS:
Kyle Winkelman: director, writing, animation, modeling, texturing, VFX, concept development)
Joshua Merck: animation, layout
Ginka Kostova: lighting, compositing, VFX
Raphael Phillips:modeling, texturing
Robin Beauchamp: music, sound design, foley
Matthew Espinoza: DVD authoring
Evan Miga: additional texturing
Tony Lotts: additional texturing