Bill Oberst Jr, Los Angeles SAG/AFTRA

(above) Director Oleg Alexander's previs for PRIMITIVE, an innovative VFX short inspired in part by author Jared Diamond's writings. Alexander writes: "The idea for the film came to me while reading Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. In this book Diamond paints a picture of humanity–highlighting both our capacity for innovation and our capacity for genocide. He writes that the Cro-Magnons (anatomically modern humans) migrated from Africa and arrived in Europe forty thousand years ago and that the Neanderthals became extinct soon thereafter. Drawing from similar events in human history when a 'numerous people with more advanced technology invades the lands of a less-numerous people with less-advanced technology', he concludes that 'Cro-Magnon diseases, murders, and displacements did in the Neanderthals.' "

Oleg Alexander's PRMITIVE Pre-Production Blog

(above) University of Zürich reconstruction of a Neanderthal child

(above) PRIMITIVE Fake Motion Control Test - Click to jump to technical discussion on Oleg's blog...

(above)Mocap walk test on rig for Bill Oberst Jr. Click here to jump to Oleg Alexander's EMILY PROJECT vid.

Bill Oberst Jr. facial scan by Mimic Studios. Pre-Production for Oleg Alexander's PRIMITIVE

PRIMITIVE is a stereoscopic 3-D short now in pre-production from Oleg Alexander, director of THE EMILY PROJECT video. EMILY generated over 500,000 hits on YouTube in the first week of its release and is considered a major leap forward in realistic facial animation. He also worked on facial animation for THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON as Lead Technical Artist for Image Metrics.

PRIMITIVE will combine live & digital elements (along with some innovative new processes) to depict a meeting between a Neanderthal and Cro-Magnons (the ancestors of modern humans.) Neanderthals became exinct after Cro-Magnon contact, and there is conjecture that Cro-Magnon murders helped do them in. Bill Oberst Jr.'s performance as The Neanderthal will be used to drive a CG model, similar to how Bill Nighy's performance was used to drive Davy Jones in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series.