Olivier “Hero” Dressen is a Belgium director based in Shanghai since 2012. He have been drawing since He was a kid and directed animation films on digital and 16mm films. He also love to mix different techniques such as photography, drawing, graphic design,
video, etc. His primary directing style is characters driven and storytelling. Commercials, Music Videos, and Shorts his career as a director started in 2000.
In 2012 I began a side career as a photographer for portraits, fine art, fashion and editorial magazines.
Now I am currently based in Asia but also work overseas.
Michael and I met through a mutual friend several years ago. Our passion for film and film making led to a creative partnership still strong seven years later. Our first collaboration was “The Passport” which was produced and shot within three weeks of finalizing the script. “The Passport” addresses our idea of identity and memory. “We are what we remember” illustrates the fragile balance between our existence and the fear of loosing who we really are. This project is personal to myself in particular, as I experienced a degree of memory loss in the past, and realize the importance of how precious and fragile our memory really is.
Regarding my cinematic inspirations and influences, Memento and Drive are two films who really set the tone for me. Memento because of the movie’s subject and his main character’s quest and Drive for the colors, mood, esthetics and music. The film score, as a music video director and part-time musician, I really wanted to express emotion through the music and aim to create a poignant connection between the character, the score and the audience. As I financed, produced and directed this movie myself, the post production process was quite a challenge. I spent a lot of time on a rough edit, both image, sound and visual effects using a variations of post production tools and techniques. From Adobe Creative Cloud Suite to Cinema 4D and Substance painter and even ADR for some sequences. I went back to some of the locations with a sound kit capturing water drips or ambiance noises in the streets of Shanghai etc to give it more depth and realism.
I also learned a new 3D software for this project, Substance Painter was used for some of the 3d texturing process. I found it to be a very intuitive software which allowed me to paint and create a very 3 dimensional texturing. My idea was to create an advanced draft version as close as possible to my vision and seek help from experienced and high end specialists back in my country of birth, Belgium. And thanks to a talented group of people we managed to complete the film and get it to the level it is now.
Our film is finally starting to hit festivals around the world and we hope that our audience will also be inspired and equally passionate for this film. Our next challenge is to produce a feature film together as we don’t want let Bryan Boise rest for too long.
Michael and I are currently based in Shanghai, China. We continue to collaborate on film projects, which we hope will come to life across screens worldwide in the near future.
Los Angeles feedback film festival 