This week I had the honor to talk to Fernando Sarmiento of PepperMelon, a very imaginative company who've created some really amazing commercial work for the likes of Microsoft, MTV, and Nike, but also create some really amazing stuff of their own. So check out their new video "ELA Love at First Byte" above, then read the great interview Fernando gave me below.

Wes: First tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started as a Director?

Fernando: Film was my passion as a kid, I keep remembering the day I saw Indiana Jones 3 for the first time at the movies, I just couldn't believe it. I've always been really interested in film, and special effects more specificly. I went to film school, but to only drop out 2 years later, bored to death after analyzing Citizen Kane for the hundredth time... I begun working on special effects for movies, but my first real break was my short film, Girl(Boy), that we did when we were just 16 years old. It came off being a tremendous rip off to the Matrix, but many people loved it, and loved the effects in it, so there I got my first job here, doing compositing work in Argentina.

When did you first become involved with PepperMelon, and what all kind of work does PepperMelon do?

I came to know Tomas Garcia, my associate, when we did together the postproduction for the film "The Aereal", which opened last year's Rotterdam International Film Festival. That movie was real heavy in postproduction and art work... We did a good job there and said hey, we should work together and do some advertising work! So, we did, and we put together a reel that came before the eyes of MTV executives here in Argentina who brought some good work to kick off the studio and begin our commercial career.

In ELA you utilized some really complex special effects, that look deceptively simple and retro. Can you talk about how the PepperMelon team accomplished some of the effects, and what were some of the most complex shots in the video?

This may not seem as complex, but it was really years work. ELA is only a fragment of a giant trilogy I've been brewing and kicking around in my head since the year 1999. This short only presents the "feel" of this project I have, which has a completely different screenplay/story. What I wanted to achieve, was that particular sense of nostalgy one once in a while gets and
can't really put a finger on it and say, hey, this is what I'm remembering. Around 1998 I was listening to this song on the radio, which made me real happy, but just coulnd't nail why. I came to analyze the song, thoroughly, and came to realize that at one moment, there was this trumpet solo that was wayyyy too similar to the theme song for Gummy Bears. And then it hit me.
The solo wasn't the most important part in the song, nor relevant. But it was in there, and it made me remember fond memories of my childhood. I decided to investigate that, and decided to do something similar, but visual. I begun studying the greatest nostalgic film of all time: Star Wars. We all saw it, we all loved it, and it's way in there, in our subconscious. Well, not really our subconscious, with all the new versions and animated Star Wars and posters and images nowadays. So, I said, Star Wars is way too obvious, so, let's analyze the copycat films of Star Wars during the 80s. That, and Saturday morning animated series. So, I figured that if I put together a decent story, even a real simple one, I could take elements from all these shows and movies and jumble them all up to make spectator interested in what one's generally interested most: one's self. You're not seeing more of a story here than what you're seeing yourself, your own childhood. Of course, for this to "feel" right, we had to achieve this retro VHS crappy look, as if you'd found an old VHS of Masters of the Universe in your garage...

Your shorts look like they were very expensive and took a lot of hard work to create, but really how much time and resources go into a typical example of your work?

Well, around 90% of the short was done by myself, working on weekends, in about 2 and a half years. People at the studio helped me out for the Intro sequence, the great Ignacio Godoy. And Martin Dasnoy, a good friend, did the whole designs and animations for the hawk, and the canvas at the beginning of the episode. Here in Argentina you don't have money, nor resources, so
most of the time, without an industry behind you, you must act like an orchestra-guy, doing everything yourself, from the shooting, animation, composition to the distribution. The music though was produced and composed by Mitch Davis from Pull. We met online, we just shoot a couple of emails and decided to go on this together. It was real great working with him, he's such a huge talent in the states, with his Orba Square project now being picked up by MTV for rotation and so on.

You seem to have a very retro, colorful aesthetic in much of your work, can you tell us where you get some of your inspiration from, and how it's affected and helped your develop your own voice?

Old movies, I tend to see the same movie 10 times the same week. The Neverending Story, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, what have you. I just keep seeing them over and over again. I think I get more inspiration from old stuff than new stuff.

With cameras and computers getting more powerful, and places like YouTube offering filmmakers more control in the creation and distribution of their work, do you see these as really changing the face of media?

I'm sure it is. Here in Argentina it's really difficult, nay, impossible, to get a property on the air. All shows just feed off other more popular shows, and you don't have fiction content and original series like in the US. There must be one or two series right now on TV, people just don't seem to care. Networks, I mean. Meaning that nowadays, you can forget about the networks and just shoot your stuff through Youtube or whichever service finds you. The thing is, making money off this, is also difficult. It would be weird to have someone pay to watch a short or series online... But I think it's going to happen in the future, that we won't have to be so dependent of these money-sucking studios and networks that just care about their cash and nothing else.

Making a film like ELA that so readily combines the visual languages of cinema and video games, what do you think of how these mediums could possible converge more in the future, as the current generation, who grew up playing video games starts making films inspired by the things that they like, do you think we'll see more and more of this convergence between the mediums?

Well, I guess we're living that right now, with the Doom films and Resident Evil, and so on. Films look like videogames directly. I once found myself playing Spiderman on an XBOX and I wasn't sure if I was playing it or watching the film, the image looked so similar. It seems big fx studios are spending "less" money for films, so they look similar to their current videogames and little children just can't find the difference and think it's all the same thing. I sure see this happening in the future, today games make more money than movies... so... I want to buy a WII, I think I'll be doing that next week...

How do you promote your work and get it out there? Do companies that you've done work for usually come to you, or do you submit Demo reels to them and they hire you based on that? Also, what advice do you have for filmmakers on how they can get their own work out there?

After 1 year of work here in PepperMelon, I've made some good contacts with people in Stash, BoardsMag, festivals, and so on, so whenever we do something new we just mail every contact we know and things build up from there, if, of course, what we did is of interest to our contacts. We also submit demo reels to potential new clients and generally keep people updated so as for them not to forget we're alive. My advice is: be out there, send a lot of emails, upload a lot of stuff, and make good collab work. Choose your partners carefully and wisely. A good way of getting some attention and recognition, is working (for free) with people who already have attention and recognition. And everything might just kick off from there...

What is the most important piece of advice that you have to offer to fellow filmmakers?

Advice? Not sure if I have any advice, except work hard. Work hard and people will notice. Working hard with lead you somewhere better, always. Maybe you won't be the next Bill Gates or John Lassaters, but at least we'll have a job and some money at the end of the month.

And finally, could you tell us about anything that you're working on now that people can watch out for soon?

We are developing a few series and short films for Nickelodeon and MTV, but everything's under wraps!!! We would definitely shoot you guys an email when we get anything done!

Thank you so much Fernando! It was great talking with you!

Check out their demo reel at their website: http://www.peppermelon.tv/reel.html

And Their YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Peppermelonweb

Also check out this great SFX Breakdown of a single scene in th ELA video so you can see how much hard work really went into the video: