Escape Students Celebrate "Dead Shot" Premiere

Henry N'Guetta, Klaudija Cermak and Oliver Chenery 

Escape Studios students are celebrating tomorrow's Sky Premiere of the indie thriller Dead Shot (formerly "Borderland"), directed by London-based film-makers Tom and Charles Guard.

In Dead Shot,  a retired Irish paramilitary witnesses the fatal shooting of his pregnant wife by an SAS officer, and takes his revenge to the streets of 1970's London.

Our compositing students, led by VFX Supervisor Klaudija Cermak, completed around a dozen shots on the film.

Dead Shot

Mark Strong (left) in Borderland

Starring Felicity Jones and Aml Ameen,  Dead Shot (formerly titled Borderland) is set in the height of The Troubles in the 1970s.  

When a border ambush goes wrong, a retired Irish paramilitary witnesses the fatal shooting of his pregnant wife by an SAS officer.  

After outwitting the SAS, now wounded, and presumed dead, he escapes, taking his revenge to the streets of 1970’s London. 

Directors Tom and Charles Guard

Borderland directors Tom and Charles Guard

Borderland was directed by Tom and Charles Guard, with live action production being filmed on location in Glasgow in 2022.  

Escape Studios

Tom and Charles visited Escape Studios on a number of occasions to brief our students and give them feedback on the ongoing VFX work.  

Glasgow 2022 for London 1972

For our students, challenges involved making the streets of 2022 Glasgow look convincingly like 1970s London.  This included paint and roto, 2D compositing, and smoke FX work. 

Escape Studios VFX 

Klaudija Cermak

Escape Studios' students have completed over a dozen shots, led by Head of Compositing and VFX Program Leader Klaudija Cermak, who is serving as VFX Supervisor.  

Escape Studios students working on the film include:

• Oliver Chenery - Junior Compositor
• Henry N'Guetta - Junior Compositor
• Stefano Ferron - Junior Compositor
• Joao Moreira - Junior Compositor
• Owen Manley - FX

Industry Engagement

Projects like Dead Shot offer our compositing students real-world experience of live-action film-making, and the chance to work with well-established directors. 

Movie Theatres and Sky Cinema

Dead Shot premieres on Sky Cinema tomorrow, Friday 12 May.

Thanks to Foundry

Escape Studios would like to thank Foundry, developers of the compositing software Nuke, for their kind co-operation and support throughout the project. 

We would also like to thank Tom and Charles Guard for their generous gift of champagne to our students, who were (of course) delighted.

Thanks from director Tom Guard:

"Dear Klaudija,

Dead Shot premieres tomorrow night on Sky

We’ve just come away from the grade and wanted to thank you for you and your team’s phenomenal work on the big wide shot of London. The smoke looks perfect and the clean up and Telecom Tower are exactly what we’d hoped for.

We can’t thank you enough for your perseverance and dedication on this project and the lengths you and the students have gone to get every shot right.

You are a crack team!

We’ll be in touch again very soon but just wanted to let you know how thrilled we are by what we saw this evening.

With best wishes

Tom and Charlie"

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2023,  follow this link.   

To apply, visit the official page here.