Director Dialogues: Zola

Director Dialogues: Zola

Highly regarded as the most well-made Halo montage of all time, Zola is the creator of the incredible Str8 Rippin team montage that was released earlier this year. Read on to see what it felt like for him to finally release it, and more.

Who are you?

I'm Zola, born in France but live in the UK, and am a freelance video / digital artist that enjoys creating videos and more recently has gotten into Photoshop-ing (is that a verb now?!) as well.

How did you get started making montages?

I always enjoyed watching them, and always thought it would be fun to try make one, I tried it briefly when Halo 2 came out with a cheap capture card and windows movie maker, but soon gave that up and only really got into it a couple years later.

Which one of your videos are you most proud of?

Hmm, that's a tough one. I guess it would have to be the Str8 Rippin montage, but that was more a sense of satisfaction than pride.

Speaking of that montage, describe the feeling of finally getting it released.

Well, it had been a long (long) process from conception to actual completion. I knew I was doing the video last July but it only came out in March so that's a considerable amount of time, so yeah it was a feeling of immense satisfaction and overwhelming relief at the time. As I look back on it now I can be more reflective and see that it was actually a huge deal to pull off. I had a small team helping me and it wouldn't have been possible without those guys so I'm grateful to them also.

What programs do you use for editing?

A bunch of Adobe programs from the creative suite, Final cut and a couple 3D programs like Maya also.

Could you give the up-and-comers a few tips?

Sure, learn the basics first, I spent a long time making sure I knew the fundamental mechanics of the programs such as After Effects before I got more in depth. A lot of people think that downloading a lot of plugins and skipping ahead to advanced tutorials is a good idea but it isn't. By learning and understanding how the program works you can more easily start to think bigger and understand how to make things happen.

What's next for Zola?

I am preparing to relaunch my website, it's getting a major overhaul and will be more based towards people coming back and checking in now, I plan to have tutorials to help people achieve effects from my videos, open up a blog and have a bunch of other cool stuff to keep the site fresh and interesting as well as having my new work on there. It's gonna be great and hopefully up and running next month so make sure you check it out!

Thanks Zola!

Check out all of Zola's video at his youtube channel.

See you next week!

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