The Invisible Front Gets Nice Shoes' Touch

The film, told through the words and experiences of resistance fighters, will introduce the world to movement hero Juozas Lukša. An architecture student who joined the resistance along with his three brothers, he became one of the rebellion's most charismatic leaders and eventually fled the Soviet Union to tell Lithuania's story to the outside world. 

 

The Invisible Front is a passion project for the filmmakers, who travelled annually to Lithuania for years to make the documentary. Bringing in Nice Shoes early in the creative process, the filmmakers lavished attention on every segment of production and post, enlisting Nice Shoes' expertise in first-class design, visual effects and colour grading. 

 

The studio designed the gripping opening title sequence - a combination of archival footage and a slow-moving tabletop shot of black-and-white photos, journals, ledgers and official documents - and brought a consistent look to the overall film, which was derived from various source media, many of them decades old. One incredible scene involves the blending of re-enactment footage shot on a Sony XDcam with footage shot on 16mm film. Work on the film was made considerably less daunting by the close collaboration between Nice Shoes' various departments. "VFX would be working on finishing the film, while Design created the title treatments, and the colour team then imported the elements into the final piece seamlessly for grading," explained colourist Lenny Mastrandrea.

 

"The Invisible Front tells the almost-forgotten story of a courageous band of fighters who stood up to the Soviet juggernaut against all odds," noted Sruoginis. "To tell the story with the proper respect and accuracy, we had to combine decades of footage into one coherent story, and Nice Shoes turned out to be the perfect partner for this challenging task."

 

"Juozas Lukša and his brethren define courage, and our work had to reflect that," said Nice Shoes producer Pat Portela. "This was a really personal project for Vincas, so we were honored to play a part in it."

 

Credits:

Film Credit:

A film by Jonas Ohman, Vincas Sruoginis, Mark Johnston

 

Produced by: Mark Johnston

Director of Photography: Mark Ryan

Edited by: Vincas Sruoginis

Featuring the Writing of: Juozas Lukša

Directed by: Jonas Ohman, Vincas Sruoginis

 

Title Design: Nice Shoes

Creative Director: Brian Bowman

Art Director: Lucien Yang

Designer/Animator: Kit Lam

Producer: Jen Cadic

 

Visual Effects: Nice Shoes

VFX Artist(s): Vincent Roma, Kevan Lee, Barry Furlano

Producer: Jen Cadic

 

Colour Grading: Nice Shoes

Colourist: Lenny Mastrandrea

Producer: Pat Portela

 

Audio Post: Heard City

Mixer: Cory Melious

EP: Gloria Pitagorsky