Phil Hawkins

Cowabunga! An absolute pleasure and honour to direct this commercial for Magic: The Gathering’s long awaited collaboration with the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! 🐢 As a huge fan of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, it was a brilliant challenge to keep the classic 2D cell-animated cartoon nature of the characters but ensure they felt fully immersed and integrated into the live action environments. Produced by the wonderful team at @weareeyebolls , I also had legendary animation director @tonycervone (who worked on the original SPACE JAM) supervising the animation team who worked tirelessly for months on this hand drawn animation. Thanks to lead animator @pablo.navarro.animation and Ink & Paint Supervisor @nintai_films and their brilliant artists. Key to the integration from the get-go was adopting a strong visual lighting style helmed by @davidmeadows.film and graded by @danmorancolour . The Comp Team, led by @uncanny_danny_vfx , went through extensive testing to establish the look to make them feel like real characters. Big shout out to our art team and production designer @jamielapsleydesign who built the apartment set and created the office, boardroom, art room and tech lab sets in the shell of an empty office building with such lovely texture and detail throughout. And hats off to the unseen hero of the piece, actor @ryankane300 , who donned the huge green Turtle suit throughout the entire shoot to stand in for our animators and fellow actors with 100% dedication to all of the roles. So many people to mention on production like this so thank you to everyone that worked over the nine months it took to make! Full credits in the comments as IG won’t let me write them all here! Director/Editor - @philmblog Animation Director - @tonycervone Creative Director - Garry Marshall Exec Producer - @rhonadrumm Creative Producer - @vrok84 VFX Supervisor / Lead Comp Artist - @uncanny_danny_vfx Colour Studio @company_3 Sound Post @savalaspost Directors Rep @thevisionariesss Casting Director @mgcasting #director #magicthegathering #teenagemutantninjaturtles #tmnt #commercial

New reel! 🤩 🎬 Showreels are no easy thing to tackle, but after directing two more movies especially featuring young talented actors - and my biggest films yet - the reel needed an overhaul. Features my work over seven feature films, numerous short films including STAR WARS: ORIGINS and commercials. Featuring talent, and I’m dropping names here, but proud to have worked with Oscar nominee’s Christopher Walken, James Cromwell (BABE) & Naomie Harris (BOND) as well as Gwendoline Christie (STAR WARS/GAME OF THRONES), Tom Goodman-Hill (BABY REINDEER), Mark Williams (HARRY POTTER), Robert Englund (NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST), Finn Jones (IRON FIST), Malachi Kirby (SMALL AXE), Joseph Millson (CASINO ROYALE), the young Darcey Ewart and a whole bunch of other wonderful actors I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I say if you don’t want to work with kids and animals, you’re missing out on all the fun. Feature Films include Sky’s ROBIN AND THE HOODS, Universal’s PRANCER: A CHRISTMAS TALE, Sony Pictures’ THE LAST SHOWING as well as commercial work for brands such as MAGIC THE GATHERING and ACER. Thanks to all the production companies, producers, talented crews and post production houses that have helped me bring these images to the screen. Spot some virtual production too! #showreel #freelancedirector #directorsreel #featurefilm #director #filmmaking #virtualproduction #robinandthehoods #prancer

AI trigger warning! Can you make a proof of concept trailer for a feature film in 3 days, for less than $150 and not create AI slop? STARLIGHT is a fun and heartfelt screenplay by Jeremy Lawson (@jeremydares ) that we’ve been trying to get off the ground for a few years. It’s a unique blend of sci-fi and romance featuring spaceships, robots, tanks, time travel and a massive heart. It’s THE NOTEBOOK meets THE ADAM PROJECT. As much as we’ve had great feedback on the script itself, I always thought financiers/studios/sales agents were being turned off by the period setting and missed the sci-fi blend. So, after a chat with writer Jeremy, I challenged myself to dive headfirst into a complete project to really see whether my reservations / hesitation / nervousness about generative video were real. And I have to say, I’m surprised at the results. This was my very first attempt at using Runway. STARLIGHT isn’t a film I could make a conventional rip reel for. It’s a test as it also contains some emotional, heartfelt scenes... could AI be directed? Is it perfect? No. Does it sell my vision for the movie? Yes. Is it AI slop? I’ll let you be the judge... Some stats: - I spent three days on this and $140 on credits. - It was created in @runwayapp mainly using #starwarsorigins #Seedance and #Klang tools. - There was a total of 350 video generations to achieve these shots. I could have generated a LOT more to improve certain scenes and moment but it’s good enough for sizzle purposes. - I used #MidJourney for a lot of the tone setting (mainly as that was my comfort blanket!) and good Adobe Photoshop to manually manipulate some input images. I generated 86 sets of stills (MidJourney does 4 at a time so 3870 images). - All voices either from the AI gens or text-to-speech tools. - Edited in #AdobePremiere. I didn’t use any editing tools on Runway. I may have spent three days creating this but it’s the 20+ years of filmmaking experience that really makes it work. A tool is just that without a vision. So, I’m curious... am I drinking the AI cool-aid or is this a great tool for selling our vision for movies?

So what is an “rip reel”? Also sometimes called a Rip-o-Matic or Sizzle Reel. Here’s the one I made for my feature film ROBIN AND THE HOODS. It’s the painstaking process of finding and re-editing existing footage from movies and television to create a trailer for your movie before it’s even shot for sales and pitching purposes. For ROBIN AND THE HOODS, which was a GOONIES meets GAME OF THRONES style adventure story starring kids, it was important for me to create this to explain the ambitious scale and comedic tone of the movie. It was also essential to try and show the core directorial idea of the movie which involved seamless transitions between the reality and fantasy worlds. That was possibly the hardest part of sourcing and editing the trailer. Much easier when you’ve actually shot it! The sales trailer was a hit with producers, sales and financiers. I’ve cut one of these for pretty much every film project I’m working on at the moment. I’m a big watcher and fan of trailers... perhaps a side hustle of editing trailers would be fun! Unfortunately I can’t share my others yet as the projects are active but about time I shared this one. Enjoy! Featuring an excellent cover of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” which I would have loved to use in the actual movie. All of the lines are also pulled from other movies except the final speech written by @stuartbensoncomedy @findpauldavidson performed by @darceymayewart (who went on to play ROBIN) from her screen test which was a big moment in the script that I knew had to be in the trailer. #ripreel #sizzlereel #trailer #ripomatic

Happy Star Wars Day. Yes, it’s that time where I mention STAR WARS: ORIGINS again. Did I ever say I made a Star Wars / Indiana Jones crossover fan film in the Sahara Desert with a bunch of awesome, talented people? No? You must be new here. 😇 A photo dump of some snaps I don’t think I’ve shared before. Still the greatest shoot adventure I’ve ever been on. Forever grateful for the folks in front, behind the camera and in post that made this passion project a reality. Very close to 3 million views so if you haven’t watched it for a while, click the link in my bio and leave it running whilst you literally do anything else but watch. 😆 #starwarsorigins #fanfilm #morocco #indianajonesfanfilm #starwarsday @velvetfilm @flipbook_studio @bofilmservices

Billy The Bird is back! Our first commercial for @gooutdoors was really successful. Millions of views & shares, Billy appeared on the side of stores and even on trucks. This time, we’ve helped Billy spreads his wings in the great outdoors. Voiced again by the brilliant @willmellor76 and shot in South Africa earlier in the year. Thanks to Driven and our lovely clients for having me back, producer extraordinaire @sophiefinniganx at @velvetfilm , the ace local crew led by @hoopsproductions and my DoP @jamesoldhamdop who helmed the look across different cameras and FPV drones. Billy was brought to life by VFX whizzes @flipbook_studio . Expertly graded by @danmorancolour at @company_3 with @kerriaungleproducer . Where will Billy go next? 😇 #director #commercial #vfx

Ever wondered how you bring hand-drawn Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the real world? Here’s how we made the Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™ – Official Trailer with Wizards of the Coast. Eyebolls came on as the single creative and production partner, shaping the film from early concept and script through live-action production, hand-drawn animation and final VFX. To bring the Turtles into one of the world’s most established fantasy universes, we assembled our own team of industry ninjas, led by director Phil Hawkins, with animation direction from Tony Cervone. With two iconic IPs intersecting, the challenge was to respect what makes both worlds work, while creating something that felt like a real moment. The result is a hybrid cinematic that blends handcrafted animation with grounded live action, built for scale, humour and spectacle. Live-Action Director: @philmblog Animation Director: @tonycervone Creative Director: Garry Marshall Exec Producer: @rhonadrumm Creative Producer: @vrok84 VFX Supervisor: Lead Comp Artist: @uncanny_danny_vfx DOP: @davidmeadowsdop Production Designer: @jamielapsleydesign Stand in Turtle: @ryankane300 Colourist: @danmorancolour Colour Studio: @company_3 Post Producer (Colour): @kerriaungleproducer Sound Post: @savalaspost See below for full credits. BTS editor: @goose_bradley #MTGxTMNT #2danimation #liveaction #hybrid #behindthescenes

Fourth marathon in the bag. Manchester, you never disappoint. Such great spectators giving full energy throughout the whole course. To sum it up, swipe to see the video of @rikkiparsons and I walking into @altymarket and getting a heroes welcome from a room of strangers. 3hrs 50min. Negative splits. Didn’t feel ready this morning after low training mileage carrying an injury but very happy with that result. @manchestermarathon 🤩🥇🏃‍♂️

A little tease of something about to drop that’s been nine months in the making… 👀 🐢 🎥

When Wizards of the Coast decided to bring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into Magic: The Gathering, they didn’t want a standard launch trailer. They wanted a cinematic moment. We’re proud to have partnered as the single creative and production team across live action, traditional hand-drawn animation and VFX to bring the heroes in a half shell into the Magic universe. Directed by Phil Hawkins, with animation direction from Tony Cervone, we built the project from early concept development through live-action production, character animation and final compositing, all under one roof. Designed from the ground up to make 2D characters feel completely at home in a live-action world. Huge thanks to the incredible team who made it happen. Watch the full trailer via the link in bio 👀 Live Action Director - @philmblog Animation Director - @tonycervone Creative Director - Garry Marshall Exec Producer - @rhonadrumm Creative Producer - @vrok84 VFX Supervisor / Lead Comp Artist - @uncanny_danny_vfx Full credits below. 🐢✨👨‍🎨👩🏻‍🎤 #MTGxTMNT #2danimation #livaction #hybrid #gametrailer

How to do a battle “oner” with 50 kids and transition between present day and fantasy worlds within the same shot… 😅 I have two distinct memories of this sequence from ROBIN AND THE HOODS. Firstly, explaining the shot in an early meeting with producers and them looking at me like I was insane. And, secondly, explaining it on the tech recce to the entire crew… with a very similar reaction. Luckily they would have followed me into any battle to help create this and couldn’t have done it without them. You’ve always got to go with your gut even when logistics/weather/budget/common sense is against you. It’s a sequence that got stuck in my head the first time I read the script and one that would have been so easy to dilute. This was a little homage to one of my favourite battles from GAME OF THRONES. Swipe for the screenplay and shot list breakdown of the seven pieces that went into this “oner” involving swapping from anamorphic to spherical to zoom lenses, lead actress to stunt performer and back, crane to Steadicam to handheld and the multiple costume and light look changes to sell the two different worlds… and in one child-acting hours shooting day. But, hopefully, it’s seamless… with the VFX help! 😅 #director #battle #oner #behindthescenes #featurefilm