I was born on July 6, 1988, at a small city hospital in Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic. Growing up as the youngest of three brothers in a town like that, I was guaranteed the formation of numerous wonderful memories. There was never a shortage of activities, adventures to embark upon, and places to uncover.
However, the pinnacle of it all was reached when we rented our very first VHS tape – Star Wars: A New Hope.
Child of the VHS
Let’s journey back to the 90’s. Eventually, I found my safe place while glued to movies, TV and games. I would doodle and recreate the things I saw, consuming one VHS tape after another. I became somewhat addicted to the vibrant colors of movie magic.
One movie night was different though. With my brother Jirka, we came across a show that came on TV called Hollywood Stuntmakers. Everything changed from that moment on. Every week they demystified different aspect of moviemaking in very interesting way. The show kept revealing different disciplines of special effects – animatronic puppets, latex masks, miniatures, stunt work… you name it. It was like having a VIP backstage pass to most prominent Hollywood studios and having a guide to explain you how all those cool movies are done. Now it could sound like nothing special but believe me it was. We were transfixed on that show. To us it was pure magic. From that moment on, everything changed and we never looked back.
High School Years
High-school years were all about stress of trying to fit in, keeping up with my new friends, getting rejected by girls and trying to be someone I’m not. But our dad got us our first computer and that was really a seed of everything that came after. We started to experiment with 3D animation and saw what could be done with those tools. That really opened our eyes.
Dropping Out of College
In the fall of 2007, I made the decision to drop out of my college as I did not get accepted into my desired institution and ended up in a place I did not wish to be, just to make parents happy. Additionally, I felt a strong desire to become financially independent and relieve the burden on my parents, being the third child asking for support during study years. However, despite attending numerous interviews, I faced multiple rejections, causing genuine concern for my parents.
Nevertheless, my father, understanding my reasons and seeing my determination, never pressured me into making hasty decisions. I kept trying and eventually got my first job as a flash animator at Web Design Factory. This job was fun for awhile but I eventually moved on to other places where I felt closer to what I really wanted to do.
New Career
In the spring of 2009 me and my brother Jirka won a challenge with short CGI clip of a strange underwater encounter between octopus and whale. I put together showreel and got first job in Prague’s biggest visual effects company UPP as a character animator.
Then I went to Eallin Motion Art company where I kept focusing on character animation and layout and that slowly transitioned into my freelancing years. Learning the game, meeting few great friends and doing my own projects. Some of them got finished, some of them did not.
Rock Bottom
It was also around that time a group of four very close people established a company called Mira Pictures. Me and my brother Jirka being one of them. Unfortunately after few promising months the company got into trouble and had to be terminated. All of those close bonds got considerably endangered. Few of the bonds got irreversibly broken. But the ones that lasted are meant to last forever and me and Jirka smile together looking back at how we did not see the problems coming. The lesson was learnt the hard way.
However, we all got into our own financial problems thanks to this. I got to a point when I had to immediately repay considerable amount of money to Czech agencies for not paying my social and health insurance in a span of few years. I immediately returned back to the offices of UPP to get out of trouble asap. Which I thankfully did and left the company shortly after.
Recovery Years
The urge to turn things around was always in me and after finding my supporting job that doesn’t suck the life out of me at AboutFun in mobile game industry, in 2014 I decided to make my big debut. A full CGI short film. After two years of arduous production, the short film Saurora was successfully released online in 2016. Telling a claustrophobic survival story about a rescue mission set in deep ocean on an unknown planet where man can only survive in special heavy submersible suits.
By 2019, after few years in processing mode, travelling, I looked for things to do next and I co-founded a small independent film production company Roudfilm (Roud standing for the birthplace of my filmmaking dream) focused on a single big project, requiring strategically only a small investment. I got a new screen, latest Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, built a sci-fi set with my father and my brother Zbynda and kept working on the script in parallel the whole time.
Covid Years
But then covid came. During those crazy covid years I kept doing just small projects, some videography work, couple of horror shorts (Baptism, Scare Us Challenge) just for fun to keep me sane.
In 2021 I became father to our wonderful little princess. She makes us proud and smile literally every day. I know it’s cliche but I can’t imagine my life without her. She’s everything.
2023
And all of that brings me to 2023. The year I decided to move forward fully independent committing head-first to pursuing my true passion – storytelling and filmmaking.