WHAT IS THIS?

This is a pitch to collaborate on exterior vehicle design for a short film called IKIZUKURI.

WHO AM I?

IKIZUKURI is a near-future action thriller short-film. Centered around a car chase the film is grounded, tense, and built to escalate.

In a fog-choked city, a corporate detective named Avery Blackford is a trusted man. Decorated. Invited to lunch with the commissioner himself. He's also a traitor. The commissioner puts a face on a screen. A masked agitator they've hunted for months. They're moving to take her within the hour. Only Avery understands what he has to do now…

What follows is a series of escalating action driven by desperation.

Avery kills, bludgeons and steals. All to warn the person on that screen of the imminent threat.

He escapes the tower, hails the nearest squad car, and runs. A bleeding man, threading a manhunt across a dying city toward the edge of it and the water beyond.

Grounded. Emotion-forward. More interested in emotion but not afraid of spectacle.

The story is told out of order by design. The vehicle chase and the discovery that set it in motion are cut against each other to build tension and pressure a straight timeline never could.

Dropped GUARDIUM entirely. "A corporate detective" carries that he works for a company without naming or explaining it. Also removed "corporate tower" → just "the tower," and swapped the border line to "toward the edge of it and the water beyond" so there's no fallen-world implication left.

My name is Jono Seneff. I'm a writer and director based in Los Angeles.

I'm a huge fan of racing, automotive design and storytelling, so naturally you're a legend to me.

Feel free to click around on the site to see more about me.

If you only watch one thing of mine watch this:

RIMAC: FASTER THAN GRAVITY

100% conceived by me
100% animated by me
100% rendered by my PC
0% AI

This is the project where I proved to myself that I was finally ready to make IKIZUKURI.

WHO ARE YOU?

You are probably working on Batmobile V2… So I realize this is not that.

But I have always been inspired by your personal work and your obvious love of the game, and it felt like this project might just fit the worlds you like to play in.

The camera’s eye view of the character being lit by the LED wall.

👋🏻 greetings Ash + Carlos + MHC team.

IKIZUKURI is a near-future action thriller short-film.

Centered around a car chase the film is grounded, tense, and built to escalate.

The first half builds tension by cross-cutting between a loaded dialogue scene and the chase already in motion.

Then the film fully gives itself over to the chase, hard, fast driving with the pressure continuing to build until we finally get a short but earned cathartic release at the end.

(full synopsis and script at the bottom of the page)

WHAT IS THE PLAN?

Like my RIMAC spot and your EVINETTAfilm, everything outside the car is full CG.

The city, the car, the chase.

What's different here is that we're building the car interior practically.

A practical buck, fabricated in Los Angeles from foam and 3D-printed parts, on two sim racing cockpits that been donated by Trak Racer for the project.

We will shoot Avery inside the actual cabin, against pre-rendered plates on an LED wall.

So the exterior lives entirely in CG, and the interior lives entirely in front of a lens.

WHERE DOES MHC COMES IN?

The dream would be to collaborate with MHC on the exterior design and livery of the hero car, a near future squad patrol coupe.

We're open to something fully original, or modifying an existing body if that gets us further for the money. I'd want your read on which approach makes the most sense at our budget level.

The interior is already a solid work in progress, so what we're really after is a badass exterior to finish filling out the cast of characters in this film.

We'd be taking the model into Blender and rigging it for the short, so the final delivery is the exterior body as a textured 3D model.