Starlight Falls Motel | CGI & Photography Case Study | Dale May | New York
STARLIGHT FALLS MOTEL
Services: Concept Development, Art Direction, Studio Photography, Photorealistic CGI Environment Creation, Directing, VFX, Animation, Compositing & Post-Production | 2021-2025
I was tired of searching for the perfect location. So I built it myself.
THE CONCEPT
Every old motel tells a story. Not the Howard Johnson's kind, with their matching bedspreads and loyalty points, but the ones built in the 1960s and 70s that never changed with the times. Secluded, slightly dangerous, full of rooms that have see but don’t tell. As a photographer and horror film fan, I've been drawn to that world my entire career. The aesthetic of that era, the neon signs, the concrete privacy walls, the vintage metal furniture rusting quietly outside each door, feels like a film set that never got struck.
The Starlight Falls Motel is a fully realized, photorealistic CGI location built from the ground up. The concept: an upscale honeymoon motel from the 1960s that has since become a secluded, unkept place where people go to disappear. Shady activity and eleven rooms with endless stories.
THE BUILD
Designing and constructing the Starlight Falls Motel was weeks of reference gathering, architectural research, and obsessive detail work. I consulted my father, an architect and builder who constructed homes during that era, on period-accurate aesthetics and structure. My brother-in-law David, also an accomplished architect, contributed additional feedback on authenticity.
Every element was modeled and textured to an extreme level of detail, down to the keys hanging outside each door. I designed custom concrete tile privacy walls and period-specific sconces for the exterior. The vintage neon sign was built from a logo I designed myself. For the roof shingles, I used photographic textures sourced from my childhood home in Chadds Ford, PA.
The vintage metal Griffith chairs and tables I had envisioned for the sidewalk in front of the rooms didn't exist as 3D models anywhere, so I built them myself, complete with years of wear and tear. A payphone, ice machine, vending machines, and other period details were added until the location felt genuinely lived in, all the way down to the chewing gum and cigarette butts non the sidewalks.
To achieve the most realistic final results I used photogrammetry, custom modelling and photographic textures, rendered the scene in Blender 3D in Cycles Render Engine and final compositing with blue screen photography.
The Starlight is built to withstand extreme closeups of any surface, any fixture, any doorknob. It can be relit, recolored, weathered, or set on fire and used again the next day. No location fees. No permit applications. No schedule conflicts. Once you build it in CGI, you own it completely and permanently.
That kind of creative freedom is, honestly, one of the most exciting things about this work.
This first image is a preliminary render of the main office's hewn wood beams. Motel is unfinished.
Final props and structure details.
Vintage Griffeth Chairs & Table
Motel neon sign before I added the vending machines in the breezeway.
STARLIGHT FALLS MOTEL, ROOM 3: THE STILL SERIES
With the motel roughly 80% complete, I brought in contortionist and model Natasha King for the first shoot at the new location. Natasha and I are friends who have collaborated on several award-winning projects and she is always my first call for work that requires both physical commitment and strong presence in front of the camera.
The concept for Room 3: an undercover FBI agent, late at night, suspecting her cover has been blown. The scene ends in gunfire.
We shot the entire series in my Brooklyn apartment in August 2021, right after my wife and I sold it and the rooms were empty. With the family sheltering in Pennsylvania during Covid, the cleared-out space made a clean, quiet studio for the day. I used one Arri 650w Fresnel and shot against a white wall.
“Starlight Falls Motel, Room 3” series went on to win Lürzer's Archive 200 Best Digital Artists 2023 and earned an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards 2022.
STARLIGHT FALLS MOTEL, ROOM 4: THE SHORT FILM
A few years later, actor Phil Hyland mentioned he was coming to New York and asked if we could shoot together. I suggested writing a short script for us to film, not yet sure what it would be. His enthusiasm was the push I needed to make it something worth making.
The Starlight came to mind immediately.
Drawing loosely on Phil's previous role as a cop, I wrote a two-minute script for Starlight Falls Motel, Room 4. The story: a woman and her child vanish without a trace from the motel. Enter Detective Jack Malone, recovering alcoholic, homicide detective, and walking emotional crisis. The shady motel manager Harold tries to relay details of the incident and highlight some of the motel's finer amenities, but Jack can't stop trauma-dumping long enough to conduct an actual investigation.
It's a micro short dramedy. Phil Hyland plays it straight. For Harold, I cast my friend and bandmate from Satanicide, Phil Costello, whose long grey beard and instinct for improvised comedy made him the only choice for the role. The combination of one Phil playing it completely seriously and the other riffing for laughs was exactly the dynamic I was after. Writing a tight script and leaving room for improv is one of my favorite ways to direct. It's how I shot Jer-Z Knights, my 2003 Sundance Film Festival short, where Phil Costello also appeared and the majority of the film was built scene by scene from whatever we came up with on the spot. Watch Jer-Z Knights on Vimeo
The entire Starlight film was shot on green screen in my home studio. Every background, environment, and animated sequence was built in CGI. I did everything myself, except for the acting.
Starlight Falls Motel, Room 4 screened at the New York Shorts International Film Festival in 2025.
WATCH THE ENTIRE SHORT FILM BELOW
THE RESULT
The Starlight Falls Motel is not a project. It's a platform.
What began as a personal creative challenge, to build the location I always wanted to shoot in, has become a fully realized cinematic universe with an award-winning still photography series, a festival-screened short film, and eleven rooms worth of stories still to tell.
For advertising clients, the Starlight demonstrates exactly what a proprietary CGI location means in practice. A fully owned, infinitely adaptable environment that can be deployed for any campaign, any story, any brief, without a location scout, a permit, a weather window, or a travel budget. The creative possibilities are limited only by the concept.
The next chapter of the Starlight Falls Motel is already in development. With eleven rooms and years of history, the ideas are endless.
CREDITS
Starlight Falls Motel, Room 3 (Still Series):
Photography, CGI Environment Creation, Art Direction, Post Production: Dale May
Model: Natasha King
Starlight Falls Motel, Room 4 (Short Film)
Written, Directed & Created by: Dale May
Jack Malone: Phil Hyland IMBd
Harold: Phil Costello IMBd
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