The Film Is Finished!

Cementerio de las Almas from Jordan Browne on Vimeo.

It's complete! Still a few things here and there that aren't quite perfect but I'm really happy with how it came out. Looking forward to starting a new project (what ever that may be)

Virtual Worlds

The scene which I am currently working is made up of photographic elements composed in a digital environment. This process involves the layering of multiple 2d images in a 3d world. This is an interesting process because allows you to avoid many of the restraints of the stop motion medium, the camera for example can be moved smoothly and background details such as the sky can be easily animated to add additional layers of depth to a scene. These methods provide the advantage that even after a sequence is shot, basic components such as layout and texture can be manipulated without having to re-shoot anything. In terms of animated space, this really opens up an array of new possibilites which I am curently exploring through the cinematography of the project - particularly the ability to move the 3d camera through the depths of an environment.

There are ofcourse limitations in animating like this as well, aesthetically everything seems a little more plastic and computerised. To help remedy this, colour correction will be applied to the final film to ensure a consistency between scenes and allow the traditional and digital elements to blend more seamlessly.

Walking

For the first half of the film the protagonist is bed ridden, now I'm past those scenes I'm starting to discover the difficulties of animating a realistic walk cycle.... I should have just built a wheel chair.

The Magic Of Post-Production

The first third of the film has been filmed and edited! The entire second scene uses red screen so that has been an interesting challenge to work with. I hadn't really had that much experience with After Effects before this semester but so far it's been a very powerful tool. A lot of colour grading has also been done with a high contrast approach as well as the application of cooler tones than most of the original images had. This will hopefully give the final film a much darker aesthetic and moodier atmosphere.

Now I just need to go shoot the rest >_>

Sound Design

So I'm writing part of the soundscape at the moment, looks as if its going to be a blend of guitar and synth with a lot of ambiance. The way I want to do it is not as one single track but as a series of motifs which will be complied together in the editing software. This means that the soundscape can be developed in direct relation to visual elements so things could be cued directly on cut as well as allowing a cohesive integration of both foley and melodic components. It's hard to say where inspiration the soundtrack is coming from, its not really mimic anything in particular, more just coming out the way I think it should feel.

Shooting The First Two Scenes

A lack of updates on here doesn't mean a lack of progress - I've shot around the first third of the film! Still a lot of work ahead but it's looking really good so far. Animation-wise it was quite difficult to start with considering I hadn't done any stop motion in over a year. Luckily the movements of the character are fairly passive in these parts so it was a good way to ease into the project. The hospital scene is looking really good and the materials came out great on camera. The 'darkness' is quite obviously just clay but there's a sort of real, material aesthetic which I quite like and in many ways it actually suits the medium. The next scene is going to use a lot of computer generated effects and was shot on my home made red screen (a piece of A3 taped to a box!). Hopefully by the end of next week this will all be edited and some new footage taken.

A few shots from production over the last week:

Decaff

Decaff - an interesting series of films by New Zealand (originally Hamilton) animator Greg Page. Although the dark yet comedic tone is quite different to my own work, this film is quite inspiring in terms of the animation process and the associated aesthetics.


Decaff (1994)

Despite the simplicity of the sets and low production values this film is still highly engaging and for me, a lot more enjoyable than many animations which I have seen with far greater technical qualities. In relating this film back to concepts of animated space and on screen realities it is interesting to consider that regardless of the aesthetic disconnection to our own world, that in the context of the film and by nature of the stop motion medium, a cinematic reality of its own is formed which is entirely compelling.

Hospital Room

Considering different aesthetics for the hospital room set:



The lighting is defiantly going to be what sets the mood in the final film, cold, dark and eerie.

My character is humanoid but not human, meaning that the 'real' world in the film is not necessarily the same as our own so there could be a lot of experimentation in the environment. Still, being that this is the only location of its kind I think a traditional approach would work best to draw a distinction between the two realities and make the shift to alternate world more impacting.

Got a few more bits still to make but I think it's coming along quite nicely:

The bed was kind of tricky to design, I wanted there to be a bare skeletal kind of look to it. The framing is actually an old TV aerial, the head and foot boards drawer handles and the springs a fish net glove.

Plot Development (Finally)

Been doing a lot of design stuff lately and it's starting to feel a little aimless. I've really just needed to get actual story down to a concrete form to keep a sense of direction. I'm still not 100% happy with all of this, I like the start but the ending feels a little lackluster at the moment.

Beat Script

-Character lies alone in hospital room. There are dead flowers at their bed side table.

-Darkness begins seeping through the walls, tentacles engulf the scene until they wrap around the bed, dragging the protagonist into blackness where darkness tears out their soul.

-Character awakes to find themselves in a strange landscape covered in giant black thorn like plants which wrap around themselves over and over. Feeling the emptiness inside themselves they begin to wander through this new world.

-Eventually the character comes across a set of footprints which they begin to follow.

-In a clearing stands another creature, similar to themselves with their back turned. As the protagonist approaches, this creature turns around, revealing that it is in fact faceless. It points up a hill to a nearby well.

-The main character approaches the well, looking into their own reflection to see a bright light and he voices of spirits callng out. The protagonist climbs in.

-Underwater, they swim to the surface finding themselves at the edge of a long river with mist rising from the water. They climb aboard a nearby raft and begin paddling.

-Eventually they come to a cove with a chest. Opening the chest releases the soul which is now reunited with the protagonist.

-The darkness doesn't take kindly to this defiance and purses the fleeing character.

-The sound of static, a beating heart and screams are set to a rapid montage interspersed by the protagonist being torn apart. This sequence comes to a sudden end, returning to the hospital room where all that is shown are the flowers at the bed side table which are no longer dead, but now fully alive.

Storyboards

These are some storyboards I drew up, they are quite rough and were more intended as a way for me to sort out my ideas than to act as a comprehensive guide to how it's all going to be shot.

The ending hasn't been drawn up yet but will be added soon. Just thinking of the best way to do it.

A New Character

I started working on a new character, this one is slightly smaller than the last one which will make set construction easier and users thinner wire which should make movement a lot smoother. Also experimenting with different kinds of heads, despite my fascinations with the Kuleshov Effect, I have to say that facial features seem to express a lot more emotion. I suppose the same philosophy can still be applied but it might require a bit more effort in terms of animation.

Overall this is very similar to the last character, just refined in structure and design. (Also looks less alien like than the old one which is something I wasn't really going for anyway.)

Plant Life

I've been thinking about what he 'other' world in the film should look like and the first thing that has come to mind is the foliage and plant life. This is because such features can be highly defining and be used to create a sense of fantasy which is believable in the context of the films environment as well as being fairly straight forward to construct.

A visual theme present in a lot of my art is the Burtonesque type of structures, a motif I would like to carry forward into this animation. The main consideration which has to be made is the transition into 3d space, for inspiration on this aspect I looked to the New Zealand native fern which bears a similar resemblance.

A fern and a drawing demonstrating the intended style of the other world's 'trees'

So far attempts at this recreation have been highly successful. I've been using the same method as I employed for my character with the use of masked wire covered in clay to make a bendable and stable model. So far I've made several of these but in the actual film I plan to make use of green screening to impose multiple layers over the top of one another which would give the illusion of depth as well as allowing the layout of the landscape to be manipulated in post production for fullest effect.

A similar style will be used on the 'darkness' throughout the film with this sort of structure being anthropomorphised into a bodiless tentacle of expressionless, yet harmfully obvious intent against the protagonist.

Creating The Character

Today I made my first prototype of a character based upon my earlier concepts. I used 16G galvanised wire for the body and 18G for the arms and fingers. This is thicker than I found a lot of people have recommended but works fine in this situation as it meant I didn't have to twist it around itself.

Epoxy was used to join the different sections of wire with modeling clay to flesh out the skin (quite conveniently both of these are a very similar colour). Masking tape was wrapped around the raw wire to add muscle and stop the clay being cut through. I looked into using foam to achieve this same effect but for the size and structure of my armature the tape by itself seems to work fine.

The head at the moment is just a clay ball, I'm still thinking of a way to do a sewn shut mouth like in my concepts.

I'm pretty pleased with this result especially as a first attempt. As far as actually animating this character is concerned, I think the fingers would benefit from thinner wire and perhaps longer legs would work better proportionally. The next step will be do add finer details and clothing along with a way to tie it down to the set.

The Kuleshov Effect

While reading an essay I came across an interesting reference to a Russian film maker named Lev Kuleshov who became known for his experimentation with montage and editing.

The Kuleshov Effect refers to a form editing where one picture or sequence would be played multiple times throughout the film with the images in between changing. This creates the illusion that the unchanged image is actually different each time as the audiences perceives it to be different by the affect of what came before.

This is something which interests me as far as the effect itself is concerned as well as the possible implications it could have for my film.

Something I have previously toyed with is the idea of faceless people or creatures. In the context of animation this idea could be highly useful in that if a character had no face, could they still express emotion? A lack of or possibly a minimised amount of facial features would bring the focus to the characters gesture and body language, strengthening an overall sense of kinesthesis and being that my film revolves entirely around a single protagonist, the viewers connection to this character is of great importance to making the film engaging.

Additionally the short film L'Homme Sans Tete comes to mind.

Some Conceptual Stuff

The conceptual aspects of this project will be discussed in full in an essay which will accompany the final film. It is however, highly useful to consider some of these elements at this stage in order to solidify my ideas as well as inject this thought process throughout the development.

Fantasy and escapism are central themes of my film in terms of the plot as well as the very medium of the project creating an on screen reality in itself. Films such as Corpse Bride (2005) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006) are examples which both include alternate worlds. What I like about both of these is the fact that as well as being part of the stories, the other worlds also hold visual and thematic significance.

There is a particularly good essay on the subject which talks a lot about the psychology behind escapism. Even though the character isn't necessarily human, I feel like it is important for them to display human traits and emotions in order to allow the audience to connect with them. The reason for this is that relation to the character will result in a deeper immersion that will allowing the animated space to become a perceived reality of its own.

Of concepts relating directly to animation, two which will play a significant role in my film will be metamorphosis and kinesthesis. Metamorphosis is a central element to the plot since there are many occasions where the environment morphs in different ways while the use of kinesthesis is something I want to keep in mind during the animating of the film to maximise believability and fluidity with the intended effect of an increased engagement with the viewer.

Character Design

I've begun designing my main character, everything is still in the very early stages of development but a few things have been worked out already.

I decided to make him bald, since he is in hospital it defiantly makes him look more sickly and slightly more disturbing. There is also a practicality in that I won't have to worry about animating hair. For the face I don't know what I want to do just yet but the bug-eyed approach has been working quite well so far. Perhaps a completely blank face could also be an interesting possibility...

I like the idea of a 3 fingered claw type approach to the hands. This would be more feasible to animate than a human type configuration as well as providing a more fantastical and unique physicality to the character which is mirrored in the bird like feet.

A lot of these ideas are stemming from my own art which I have done over the years.

Being that the character is meant to be on the edge of death, its deign is intended to look somewhat disturbed and fragile. This aesthetic is also heavily influenced by other artists such as Adam Jones, the guitarist of Tool who also directs a lot of their music videos (who in turn bases many of his ideas of off the Quay Brothers).

Characters from the music videos for Parabola and Schism

Coincidentally I'm also seeing a resemblance to the 1997 Playstation game, Abe's Oddysee.


'Abe' from Abe's Oddysee

Overall, I quite like the style which I've been developing both for the aesthetic value as well as that these designs should be quite easy to create a physical armature from (more on this later).

Transitioning Worlds

The change from 'real' to surreal worlds offers a chance to explore transition throughout animated space. I want to do something more than a basic fade or cut which would be a change far to sudden as well as entirely missing the opportunity to experiment with a sequence with so much potential.

#1 The Room collapses around the bed into darkness, falling away in every direction through a seemingly endless void until the bed itself lands in the new world.

A possible way of doing this could be from an overhead view where as the scene subsides, the camera dolly zooms into the patient lying on the bed. The intended effect of this would be do create a sense of kinesthesia to convey a heightened sensation of falling as well as being an effective way of forerunning the other worldly surrealism to come.

#2 Blackness seeps into the room, through the walls and floor, dripping from the roof, it moves and spreads as if it has a consciousness of its own. Eventually it works its way up the bed enveloping everything until it spreads over the patient.

The think I like about this idea is that the blackness could very be much anthropomorphised in its movements. A tentacle or snake like motion would be an effective approach to this idea. It would be as if the darkness were pulling and manipulating the protagonist away into the other world. This kind of movement would also help form a nightmarish atmosphere and is different than the other ideas in that there is a clearly visible force acting upon the patient against their will where as the other concepts are far more passive.

#3 The room morphs into a new environment, objects change into the new landscape as a gradual progress until the patient finds themselves sitting up in their bed surrounded by a completely different world. The new world would very much grow out of the old one in a Where The Wild Things Are type fashion.

#4 The room itself implodes. Walls close in pushing furniture and objects aside as everything gets crushed into a nothingness out of which the protagonist would likely fall through into empty space.

Influences/ existing media to investigate further:

-The ‘darkness’ in the video games: Shadow Of The Colossus, Ico and Kingdom Hearts.




-Samurai Jack, the intro sequence as he gets sent into another dimension



-Limitless, zooming cinematography in opening credits

Light and Shadow

The Quay Brothers typically employ a dark, textured, grungy style with a definite dose of surrealism. The aspects of their work which are of particular interest to me in reguard to ideas for my own film are that of cinematography and lighting.

Street Of Crocodiles, perhaps the best known work of the Quay Brothers which demonstrates the techniques which I have examined.

Something I like about their work is the strong use of light and shadow and the relationship between what is seen and what is not. The hard contrast between light and dark forms a foreboding mood in which a sense of mystery is created. Things are not always what they may appear to be and the viewer is left wondering what is around the next corner. This aesthetic is heavily complemented by the cinematographic techniques used in many of their films. Shallow depth of field as well as extreme close-ups allow for focus to be placed directly on the subject of the shot as well as providing ambiguity to the surroundings.

In terms of my own project, these ideas are extremely useful to consider. Stylistically, such an aesthetic would work well with my story as it would undoubtedly complement the darker tones of the plot. There is also a highly practical advantage to this approach in that such techniques can be used to give the illusion of depth and expanse without actually revealing a whole lot of the set. This would be a useful consideration to make in the set design itself as even a small scene could be manipulated into an enormous landscape with the right camera and lighting setups.

Storyline

This is very much a skeletal form of the plot at the moment, the main part to be filled out is the middle section which will be further developed as my project continues. Having a basic outline is important at this point because it will allow for my research to be more concise and allows ideas gained to be directly applied my film itself.


A child lies alone in a hospital bed of a terminal ward. The room is empty, stale and decrepit. All that furnishes what could just as easily be a cell in an asylum is the cold steel bed and a small metallic table. On the table is a withering rose in a clear glass vase. As the last of the living petals fall from the flower, so too does the protagonist fall into death. They find themselves in a foreboding world of surreal wonder which offers a hauntingly cruel comfort from the reality which they have been plagued with. This would be a bitter sweet tale of loneliness, hopelessness, acceptance and eventual salvation when they are revived back into the world to find themselves alive and the rose in full bloom.

The film would be comprised of two basic environments, that of the hospital room and also of the other world which the protagonist experiences. It is very much open to interpretation as to what exactly this world is, perhaps the afterlife, a form of purgatory, a abstract representation, a dream or an elaborate construct of a child's mind.

The hospital room would be a small to medium sized with a grey lino floor and dull concrete walls as well as a small window half covered by blinds. The colours in these real world scenes would be extremely bland with no vibrancy in the palette aside from the rose at the end.

The majority of the animation would take place in the other world where imagery would very much be emotionally charged with a focus on the character and what they are feeling. The landscape of this place would be barren and desolate to maintain a sense of melancholy which would be interspersed by sudden charges of hope and light as well as fear and darkness. The vibe is not so much intended to be scary but rather a disturbing portrayal of the fragility of humanity. There could also be additional characters from figurative depictions of emotion projected into strange creatures to others who have found themselves lost inside this realm.

I'm still largely undecided what would happen in this section – it would be a good opportunity to explore more experimental forms of animation as well.

Boy

Last night I watched Taika Waititi's Boy, a film I'd been meaning to see since it came out last year. Interestingly the film also featured short animated segments of hand drawn sequences interspersed between the rest of the film - a poignant aspect which I could consider in my own work. The idea that different mediums of film making could be applied within the same project is an interesting thought indeed. If I end up using stop motion as my form, it is entirely plausible that certain segments could explore other kinds of animation such paper cut out or hand drawn frames. The way that Boy employs such technique is effective in both that the scribbly style of the drawings create a strong relationship with the child's mind as well as allowing the film maker to execute complex scenes far more simply (such as a car crashing). Such technique could prove to be effective stylistically as well as being of practical use in creating sequences which may be difficult in the stop motion medium alone.

Narrative Structure

As I'm throwing around ideas of possible stories in my head, one of the things which keeps coming up is how to present an engaging narrative in the space of what will only be a film under the five minute mark. In terms of a traditional structure, you can break most stories down into four basic steps:

-Incident
-Conflict (can be multiple points)
-Climax
-Resolution

You can apply this to nearly any Hollywood or traditionally structured film and it will fit like a glove. One thing which I am realising is that the length of a film by no means restricts this model (or any other for that matter). For shorter films each point may not be as filled out or as complicated but can be employed none the less.

The interesting thing about animation is that you can have something compelling without having any clear direction or story. The medium seems to lend itself quite well to experimental approaches where in terms of story, something as simple as the animism of household objects can be completely engaging on its own without the need for a clear narrative. In many ways the technical accomplishment of animation and its aesthetics (stop motion or otherwise) holds value in itself based purely on the nature of its construction.

For my own film I am most drawn to a more traditional narrative; at least in the sense of characters and a conflict or motivation. This stems largely from my own interest to create a story of this kind but by no means does this restrict experimentation in terms of cinematography and plot devices. Regardless of how everything turns out I think it's useful to consider these ideas - even if all preconceptions of narrative were completely subverted, it would be just as important to have a grasp of these conventions as it would be if you were working directly within them.

An Introduction...

Welcome to my new animation blog! This page is being made in relation to the development of my upcoming stop motion animated film which will begin production late next month.

I have always been interested in stop motion and gained a considerable amount of experience in the medium with a project I worked on last year. This time around I hope to achieve even greater results in all aspects from initial developments to the final short.


'Ole The Brave', an animation I worked on in 2010.

The entire process behind the making of this film will be documented on this blog site as part of the project itself, for my own personal recollection and perhaps most significantly, to give others insight into both the concepts as well as the practical techniques behind making a film of this kind.

The next few weeks will be primarily focused on research as well the early stages of development for my own short film. In terms of what will be specifically investigated, I plan to study the fundamental conventions of animation both technical and conceptual as well as any other films or film makers historical or contemporary who may be influential in helping shape my own ideas. I also plan to consider elements related to New Zealand imagery which will be drawn upon to inform my own work. Being from this country myself and creating a film in this environment, it makes sense to examine a local identity as a point of reference in addition to international sources.

The yet to be titled (or designed!) film is scheduled for completion at the end of May this year.

Should be fun :D