2 weeks to go until hand-in deadline! Here are the tasks i’ve set for the group for the coming week:
Once Bitten: New Rough Cut
A wee update on exactly where i am in production… Enjoy!
For more details read the post on my Project blog
Buoy: Production update
4 weeks to go and the pressure’s on! At today’s meeting we reviewed the film completion goals we had earlier in the year and gave ourselves a more realistic deadline for film completion- a week before official deadline.
Again i am slightly disappointed with lack of communication from some group members- resulting in neither the director Olly or I having much idea about the stage their tasks are at.
There is an official production catchup scheduled for tomorrow with our course leader however, so hopefully there will be fuller attendance of the group at this and we will all come away with a better understanding of where the project stands.
For now, Olly and I have worked out tasks to be getting on with and how to proceed in the final weeks of our course.
Once Bitten: Animation update
Another long awaited animation update for my personal project. I’ve made some headway with the animation which i’m very proud of for the most part, however i am still behind over all… I managed to recruit a little help today with inbetweening, clean up and colouring in the form of Wendy! Hopefully this will take some pressure off my shoulders in the run up to deadline.
Buoy production update
buoy production schedule_updated
Although slightly behind schedule, we’re not as far behind as i would expect to be at this point in the project, so i’m feeling confident that the film will be completed on time!
Once Bitten: Rough comp
I put together some of my final footage (pre- colour correction and grading) with some finalised line animation and tried out some 2D tracking and masking:
The only thing apart from workload that worries me atm is the length this rough cut is coming out at… almost double my animatic- probably due to over generous time allowance when filming. I’m hoping this time will go down as i fully animate sections and have to cut the footage to match the animation.
Buoy Production update
I’m finding it difficult to keep up with production specifics of Buoy mainly due to lack of communication from several group members. There was low attendance at todays meeting again, and any attempt to contact people on facebook for updates on their tasks is ignored, the only people who post on the facebook production page seem to be Olly and I. I raised this issue today in the meeting and on facebook so i hope this will lead to more fluid communication between group members, and a more clued up production manager!
But, we soldier on:
Olly has set the new goal of having all 3D boat scenes rendered and ready to be comped with 2D animation by the end of June. There is also a suggested change to the end of the crab scene which Olly and Natasha are discussing the choreography of. Personally i don’t think the project needs any extra work.
Updated production schedule with all changes to scenes in production/ hierarchy. Olly and i are not completely calm about the amount of high risk scenes in green atm, although we are safe in the knowledge that they are all blocked roughly AT LEAST and some are complete. He is happy firing through shorter scenes quickly and coming back to the high risk scenes later.
Once Bitten: Animation update
Here’s a much needed progress and process update on my personal project animation!
Click the link below!!
(I couldn’t get any of my WIP gifs to work through wordpress)
Once Bitten: Live action filming
It’s been a busy and stressful week, although looking at these pleasant photos you’d never guess….
These are some reference and behind the scenes snippets from my 2 days of filming. I hope to god this is all the filming i’ll need to do, but i’ll have to wait and see! Carrying make-shift equipment around a forest all day is tiring, and although I couldn’t have hoped for a better team or weather – the scorching sun sometimes made for fast changing light and high contrast in shots where we didn’t need it… Working with friends and Kira the wolf stand-in was fun but working with a disobedient apple was not so much fun!
Photo by Wendy Wang, Please see the Official Project Blog for more!
At the moment i’m putting together a rough cut of the footage we gathered and the animation i have so far, and trying out some masking, 2D tracking and 3D tracking. I hope that this will speed up the final editing process as it will throw up any problems i’m having sooner rather than later and force me to solve them or look for ways around them rather than just letting them be for lack of time.
At the moment the rough cut looks to be nearly 5 minutes long! That’s nearly twice the length of my animatic. I know that we were sometimes over-generous with time when shooting scenes i had roughly timed in my animatic, I see no immediate problem in leaving sections that are empty of characters longer than i estimated as it makes almost no difference to my work load. I will have to be careful not to leave some shots over long and empty though for fear of boring the audience- Birdemic style….
Adam and I are planning to edit the colours and light across the chosen shots in the coming days, this will hopefully help to tie very differently lit scenes together and express the chosen moods of my film a little better.
The decision of how to colour my characters is drawing close. I decided to hold off making the final call on colour palettes until i saw what the final plates would look like, and now that will have to wait until post colour correcting. I have had a little play around though and am keen for feedback.
I was tempted by coloured lines in theory but looking at the comparison with plain black line art against a photo background from our filming days… I am leaning further towards black lines (also for speed and simplicity sake).
I will be attempting to put together a rough colour script in the coming days to help me colour correct my footage. Once that is complete and i have some feedback on my character colour choices i can start working out how to best and quickly colour my animated line art!!
Thank you to my filming team:
Adam Morrow- Camera work
Wendy Wang- assistant and photographer
Qi Feng- assistant
Kerri- reference actor, assistant and dog trainer
Kira- reference actor and stick finder
Thank you to colourlovers.com for colour palette inspiration
Please follow The Official Project Blog as we progress for more detailed posts!
Story Surgery with Mark Grindle
Mark Grindle held individual project surgeries today. For “Buoy” the main feedback was about tightening up the story and making it more about the BOY’S journey rather than the captain’s, also emphasising the importance of the SPYGLASS. He suggested some small cuts but mainly just changing scenes into first person perspective shots- therefore reducing character animation and letting the audience see through the main character’s eyes. Olly has begun re-cutting his animatic according to the notes he decides to to take on board from Mark. Because of the suggested cuts he has some time freed up this week to recut the animatic, complete his backgrounds and complete some very short scenes.
I met with Natasha today and made sure she had some tasks to be carrying on with this week- unlike what i previously thought scene 30- 33 are not blocked (this is part of the crab fight scene) so i asked her to work on those. She also received notes from Olly about the scenes she had already blocked and is busy cleaning up keys and making small changes according to a staging flaw Mark pointed out today.
I also had an individual meeting with Mark about my personal project “Once Bitten”. His feedback was very positive, he said the story hung together nicely. Some small suggestions he had were: allowing more time before the pup has a negative reaction at the end of the film (allowing his innocence to linger a little longer while the audience understands before him what is happening); adding a slight zoom in or focal length change in the first person perspective shot of the wolf mother looking at Anna through the trees to emphasise the inescapable danger Anna is in.
Slava Lawson: Animation & Visualisation 