4th Year Film - Idea Development

I thought it was about time I wrote a bit about the progress of my final year film. Over the summer I was mulling over ideas and seeking inspiration, and in the last month or so I've been busy getting these ideas down on paper!

Inspiration and Research

First of all, the main inspiration for my film was the remote North Western corner of Scotland. I spent summer exploring the area (plus taking a trip to the Outer Hebrides), collecting stories and information, and sketching as I went.
I wanted my film to conjure up a feeling of this particular location; of the sea, the mountains, the wildness, and the rural way of life. Since the beginning I have also wanted my film to involve themes of nature and the environment - which is perfectly suited to this setting.

This brought about ideas of the relationship between the two worlds of land and sea, and between people and the environment, that are brought together dramatically on the West coast.
My own experiences of living in this kind of environment, research into folk stories and traditional ways of life, and observational work, provided me with a basis for my story!

Fishing is the most important industry here and plays a big part in many peoples lives. Crofting is the next traditional means for making a living. These livelihoods are tied to the landscape. I wanted my film to represent these two distinctive worlds that define the way of life here.
Thus I decided my main characters were to be a fisherman (the sea) and a horse (land).

The horse was initially changeable, but I liked the idea of a horse due to it being a large and powerful animal that is more than a match for the fisherman and that could hopefully echo (through the animation) the force and rage of the sea. I was also inspired by folk stories about 'water horses' and horses that could travel on both land and water. In summer, I used to help out at a local trekking centre which provided me with experience to draw upon (and living subjects to draw from) for animating the horse character!

The story so far...

To sum up my story in one sentence: a troubled fisherman must try to rescue a horse stranded on an island.

My film will revolve around three equally important characters; the fisherman, the horse, and the environment in which they both live. All three characters are connected. They all provide the problems for one another but are also needed to solve these problems, for example; nature is partly what caused the fisherman's grief and troubles, and he is a bit frightened of the horse, but he needs both these things to find his feet again. All three also share characteristics. They are all temperamental and changeable -  a bit 'rough around the ages'!

Most of the film will focus on the struggle between the man and the horse, and the landscape and weather will feature prominently in establishing the mood and the action. The fisherman has had an accident at sea and is having difficulty returning to his normal life on land. He is caught between two worlds - he doesn't want to return to sea, haunted my his bad experiences, but he is also not content on land. He feels isolated and an outcast. Then he finds the stranded horse...
The horse has been abandoned on an island. She is literally isolated and turned semi-feral, and like the fisherman, is not too happy in her situation. The fisherman decides to try and bring the horse back to land and the majority of the film will be about the undertaking of this task.

After scribbling out many notes and drawing many thumbnail storyboards, I now have the structure of the film and the general direction of the plot down. At the moment I am still storyboarding; I am working on piecing together some of the more specific action in the film (how the action will play out, trying out different shots and ideas). I have also started to create some conceptual art and thinking about the 'look' of the film.

Next steps - working on some more final character and set designs and starting to do test animation.
I've been using Gantt to create a general schedule and been checking/updating it regularly (apologies for the terrible image - just to give an idea!) It has been very useful for thinking ahead and having a visible plan to stick to. At the moment, all seems to be on schedule! I hope to start animating in November once I am completely happy with the story and design.

Illustration Work - More Animalia!

Just a wee note on some illustration work I did this semester. At the beginning of the year I spent some time making trial illustrations for a possible client on the theme of childrens book style jungle and farm animals. In the end it didn't work out, but it was still a good experience and I got to try my hand at illustrating. This was something quite new for me so I had to experiment a bit - and it was strange spending so much time on just the one drawing (a rarity in animation!). At the moment I am working with watercolour more and more, so I drew some animal characters in my usual style with a mix of watercolour, ink and pen.

 

Horse Anatomy Workshop

During 'Innovative Learning Week', I went to a horse anatomy and wire sculpture workshop at the Vet School. The workshop was run by the Vet School and the Society of Wildlife Artist's president Harriet Mead. It was a fascinating workshop where we were given a lecture and demonstration in horse anatomy, then were able to draw and create a wire sculpture from live horses. We were provided with A2 sheets of paper for drawing - I loved sketching at this scale! Here are some of my sketches from the day:

 

And here is my attempt at wire sculpture... (it wasn't as bad as I was expecting actually!)

It was an excellent day; as always the chance to draw from life was valuable practice, as well as trying something new!

Memory Project - "Paris is Always a Good Idea"

First off, as recommended to me...



...particularly fitting for my French themed memory? As well as how we remember things differently!

For the memory project I chose to talk about my travels to Paris at different points in my life. I thought comparing these two different memories/experiences could make for an interesting narrative. Myself and a friend went to Paris a couple years ago - revisiting all the places we went to on the same trip we went on 8 years ago with our parents.

“There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even -the French air clears up the brain and does good- a world of good.”
― Vincent van Gogh

Now, I don't know about 'French air', but I certainly felt that our trip to Paris a few years back was an important experience. As my first proper travel (outside the UK) independently, without parents or a school, it was a learning curve! And an interested trip in how it compared to my first experience of Paris. Overall I would like the film to include themes about traveling and exploring places as a young person - finding your own feet in a vast and fast-moving world - and what effect your memories and expectations may have on this experience. There was a quote by Terry Pratchett that I quite liked in regard these ideas: "Why do you go away? So that you can come back...Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."
I think how we saw Paris as 20-something year olds was quite different to when we were in our early teens. On our 2nd trip, it probably took us a bit longer to see that Parisian warmth and colour we remembered - as we now noticed more of those dodgy or unpleasant aspects of the busy, modern city! (Although, the experience was never not fun - that's part of the adventure...)

Anyway, that's enough rambling...



Research & Initial Ideas:

Just as I was beginning to work on this project, Google released this cute doodle to celebrate the Eiffel Tower's anniversary. Good timing; I actually found this quite inspiring as there is a lot of movement in the illustration and I really like the colours and design!

I also love this portrayal of Paris from Sylvain Chomet's film 'The Illustionist'. The city is portrayed as a dark and somewhat depressing city - much less inviting than how Paris is usually depicted. Strangely, the scene below perfectly shows how we ourselves experienced Paris on our first arrival on our 2nd trip (our hotel was near the pictured church Sacré-Cœur and it was very grey and rainy!).

(Background art by Bjorn-Erik Aschim; http://www.bjornsportfolio.com/The-illusionist-Background-Layout-artist-Django-Films)

I did make a film about Paris only last year, but it featured little the actual city, so it will be nice to revisit the visual feast that is Paris with more of an emphasis on the place itself!

At the moment I have a few ideas kicking about:

• The film title could be "In Search of Paris; I feel it refers well to how we arrived in Paris on our 2nd trip with memories and expectations planted in our minds and how we had to search for the Paris we remembered. I guess as we become more comfortable and used to the ways of the city, we began to see the awesome parts of Paris again - but not quite as we remembered it perhaps. The little things like details and patterns. Learning to look at somewhere in a different light...

• I like the aesthetics of maps and the Paris Metro. Having metamorphosing map lines is one idea for the animation - travelers can create their own maps of a place as they find their own way perhaps?

• Colour could be an important element in this film - continuing on the theme mentioned first of us getting used to Paris and seeing it's beauty again. The beginning could start of with the gentle, pastel colours of our Parisian memories, which turns to a moody and rainy greyscale as we move to our more recent adventure. As we become more comfortable in the city and discover new things about it, the palette would become more bright and colourful again - possibly ending in a warm, pastel sunset that mirrors the beginning.

Some shot ideas so far:

•   It would also be good to use animation to do something fun and different with the story. At the moment I am thinking of having Paris as a bit of a playground or maze. Inspired by the statues on Notre Dame, I had an idea of us on top of the cathedral having to take a step out and leap into the unknown and find our feet in Paris

Next...
I haven't had much time in the semester to work on this project (mainly due to the time-consuming nature of the zoo film), but I am hoping to create a finished film in the next few weeks before the summer!

The Man Who Lives in the Zoo - Making the Film

The collaboration project with Edinburgh Zoo has taken up most of my time this semester. I used this project as a chance to work on a slightly longer, narrative-driven short film. After making a number of short films this semester, it was refreshing to focus on a longer film!

Continuing on from last semester, I worked further on the story and animatic for a while before beginning to animate - I wanted the narrative to be the main drive in this film.
The main change was altering the ending slightly so it was a a more definite conclusion; Darren back in the zoo with his own Edinburgh penguins, and with a nod back to their Antarctic roots. Following advice from the last semester's crit also, I tried to make the transition from Darren's dissaproval of the whalers to teaching them clearer. So I made one more animatic before starting the animation! (Password = penguin. Bet you didn't see that one coming)


The Man Who Lives in the Zoo - Animatic from Ali MacPherson on Vimeo.


Development & Research:

To achieve the look I was hoping for, I undertook a bit of research and spent more time designing the characters and the environments. I loved working with an Antarctic location - South Georgia Island (which can be seen in the photos below, and is where Edinburgh Zoo's penguins originally came from) seemed like an perfect location for an animated story to me! Antarctic landscapes, rusting abandoned ships, deserted of people - animals now living in the human ruins as if we were hardly there...

(Photos by wildlife photographer Anthony Smith: 

http://travel.anthonysmithphotography.com/?page_id=907 )

While animating, I referenced videos of penguins frequently to achieve the right movement (I even tried walking like a penguin myself a few times!). I wanted the penguins to be charismatic and appealing characters, as well as be very much real penguins - I'm hoping the audience could watch the film and just from the movement alone know that these are penguins.

Before animating I also made a colour key/script. The frames were to be coloured digitally and I wanted the colour to be very vibrant and lively - but with a natural scheme of blues, greens, greys and browns. The key actually helped a lot when coming to colour the scenes and deciding on how to assign colour to the characters and props. It was also a good exercise to test out possible Photoshop brushes I could use in the final film. I wanted this film to have less solid, blocky colours and bold lines (like many of my previous digital films) and more of a sketchy 'natural' look, resembling traditional mediums.

Making the Film:

I was very keen on this film being animated traditionally with mountains of paper, pencils and the lightbox. After finishing the Ungaretti film, I had less time than I had originally wanted for animating this film - but still enough to get the animation done and have some wiggle room if anything went wrong! So I spent about 3-4 weeks animating (and colouring the frames as I went along).
I've really enjoyed being able to spend time working in traditional or 'classical' animation techniques, and I love the pencil drawn quality of the frames. If time allowed, I would certainly like to make this  my main method of working and has given me a lot of ideas for how I want to work on my final year film.
I also spent as much time as I could allow planning each animated scene - the layout, movement, keyframes. Although winging it can be fun and work well sometimes, prior planning proved extremely helpful in this case and usually made for better animation! The scenes which didn't work out as well as I hoped were usually those I hadn't had time to plan out properly. The walk cycles of Darren and a penguin proved the most challenging.

I have also been working with composer Luci Holland who has created some amazing music for the film! Working with a composer has been a new experience for me. The music became an integral part of the planning and an inspiring part of the filmmaking process. I love how the music and animation have influenced each other and suggested new ways to look at the narrative. Luci has been great to work with and her music enhances the film so much! You can listen to the teaser here: https://soundcloud.com/luci-holland/zoo-teaser/s-SOoKx


Although the film is not quite finished, the majority of work is done and all that is left now is colouring a few more scenes and adding the background art.
Here is the current film draft (password = zoo):


The Man Who Lives in the Zoo - Film Draft from Ali MacPherson on Vimeo.

Reflections on the film so far: 

 I have really enjoyed working on this film! I am glad I spend a good chunk of time planning out the story and rearranging the animatic till I felt it was right. Spending time designing the characters and 'look' of the film was also important to me. Although you could probably keep doing this forever, it was good to put more thought into these initial development stages - I think the film benefited from this overall. This helped achieve the visual look of the film and keep it close to my original hopes.
As for the narrative, it's difficult to step away from the film and look at it with fresh eyes, but I hope the story is understandable and enjoyable to the audience!

This project gave me a good grasp on a traditional/'classical' 2D workflow also. As I mentioned earlier, this is a technique I am keen to continue with for 4th year.
Some more time for animating would have been good as towards the end I had to rush scenes a bit - a few scenes have very little movement or are without any animation at all. I planned to do these scenes last, as they would be ok without any actual movement, but I still would have liked to have had more animation in them.

All the frames for this film!

Now I have just to finishing the colouring and backgrounds, ready to be screened at the zoo this Saturday (9th May)!