The purpose behind this module is to prepare for our FMP next year. We aim to begin our third year with a strong plan of our films and the pre-production stage already underway.
At this time, I have an initial script idea for a short film, I know roughly what look I want it to have and I also have an idea of the way in which it could be animated.
I have viewed a few films that have a similar aesthetic to the piece I want to make that fit into the same genre, horror.
My Idea:
I want to create a short 2D animation that focuses on the jumpy, defencive, paranoid state of being we enter when our minds are put under stress in a frightful situation. The short will follow a young girl, who awakens terrified from a nightmare and believes that her room is full of paranormal figures that begin tormenting her.
The short is aiming to demonstrate that our imaginations alone can sometimes be the cause of what we think we see, when reality often has little or no part to play.
My next step is to research into artists or studios that focus on the same genre, and create similar work.
- I want to find more films that I can draw inspiration from, what techniques have they used to create the right atmosphere?
- Watch Tim Burtons 'Vincent'
- How do I want to animate my film?
- What style am I looking to use?
- IS there a message behind my film?
- Look into work from the age of the German expressionism movement
German Expressionism Art
It was recommended that I look into the art produced during the era of the German Expressionism Movement. It was beleived that the strong form of the paintings, and the dark colours used a some of them would be beneficial inspiriation when deciding on the style of my film.
The art that is now referred to as part of 'German Expressionism' has to be one of Germany's most important and original artistic movements since back in the Middle Ages. Although the term 'Expressionism' was used in conjunction with the work in 1912, the art was never named as part of an art movement until it had nearly ceased existing.
A group called The Bridge (Die Brucke) was one of the first groupings of German Expressionism artists "They believed that their art would act as a bridge to the art of the past, and aspired to simplicity in colour and also form." (History of Art, 2000).
Below are a few images from the German Expressionism art movement. I have chosen to include these particular images because I feel they portray the most emotion, and/or are very aesthetically pleasing.
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| Image 1 - Metropolis |
Image 2 -
Post 3:
Inspiration
Below are a collection of videos and films that are related to my idea via either style, look or narrative.
Memoria -
Directed by Elísabet Ýr Atladóttir, in 2013.
Memoria is a good example of an animation narrative that's been built around the imaginations and memories of the mind. The style of the animation doesn't interest me, instead I'm including this film as a demonstration of storyline, and intend to analyse how the directors have, in the film managed to separate the memories that haunt him from the reality he is presently in.
Porcelain Rising -
Although this film is live action instead of animation, and very disturbing, I have included it because it is set in a young girls bedroom, with the occupant being disturbed by a supernatural being during nightime, same as I aim mine to be. This film is however, a lot more disturbing than I want mine to be, the focus is on the doll and her cruel intentions, where as in my film, the focus will be on the girl and her reactions to what she thinks she's seeing. The Begining of the film is something that I can draw from however, I like the way the lighting flashes are used to creatively light up sections of the fathers and dolls faces. Close ups of seemingly random features in the room help to drag out the still feeling of silence and isolation. The film looses interest, in my oppinion, after the doll actually makes contact with the child. I think the film could be stronger if there was a longer build up of the doll reaching for the child.
The Tale of the Three Brothers -
Post 4
Zero -
"Born into a world of numbers, an oppressed, zero discovers that through determination, courage and love, nothing can be truly something."
Born
into a world of numbers, an oppressed zero discovers that through
determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.
- See more at: http://www.zeroshortfilm.com/#sthash.iCh8gmY0.dpuf
Born
into a world of numbers, an oppressed zero discovers that through
determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.
- See more at: http://www.zeroshortfilm.com/#sthash.iCh8gmY0.dpuf
Born
into a world of numbers, an oppressed zero discovers that through
determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.
- See more at: http://www.zeroshortfilm.com/#sthash.iCh8gmY0.dpuf
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOS
Christopher Kezelos wrote, directed and animated this film in 2010 with a team of eight artists.This film isnt particlary scary and is supposed to be love story rather than a horror story. I have included it in my research however because it is a great example of how emotion can be portayed through character actions and performance rather than purely through character expressions.
Born
into a world of numbers, an oppressed zero discovers that through
determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.
- See more at: http://www.zeroshortfilm.com/#sthash.iCh8gmY0.dpuf
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOS
Sebastians Voodoo -
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOS
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOS
CHRISTOPHER KEZELOSebastians Voodoo -
Red -
Caldera -
This film was a great one for me to find for this module. It's a very personal story about the effects of suffering from mental illness. In that retrospect, it differs extremely from mine. The story I am trying to write is not suppose to be told from the eyes of someone with a mental disorder, but purly from someone with an overactive imagination and very frightful nightmares. This film helped me though, it helped me to realise that in a film about the brain and the imagination, there are very few limits. A literal dive into the unknown is sometimes the best answer, and who knows, maybe we can all find a giant turtle to be friends with.
Post 5:
Idea Development.
After the research I have conducted above, my idea has began to take on another form. It is moving slightly off the track of a horror and further into the world of abstract surrealism, but still with a sinister, darker side. The above film 'Caldera', has been a huge inspiration for me. It reminded me how creative we were allowed to be. When making a film about the responses of the Mind, there aren't really any boundaries to how obscure and weird a film could be.
I had previously planned for the entire film to take place in the one room, but as I enjoy creating landscapes and 'new' worlds, I'm trying to now expand on the idea to include more outside locations.
The general story plan, at the moment, looks something like this :
- A young girl of 15- 17, is asleep in her bedroom.
- The camera moves around the room, giving us a veiw of her surroundings.
- With a start, the girl awakens and shoots straight up in bed.
- Breathing heavily, she scans the room for any trace of what could have woken her so dramatically.
- she stares straight towards the camera and squints, and as if she can see us watching her.
- slipping out of bed, she walks over towards her bathroom.
- Walking past the mirror, her reflectIon squirms and changes, her face elongating and her skin changing to a sallow, sickly, pale green.
- Turning to glance at the mirror, she catches a glimpse of her altered reflection.
- shocked, she jumps backwards away from the sight in front of her, starts blinking rapidly to clear the image.
- The reflection quickly returns back to normal, leaving her standing there confused.
- Through the window the lights from passing cars create forked, spiked shadows across the floor and walls
- She turns to walk backwards as she looks ominously around the room, before facing back towards the bathroom.
- leaving the lights off, she runs the tap and cups water in her hands.
- Closing her eyes she splashes the water over her face, holding her hands up over her eyes as the water drips down
- Her eyes still closed, she runs her hands up and through her hair.
- She drops her hands down to her sides as she opens her eyes back up.
- Through a close up shot we watch her face as in a state of shock her eyes widen and blindly she stares straight ahead, unblinking.
- The camera slowly pulls backwards, and circles the girl - Revealing that she is no longer standing in her bathroom but in the centre of a large rocky plain. Its nightime and her surrounding are dark. Lightning trees fork out of the earth and overhead the sky rumbles and flashes.
- Still unblinking, the girl slowly turns her head to the left and then to the right, her eyes get wider
- A loud thunderclap behind causes her to quickly turn around
- Away in the distance, the ground begins to rise up like a tidal wave, in a ripple formation and rushes towards her.
- scanning her surroundings, she darts forward on what she thinks is the safest route~ towards the hills.
- she picks up speed as the lightning flashes overhead, turning her surrounds a startling red and then white for a few seconds.
- As she nears the hills, she spots a figure atop one of them.
- whilst continuing to run, she yells for help and tries to wave her arms
- the figure raises its arms up and out sideways, putting its head back a curdling shriek fills the air.
- from behind the figure, smoke funnels up from the hills. It swirls high up into the sky, spins, and then rushes down the hill and across the plain towards the girl.
- from a closer veiw, it becomes clear the 'smoke' Is made up from thousands of hollow, opague faces with wide gaping mouths,
- screaming, the girl drops to her knees just as the monsters reach her, her arms fly up to cover her head as she cowers into the floor.
- Despite avoiding the danger of the creatures, the crushing ripple is still in pursuit.
- Feeling the ground rumble and shift beneath her, the girl scrambles back up onto her feet.
- But its too late, the ground is already rising up beneath her feet.
- Fighting against the rubble she tries to stop herself being pulled over the mound.
- Her struggles prove to be too little, too late as shes pulled up and over the mound Of moving earth.
- reaching out to the sky, she falls in Slow-motion backwards into the hole in the earth, her arms fLailing out in front in an attempt to grab a hold of something, anything.
- giving up hope, she resigns herself to her fate and closes her eyes, waiting for the floor to rush up and meet her.
- slowly, ever so slowly she lowers her hands from her eyes
- in Pov she looks down at her hands, And then back up, into the bathroom Mirror.
- she stares intently, into her own eyes.
- cut to black. The end.
After the stortyboards are complete, I will have a better idea of which scenes and shots are effective and which may need to be cut. I will more than likely need to revisit the script afterwards to write another draft with any changes that have been made.
Post 6:
Landscape:
For the experimentation side of this module, I wanted to work on the concepts for the landscapes. I had quite a dtailed image in my head of what I imagined my landscape to look like, but instead of drawing it, I figureed I would find it more helpful if I founf images that fitted the geberal concept, and then adapted them using photoshop to see what I could create.
This first image was found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/press/PIA02406.html It is actuallt an image of Mars, which I find quite comical as it fits the brief perfectly, and really is a world outside of this one.
Using photoshop, I then played around with the colours, saturation, colour curves, sky and the over texture. I think I managed to create something really quite physadelic.
The next versions were created to see how the landscape could look during the lightning flashes. The first for the red flash, the second for the white flash.
The problem with this image, is the lack of trees. In my landscape, I wanted to have ‘lightning trees’ dotted around. This below is a lightning tree.
And
this above is my edit.
Coming into this project, I had a pretty strong idea of a
film that I wanted to make next year. I’ve had the idea somewhere in my brain
for this entire course, so its pretty exciting to get a start at it.
I wanted to start the project by writing the script, but I
know that my ideas always change and adapt when I begin researching, so I
thought iwould skip the re-writes and jump straight into finding a selection of
films that could inspire and influence me.
I started with the obvious
choice for a horror animation –Memoria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ue0fLWOUj8
Although the style of this animation isn’t
off interest to me, the plot and storyline deffinitly is.
Moving on, I looked at a live action ‘horror’ short, for the
sake of looking at how tension can be created in the different mediums. I
looked at ‘Porcelain Rising’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Q23EU46s4
but
I think now that that was a poor choice. its an interesting short, but I find
it very disturbing, and I wouldn’t want my film to draw any influence from it.
The tale of three brothers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1_h_eGitE
was the film I looked at next. This was very worthwile, It made me consider the
use of cut out style animation in sections of the film.
As expected, after looking at all of the above films and
more, my idea did begin to take on a different form. I slightly went off the
idea of producing a horror, and wanted to look more into the idea of making a
surrealist, slightly abstract film that slighty kept within the theme/genre of
frightful films.
This new perspective excited me some, it freed up my mind
and allowed me to work more action and locations into the film.
Moving on from writing a script plan, I then wanted to look
into the design of the landscapes. I went about this stage differently to
usual, instead of drawing out all the ideas from scratch, I desided to first
find images online that fitted into the ideas I had, and then adapt them and change
through photoshop. Although I didn’t get as many tests completed as I would
have liked (due to illnesses and personal complications) I did find the
experiments to be useful.
The next step in the concept stage, is to produce a few more
experimental images through editing to get a good plan of how I want the
colours and composition, and then I can begin to draw the images from scratch.
For the character, drawing people has always been a weakness
for me and because of this, I hoping that a colloboration with a character
designer could be possible. Again, I have an idea of how the main girl and
monsters are going to look, so a few very basic sketches should be enough to
give an artist an idea of how to develop them further with me.
Aside from the further story and concept developments that
will be underway, the next biggest step for me will be to make a descision on
how the film could be animated. At this time I am hoping to do most of the secondary
character and background camera animations through After Effects, and then
animate the main character through flash, or a similar drawing software. I am considering
rotoscoping for the character, but tests are in order to decide on the most
productive way of animating.
Moving into the new academic year, I want to have a team
ready assembled, a strong team of trustworthy people. I aim to have the story
plan complete, without any kinks, with a strong storyboard and the frames for
an animatic ready to be assembled upon return to uni. It would be ideal, to be
near ready to animate when the new year starts, so that we have as much time as
possible to spend on the intricasies of the animating procesess.
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