What we did in class the other day was a lot of fun. Here is someone who has taken it a step further and made themselves fly around.
I'm still looking for the really brilliant people stop motion I told you about, but check this out in the meantime.
Think about what we learnt by doing that exercise together. I wonder what we could have done if we had planned it out more and injected more ideas? World is our oyster.
Again, the youtube link below it leads to lots of other goodies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTu7uhJi1ds&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Friday, 17 September 2010
Animation Process: Making things fly
This is probably jumping way ahead, since we haven't even looked at the basics of how to do, say, claymation.
But its worth a look at how to make a character fly now, because depending on how much confidence you have, you'll either write a scene in your film where a character flies, or you won't, after watching this!
There are other ways I'm sure, but this is the one way I know off. See if you can find other ways. There are loads of other references in this page to other stop motion processes which build on what we've tentatively looked at so far.
The youtube address for them is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFI-Msp4Kv8
But its worth a look at how to make a character fly now, because depending on how much confidence you have, you'll either write a scene in your film where a character flies, or you won't, after watching this!
There are other ways I'm sure, but this is the one way I know off. See if you can find other ways. There are loads of other references in this page to other stop motion processes which build on what we've tentatively looked at so far.
The youtube address for them is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFI-Msp4Kv8
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
TRANSCRIBING A FILM
Transcribing a film back into screenplay format is a technique used in many schools to get young film makers to see the relationship between screenplay and moving image.
It's a great technique that offers little in the way of instant gratification. So be warned! This won't make you popular or cool, what it will do is, by means of a short intense piece of work, help you to learn how the pictures on the screen translate into words on the page and what is, and what is not needed in script.
Five great tips for how NOT to write a successful screenplay.
Here's some more quick, short screen writing tips. Mostly for features, but all relevant.
Some words of wisdom from BBC Writers Room about Short Films
Largest short film channel in the world, apparently.
Excellent resource for short scripts and others. Looks dated. Content is great.
So, what you need is a short film. And a pen and paper. I'd suggest a simple film. One without any words but with a decent story.
Monday, 13 September 2010
12 Principles of Animation
Back in the twenties and thirties Walt Disney and his principal animators began to formulate basic principles to ensure good animated entertainment. This was thirty years after the official birth of animation. The principals are fun, simple and very practical and we have a lot to learn from them when it comes to designing our animations.
John Lasseter (the Mr Lasseter, famous for Toy Story and others, the first 3D Animated film) decided, way back in 1987 to remind himself and others at the Animation Industry's leading get together (called SIGGRAPH) of these principals and the meaning behind them.
You can find them here. They are all over the web now and taught as the backbone of any full time animation course. Remember, he didn't write them, he was just remembering them. They were written up by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in there landmark tome, The Illusion of Life (1981)
http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/prin_trad_anim.htm
They are indespensible reading for anyone doing animation. And really helpful.
This is great little video put together, with examples to understand what they are.
And here is the whole lot again, told through Ice Age 3. This is very, very good.
This video does the same, except without half the detail!
SO WHAT'S TO LEARN?
Well we've talked a lot about learning the history and culture of the medium your working in so that you can fully understand the range of ideas, possibilities and sources of inspiration for your own films. With these 12 principles we have 12 tried and tested touch stones by which to evaluate OUR IDEAS.
My basic idea is to take your short filmic stop motion screenplay and evaluate it against the 12 principles, being able to talk about where and when your animation is able to touch on these principles. It'll be even easier to see once you begin storyboarding how you're film integrates with the 12 principles and how these, in turn link back to that core of CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION based STORYTELLING.
John Lasseter (the Mr Lasseter, famous for Toy Story and others, the first 3D Animated film) decided, way back in 1987 to remind himself and others at the Animation Industry's leading get together (called SIGGRAPH) of these principals and the meaning behind them.
You can find them here. They are all over the web now and taught as the backbone of any full time animation course. Remember, he didn't write them, he was just remembering them. They were written up by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in there landmark tome, The Illusion of Life (1981)
http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/prin_trad_anim.htm
They are indespensible reading for anyone doing animation. And really helpful.
This is great little video put together, with examples to understand what they are.
And here is the whole lot again, told through Ice Age 3. This is very, very good.
This video does the same, except without half the detail!
SO WHAT'S TO LEARN?
Well we've talked a lot about learning the history and culture of the medium your working in so that you can fully understand the range of ideas, possibilities and sources of inspiration for your own films. With these 12 principles we have 12 tried and tested touch stones by which to evaluate OUR IDEAS.
My basic idea is to take your short filmic stop motion screenplay and evaluate it against the 12 principles, being able to talk about where and when your animation is able to touch on these principles. It'll be even easier to see once you begin storyboarding how you're film integrates with the 12 principles and how these, in turn link back to that core of CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION based STORYTELLING.
Stop Motion Techniques
You've a bunch of different stop motion techniques available to you. Pupperty, claymation, pixelation, using found objects or a combination of all of them. Below I've put down some relevant information on each of the techniques.
PUPPERTY
This is pretty advanced stuff and it's unlikely you'll go ahead and make puppets. However, the principals of it are the same for, say, claymation. A technique you're more likely to use.
Here's an interesting bit of history about pupperty stop motion from one of the forerunners of the technique.
CLAYMATION
Here's an excellent backgrounder to the making of a clay mation advertisement. You can see the use of green screens is important and you'll see how they set up their studios - similar in many ways to your little studios.
Claymation is a fun and flexible way to do stop motion and you can often get great effects, however, it does take a fair bit of organisation and more creative thought you might imagine to really 'animate' scenes and come up with interesting ideas that don't look amateurish.
Here's a very simple, very clever, little animation. There's a character, an environment, a problem and a resolution. (CONFLICT and RESOLUTION). Although, I don't think the resolution is as big a big pay off as it could be. I wonder how the story could have developed it they'd thought about it more? It has a tragic (down) rather than an upbeat (up) ending. Funny. I think aiming for this sort of standard is a good goal for the class of Extended Dips.
Citoplasmas en medio ácido, stop motion film from citoplasmas on Vimeo.
Check out more great stuff on their website:
http://www.motionn.com/search/label/Stop%20motion
PIXELATION
You'll have experience of this already most likely. Pixelation has a number of advantages and disadvantages. You can imagine if you have to film, say, outdoors, then suddenly all the controllable elements of animation (because its nearly always shot in a studio environment) go out the window. Suddenly your prone to weather, light and other environmental factors. However, the results can often be stunning BECAUSE your outside a studio environment.
Check out the brillant Tony vs Paul. Much imitated but never bettered. Yet.
USING FOUND OBJECTS
Pixelation and using found objects have a lot in common: in Pixelation the found object is the person. Using found objects changes the nature of the storytelling (in some instances it can destroy the story since you are relying on what you have found rather than pushing through your vision, like you might with if you were making characters from scratch in Claymation)
However, its not to be discounted. Here's a mix of pixelation and found objects together. Not bad.
Here's an awesome use of objects. (not neccessarily 'found' but in a way they are!)
PUPPERTY
This is pretty advanced stuff and it's unlikely you'll go ahead and make puppets. However, the principals of it are the same for, say, claymation. A technique you're more likely to use.
Here's an interesting bit of history about pupperty stop motion from one of the forerunners of the technique.
CLAYMATION
Here's an excellent backgrounder to the making of a clay mation advertisement. You can see the use of green screens is important and you'll see how they set up their studios - similar in many ways to your little studios.
Claymation is a fun and flexible way to do stop motion and you can often get great effects, however, it does take a fair bit of organisation and more creative thought you might imagine to really 'animate' scenes and come up with interesting ideas that don't look amateurish.
Here's a very simple, very clever, little animation. There's a character, an environment, a problem and a resolution. (CONFLICT and RESOLUTION). Although, I don't think the resolution is as big a big pay off as it could be. I wonder how the story could have developed it they'd thought about it more? It has a tragic (down) rather than an upbeat (up) ending. Funny. I think aiming for this sort of standard is a good goal for the class of Extended Dips.
Citoplasmas en medio ácido, stop motion film from citoplasmas on Vimeo.
Check out more great stuff on their website:
http://www.motionn.com/search/label/Stop%20motion
PIXELATION
You'll have experience of this already most likely. Pixelation has a number of advantages and disadvantages. You can imagine if you have to film, say, outdoors, then suddenly all the controllable elements of animation (because its nearly always shot in a studio environment) go out the window. Suddenly your prone to weather, light and other environmental factors. However, the results can often be stunning BECAUSE your outside a studio environment.
Check out the brillant Tony vs Paul. Much imitated but never bettered. Yet.
USING FOUND OBJECTS
Pixelation and using found objects have a lot in common: in Pixelation the found object is the person. Using found objects changes the nature of the storytelling (in some instances it can destroy the story since you are relying on what you have found rather than pushing through your vision, like you might with if you were making characters from scratch in Claymation)
However, its not to be discounted. Here's a mix of pixelation and found objects together. Not bad.
Here's an awesome use of objects. (not neccessarily 'found' but in a way they are!)
Animation History
This is a beautiful, and very quick, potted history of stop motion animation. There are some key points in the history of stop motion and some key figures too, look out for them. The simple backgrounds and cut outs are quite straightforward to do.
So, more into the history of Animation. This is a slightly longer version of the history of animation. The guy reading it does a decent job, but you might want to put a bit of music on just to help his voice along. This is good for the history basics and shows lots of the early animations.
And look, I worked out how to embed code!
LETS GO FURTHER BACK.
Lets go right back to the place where one man discovered you fool the eyes, and make them believe they were watching a moving image. Joesph Plateau, a scientist, discovered this using a phenakistoscope.
To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other.
Here's one, modern day version, but you get the idea.
Another early technique worth nothing is the thaumatrope.
Here's someone using the same principle in a very nice and simple way.
PERSISTENCE OF VISION
This is a short video which explains what persistence of vision is and why it is important to animators and filmmakers alike.
I suppose I wonder what can young filmmakers actually learn from looking at this historical stuff, from looking at the development of the medium they're being asked to work in.
No-one can answer that for you. Personally I find it interesting and it also sparks my imagination to watch the old, early animations. Even with the most simpliest technologies they still managed to tell interesting stories, usually without any dialogue, which in a sense makes them a purer form of animation - or so you could argue.
That's one benefit then, looking at the stories they created from nothing, and at the birth of the medium.
Another one is the type of stories they told. Although animation has become more complex, these pioneers teach us that simple is best.
One error, the device the man is using is not a zoetrope, but a thaumatrope!
Modern day use of persistence of vision.
This is class. This guy designed a device which, using persistence of vision, makes 3D objects.
Give him a minute or so to get into it, to wait to see hows it done.
The Big Hitters
James Stewart Blackton. Go look up his history. It makes for interesting reading. His first film, inspired by Edison's Projector and first films, is a development of a technique he had tried for theatre, but failed.
The enchanted drawing is considered one of the first 'stop frame' films in the history of animation and stop motion animation.
His next film, Humorous phases of funny faces, uses more stop motion (as well as just basic camera effects) to make the characters move.
Even in the early days, the different techniques of stop motion where being exploited. In this 1909 film, the Automatic Moving Company, used what might be called 'found objects' to electric effect.
So, more into the history of Animation. This is a slightly longer version of the history of animation. The guy reading it does a decent job, but you might want to put a bit of music on just to help his voice along. This is good for the history basics and shows lots of the early animations.
And look, I worked out how to embed code!
LETS GO FURTHER BACK.
Lets go right back to the place where one man discovered you fool the eyes, and make them believe they were watching a moving image. Joesph Plateau, a scientist, discovered this using a phenakistoscope.
To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other.
Here's one, modern day version, but you get the idea.
Another early technique worth nothing is the thaumatrope.
Here's someone using the same principle in a very nice and simple way.
PERSISTENCE OF VISION
This is a short video which explains what persistence of vision is and why it is important to animators and filmmakers alike.
I suppose I wonder what can young filmmakers actually learn from looking at this historical stuff, from looking at the development of the medium they're being asked to work in.
No-one can answer that for you. Personally I find it interesting and it also sparks my imagination to watch the old, early animations. Even with the most simpliest technologies they still managed to tell interesting stories, usually without any dialogue, which in a sense makes them a purer form of animation - or so you could argue.
That's one benefit then, looking at the stories they created from nothing, and at the birth of the medium.
Another one is the type of stories they told. Although animation has become more complex, these pioneers teach us that simple is best.
One error, the device the man is using is not a zoetrope, but a thaumatrope!
Modern day use of persistence of vision.
This is class. This guy designed a device which, using persistence of vision, makes 3D objects.
Give him a minute or so to get into it, to wait to see hows it done.
The Big Hitters
James Stewart Blackton. Go look up his history. It makes for interesting reading. His first film, inspired by Edison's Projector and first films, is a development of a technique he had tried for theatre, but failed.
The enchanted drawing is considered one of the first 'stop frame' films in the history of animation and stop motion animation.
His next film, Humorous phases of funny faces, uses more stop motion (as well as just basic camera effects) to make the characters move.
Even in the early days, the different techniques of stop motion where being exploited. In this 1909 film, the Automatic Moving Company, used what might be called 'found objects' to electric effect.
Storytelling
WHAT IS A STORY?
I was thinking through why some of the previous films have worked and why others, through no lack of effort, have not worked as well. The difference comes down to one thing: the team's ability to tell a story.
Writing a story sounds simple because we consume so many of them every day. Think about it; video games, books, television, online role playing, conversations with friends, newspapers, blogs like this, the list is virtually endless. Another way to think about it is imagine a day where you had no stories in your life.
So there's more to stories than just entertainment. It seems we need stories. What do we need them for?
Well, at its most basic level, stories used to - and still do to a certain extent - convey important information, sometimes so important that if we didn't hear it, we'd die!
FIRST STORYTELLERS
The first storytellers, our ancestors, used stories as a way to explain where the good hunting grounds could be found. Or dangerous areas to avoid. If we were to stick a story under the microscope and look at its DNA, this original purpose of storytelling remains one of its fundemental purposes. Understanding and accepting this might be a leap, but once you get it, the reason for wanting to tell your story will become much clearer.
If you're not interested in myth and history then there is also a scientific underpinning as to why telling stories, good ones, is so important to us. In his book, The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker explains that brain matter, from where we derive our consciousness, our mind, is organised on one level according to stories.
"Many nueroscientists argue that we are composed of stories, that stories themselves are the basis of our consciousness. The building blocks of stories are nothing more than the logical sequence of events in our memory. The way in which this logical sequencing affects us emotively becomes the narrative arch for the stories we share."
http://www.callofstory.org/en/storytelling/need.asp
The stories of our lives are memories. Now, we've all heard someone tell us a story, a memory of theirs maybe and after a minute we know we are very bored, or close to possibly throwing ourselves out a window.
Why?
Could the scientists and mythologists be right? Do we have some kind of story telling machine inside us? One that goes nuts when we hear someone telling a story that sounds all wrong? By making it boring? Or riduclous? Or not emotional enough?
If that's true, if we do have something ancient inside us, inside the grey matter of our brains, that knows what a story is, then the big question is, what is a good story and how do we tell it?
BASIC STRUCTURE OF ALL STORIES
We need a STRUCTURE. And, the most basic structure of all is CONFLICT and RESOLUTION. Of course you need a CHARACTER to have story actions happen to. And you've got to do your best to avoid CLICHE or STEALING others ideas. Think of any film you've watched and you can apply this simple framework to lesser or greater degree.
What's a conflict? Remember some of the exercises we did in class?
VERY SIMPLE STORYTELLING: NEARLY NOTHING THERE
Using a conflict and resolution model starts to make stories, on one level, like parables. I'm not saying this is a bad or good thing, nor something you should follow, however there is always a bit of 'learning' for the audience in any story. (just don't make it obvious or you'll bore people!)
Linking from this, if you're having problems thinking up stories you could start from somewhere different and Zen poems, which are kindof like little parables aren't a bad place to begin.
I found this site, Zen stories to Tell your Friends. If you can stand the dodgy design, the stories serve as very good examples of very simple stories. I thought more and more about them and realised they make a perfect starting point for short animations.
Your reaction to them will probably be - but sure there's hardly nothing there. There's virtually no story. And you'd be right. In a short animation, or any short film, you'll have to learn the difference between reading and telling the short prose story, and reading and telling the short film story. They are two completely different things.
http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/zenstory.html
I reckon we could probably turn any of these tales, or adapt them, into lovely little animations.
PARABLES
Parables are christian incarnations of Zen Buddist stories. They are similar in that they involve a teaching element. They are also similar in the simplicity and ease of understanding (because they were developed from an oral tradition and had to be simple to be understood). This simplicity makes them perfect for short film making. Here's a site below, check out the story about the frog and the milk.
The Trouble Tree is also a good one. Very visual.
http://www.parablesite.com/
TRADITIONAL IRISH STORIES
Irish history and mythology is full of stories, many of which serve to function as warnings, or parables of human behaviour.
This fellow was doing Irish studies and put up loads of short Irish stories. Check out Set 1, the story about the Black and White Pig.
http://web.ncf.ca/er719/set1.html#5%20Minute
More from the different cycles of mythological Ireland.
http://www.mythicalireland.com/mythology/
Hmm.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm
STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Here is a fantastic resources with stories from around the world.
http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
BUILDING YOUR FIRST STORY
I suppose I could stick up a thousand posts about things to read about the history of telling stories, how its hard wired into our brain, how the good story is a method of survival and a method of entertainment at the same time. But really, the only way to learn all this, and possibly believe, and then maybe love it, is just to get on with it and write a story.
You can go about this in a variety of ways. And they all depend on how confident you feel about writing screenplay. You could write a short prose story, and then with some help you could adapt it. Or you could draw a story (I mean it, not kidding, I drew my first short film. I had no script. I thought - its a visual medium, why am I writing anything at all. A number of Directors still think this way!)
Or you could just write your screenplay. So, pen is in hand, or computer is on lap. What do you need in your story? At the very least, you need the following:
a character
a setting
a problem
a resolution.
The suggested wisdom from everyone from Pixar to Aardman is that when you're writing short films have only ONE central idea. Have only ONE, or TWO central characters. Have a set up and a resolution.
Why do you need a character, a setting, a problem and a resolution? Well, you need a character because without a character you're making a mood piece, something poetic, possibly experimental, and not telling a story that concerns people.
You need a setting, because there has to be a world, an environment for this character to be in, interact with, fight with, maybe die in, find love in, whatever. Again, we all live on earth. In N. Ireland. This is our setting. And apart from the occassional spat of violence, the poor weather, the distance from main cultural hubs and lack of jazz clubs, its not a bad place.
You need a problem because you need CONFLICT. Conflict, overcoming problems, (like those old cave men telling the story about what watering hole to avoid) is the basis of all storytelling. Conflict is where EMOTION comes from. Its also where HEROS are made. Or ANTI-HEROS.
Think about the stories you used to tell with your toys. Or in your head as a child. They were all hero stories. (I'd be interested to know what kinds of stories girls had in their heads when us wee boys were making and winning wars.) And finally, a resolution. A resolution means an ending. It doesn't have to be a happy ending.
Check out REACH. It was made from Candian Film Board money. I mention them because they have a long filmmaking pedigree and usually make good stuff. Reach embodies character, setting, problem and resolution beautifully. Its wise, funny and very simple.
FOR MR HAMMOND.
In regards to an idea made in class around the conflict resolution story structure, check out this very sick little video...
I was thinking through why some of the previous films have worked and why others, through no lack of effort, have not worked as well. The difference comes down to one thing: the team's ability to tell a story.
Writing a story sounds simple because we consume so many of them every day. Think about it; video games, books, television, online role playing, conversations with friends, newspapers, blogs like this, the list is virtually endless. Another way to think about it is imagine a day where you had no stories in your life.
So there's more to stories than just entertainment. It seems we need stories. What do we need them for?
Well, at its most basic level, stories used to - and still do to a certain extent - convey important information, sometimes so important that if we didn't hear it, we'd die!
FIRST STORYTELLERS
The first storytellers, our ancestors, used stories as a way to explain where the good hunting grounds could be found. Or dangerous areas to avoid. If we were to stick a story under the microscope and look at its DNA, this original purpose of storytelling remains one of its fundemental purposes. Understanding and accepting this might be a leap, but once you get it, the reason for wanting to tell your story will become much clearer.
If you're not interested in myth and history then there is also a scientific underpinning as to why telling stories, good ones, is so important to us. In his book, The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker explains that brain matter, from where we derive our consciousness, our mind, is organised on one level according to stories.
"Many nueroscientists argue that we are composed of stories, that stories themselves are the basis of our consciousness. The building blocks of stories are nothing more than the logical sequence of events in our memory. The way in which this logical sequencing affects us emotively becomes the narrative arch for the stories we share."
http://www.callofstory.org/en/storytelling/need.asp
The stories of our lives are memories. Now, we've all heard someone tell us a story, a memory of theirs maybe and after a minute we know we are very bored, or close to possibly throwing ourselves out a window.
Why?
Could the scientists and mythologists be right? Do we have some kind of story telling machine inside us? One that goes nuts when we hear someone telling a story that sounds all wrong? By making it boring? Or riduclous? Or not emotional enough?
If that's true, if we do have something ancient inside us, inside the grey matter of our brains, that knows what a story is, then the big question is, what is a good story and how do we tell it?
BASIC STRUCTURE OF ALL STORIES
We need a STRUCTURE. And, the most basic structure of all is CONFLICT and RESOLUTION. Of course you need a CHARACTER to have story actions happen to. And you've got to do your best to avoid CLICHE or STEALING others ideas. Think of any film you've watched and you can apply this simple framework to lesser or greater degree.
What's a conflict? Remember some of the exercises we did in class?
VERY SIMPLE STORYTELLING: NEARLY NOTHING THERE
Using a conflict and resolution model starts to make stories, on one level, like parables. I'm not saying this is a bad or good thing, nor something you should follow, however there is always a bit of 'learning' for the audience in any story. (just don't make it obvious or you'll bore people!)
Linking from this, if you're having problems thinking up stories you could start from somewhere different and Zen poems, which are kindof like little parables aren't a bad place to begin.
I found this site, Zen stories to Tell your Friends. If you can stand the dodgy design, the stories serve as very good examples of very simple stories. I thought more and more about them and realised they make a perfect starting point for short animations.
Your reaction to them will probably be - but sure there's hardly nothing there. There's virtually no story. And you'd be right. In a short animation, or any short film, you'll have to learn the difference between reading and telling the short prose story, and reading and telling the short film story. They are two completely different things.
http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/zenstory.html
I reckon we could probably turn any of these tales, or adapt them, into lovely little animations.
PARABLES
Parables are christian incarnations of Zen Buddist stories. They are similar in that they involve a teaching element. They are also similar in the simplicity and ease of understanding (because they were developed from an oral tradition and had to be simple to be understood). This simplicity makes them perfect for short film making. Here's a site below, check out the story about the frog and the milk.
The Trouble Tree is also a good one. Very visual.
http://www.parablesite.com/
TRADITIONAL IRISH STORIES
Irish history and mythology is full of stories, many of which serve to function as warnings, or parables of human behaviour.
This fellow was doing Irish studies and put up loads of short Irish stories. Check out Set 1, the story about the Black and White Pig.
http://web.ncf.ca/er719/set1.html#5%20Minute
More from the different cycles of mythological Ireland.
http://www.mythicalireland.com/mythology/
Hmm.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm
STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Here is a fantastic resources with stories from around the world.
http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
BUILDING YOUR FIRST STORY
I suppose I could stick up a thousand posts about things to read about the history of telling stories, how its hard wired into our brain, how the good story is a method of survival and a method of entertainment at the same time. But really, the only way to learn all this, and possibly believe, and then maybe love it, is just to get on with it and write a story.
You can go about this in a variety of ways. And they all depend on how confident you feel about writing screenplay. You could write a short prose story, and then with some help you could adapt it. Or you could draw a story (I mean it, not kidding, I drew my first short film. I had no script. I thought - its a visual medium, why am I writing anything at all. A number of Directors still think this way!)
Or you could just write your screenplay. So, pen is in hand, or computer is on lap. What do you need in your story? At the very least, you need the following:
a character
a setting
a problem
a resolution.
The suggested wisdom from everyone from Pixar to Aardman is that when you're writing short films have only ONE central idea. Have only ONE, or TWO central characters. Have a set up and a resolution.
Why do you need a character, a setting, a problem and a resolution? Well, you need a character because without a character you're making a mood piece, something poetic, possibly experimental, and not telling a story that concerns people.
You need a setting, because there has to be a world, an environment for this character to be in, interact with, fight with, maybe die in, find love in, whatever. Again, we all live on earth. In N. Ireland. This is our setting. And apart from the occassional spat of violence, the poor weather, the distance from main cultural hubs and lack of jazz clubs, its not a bad place.
You need a problem because you need CONFLICT. Conflict, overcoming problems, (like those old cave men telling the story about what watering hole to avoid) is the basis of all storytelling. Conflict is where EMOTION comes from. Its also where HEROS are made. Or ANTI-HEROS.
Think about the stories you used to tell with your toys. Or in your head as a child. They were all hero stories. (I'd be interested to know what kinds of stories girls had in their heads when us wee boys were making and winning wars.) And finally, a resolution. A resolution means an ending. It doesn't have to be a happy ending.
Check out REACH. It was made from Candian Film Board money. I mention them because they have a long filmmaking pedigree and usually make good stuff. Reach embodies character, setting, problem and resolution beautifully. Its wise, funny and very simple.
FOR MR HAMMOND.
In regards to an idea made in class around the conflict resolution story structure, check out this very sick little video...
Friday, 10 September 2010
So heres my first animation
I made Falling about five years ago. When I said I made, it was written and directed by me but the actual hard graft of making the characters, modelling them, building the backgrounds, building the environments and (finally, at the end) actually doing the animation, was done by a wonderful fella called Stuart Calvin.
Stuart and I worked for over a year on this (part time you understand) and it was accepted at all the festivals round Ireland. We might have gone further with it at Foyle Film Festival but at the time you had to have a 35mm print to enter the competition properly (they are a feeder to Bafta and the Oscars). We had about 5p between us by the time it was done.
It's got a number of flaws I'm not happy with. The story, for animation, is too complex. Falling is much more of a 'mood' piece than a narrative film. At least so I think. I suppose that influence came from the fact I'd be working as journalist for a long time before and was still getting to grips with what exactly a short film story is.
There are other things which are a bit dodgy in it too. Some of the movements of the character and the mouth shapes don't totally co-ordinate with the soundtrack. And in the flying sequences the animation is already looking a bit dated and wonky. Overall though, we got across the bones and feeling I was looking for. Albeit in a slightly subtler form.
The sound design, I think, is superb. Kevin did a fabulous job. I really like the song at the end too.
There's a funny website we knocked up which has loads of extra stuff in it, you can find it here:
http://www.cruciblepictures.co.uk/falling/
Just click on E's face to get in.
The animation itself I've taken down and its at another location. Once you become professional you have to leave behind your 'early' days in case anyone sees it and thinks your not up to much. So, if you want to see it, just ask me.
Stuart and I worked for over a year on this (part time you understand) and it was accepted at all the festivals round Ireland. We might have gone further with it at Foyle Film Festival but at the time you had to have a 35mm print to enter the competition properly (they are a feeder to Bafta and the Oscars). We had about 5p between us by the time it was done.
It's got a number of flaws I'm not happy with. The story, for animation, is too complex. Falling is much more of a 'mood' piece than a narrative film. At least so I think. I suppose that influence came from the fact I'd be working as journalist for a long time before and was still getting to grips with what exactly a short film story is.
There are other things which are a bit dodgy in it too. Some of the movements of the character and the mouth shapes don't totally co-ordinate with the soundtrack. And in the flying sequences the animation is already looking a bit dated and wonky. Overall though, we got across the bones and feeling I was looking for. Albeit in a slightly subtler form.
The sound design, I think, is superb. Kevin did a fabulous job. I really like the song at the end too.
There's a funny website we knocked up which has loads of extra stuff in it, you can find it here:
http://www.cruciblepictures.co.uk/falling/
Just click on E's face to get in.
The animation itself I've taken down and its at another location. Once you become professional you have to leave behind your 'early' days in case anyone sees it and thinks your not up to much. So, if you want to see it, just ask me.
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I love a laugh like the rest of you, however, although we're up online, I'd ask everyone to observe basic principles of respect and if there is a smutty joke to have to tell, then tell us in it class...
I love a laugh like the rest of you, however, although we're up online, I'd ask everyone to observe basic principles of respect and if there is a smutty joke to have to tell, then tell us in it class...
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