Graduation Film idea

What if… there are two kiddos, a Sis and a lil’ Brother and a long rainy day in early spring.

characters

In one window looked two. One saw the rain and mud. Other – green foliage ligature, spring and sky is blue. In one window looked two.

Omar Khayyám

The story going to be based on this quote. 

Well, basically, I will show how two kids see the same surrounding- their backyard.

But, additionally, I want to show their relationship- what in the end, actually, a person who is right here beside you, can help you to overcome bad moods and get over this dull day.

I’m not sure is it going to be narrated or not, but definitely without dialogues—just sounds.

Firstly, I’m going to show that it is a rainy day: moody, low, grey sky, rain.

(probably) the quote will appear, then disappears. The camera moves down; we see the chimney, then the rooftop, tree of the left. Lower; windows, now a fence. And we got into the middle of someone’s backyard—that tree on the left, of the fence, just a dark silhouette. We see a handmade tyre swing. There is a football goal on the right and a ball. Maybe some toys here and there. Everything is wet in the centre of all this a large rain puddle. Rains constantly.

Next scene- we see the house (like you turn around). Not the whole house, a lower part- great window, the fence now on the right, hides around the right corner of the house. A silhouette in the window draws our attention. It’s not very clear, but we can say that it is a person, probably a kid, under a dark-coloured blanket that covers him from head to toes. And we see him in a bad mood- eyebrows to touch each other and are really close to the nose. His small mouth in the shape of an arc sits right under his nose. Beside him on the right a kite. Might be it is coloured but for now everything in that greyish mood, so we can say what colours are there.

Next scene- we are in the room, on a distance from the window. Now we see him from the back. It is a kids room. A camera lowered, so room and window look huge, there is no light inside, so the interior is dimmed.

A dark silhouette, half of the body(might be legs only) appears in front, a bit left, of us. The figure runs toward the window. Now in the light of the window, we see a girl. The camera is closer to them. We can see them clearly. She carried a sketchbook and a pack or just a couple of pencils(or crayons). She puts it on the windowsill and starts climbing on. She accidentally touches her brother with her leg. The boy turns to head her way, angry and pushes her with hand. Not like with real power, but sort of slightly, to show that he doesn’t want her here, but more like simply ’why you are here?’. Turns his head back immediately and pull his kite closer to himself.

By the way, now we can see the difference between siblings. While brother is in a sullen mood and covered in a greyish/dark blanket and has a narrowed eyes, sisters eyes are big and bright, as well her sweater and sock are very colourful.

Then the girl settled down, grabs pencil and paper and look at the boy smiling (shows that she don’t care about push, even don’t want to pay attention to it, or already forgot about it). Extreme close up to boys face, he sighs deeply and looks out of the window.

Now the camera shows what he sees- close up on raindrops patter over tyre swing, then it shows that puddle in the middle and mud around.

The camera still outside showing both a bit from a distance, but we pay more attention to a happy girls face. She’s now overlooking the backyard. I want to show the same points but with the difference! Sister sees the same tyre swing, but her attention is on the tiny green leaves on the tree’s branch. Then she sees a couple of crocuses on the edge of the puddle. And all the sudden through the small rain ray of light touches the flowers (spring and the sky is blue)

Camera switches back to our characters (from the outside). The girl immediately starts sketching/doodling something in her block with enthusiasm. She then happy touches her brother with hand, he turns to head a bit furious, but she shows him her drawing. And now we see his face changes to smile(slowly), and then swiftly up to his legs throwing down blanket, full big smile over his face. He began to gesticulating, showing something to Sis. She follows him with happiness, immediately draws something on paper. She shows him, he sits beside her on knees and nods quickly, and they start laughing (we don’t hear that laugh). 

Now we see changes in the boy. Not only a big smile, fully opened eyes but after he threw down his blanket, we see colourful sweatshirt and pants and socks.

Camera same position. It stops raining! Kids like freezes for a second, then shortly they off from the window, so we see only sketch block (some lines on the paper surface) and pencils (the boy took the kite). After a second, we hear laughing sounds and footsteps outside. We don’t see kids, just sounds. The camera slowly started going up, over the roof, the see clear blue sky. Sounds- laugh and bids are singing.

END

(if not at the beginning of the film show quote, so it will appears now)

Credits. 

mood board

Personal contribution to the group project.

By the spring, I was teamed with Hsin (the director and initials idea’s author) and Limbo to work on a film ‘Jumping to the Unknown‘. 

The film will represent the Abstract Showcase of the upcoming London International Film Festival (27 November- 6 December).

The produced animation is a combination of two traditional technics: stop-motion and digitally drawn 2D frame by frame.

In the beginning, I would like to divide the work experience on the film into two parts: the first one is pre-production, that happened during the spring, right before the summer holidays. The second part, post-production got around the month from October to November.

By and large, over the first part of the production, we had a lot of meetings and discussions about and around the story. It was a lot of teamwork, where each of us commits to the inquiries about the narrative itself and about the technical part of our future film. We tried to predict what kind of challenges we will meet and how to avoid them by meticulously schedule each step.

Besides all that, I worked on visual content for the project. For this reason, I had plenty of conversations with our director Hsin about what worlds look like, what the difference between birds, how we are going to show it understandably so that it will not leave any doubts. I draw images which then use to produce storyboards as well as a presentation for the client.

Because of the strictly limited time of the final trailer, that should be no more than 1 min; the story changes drastically throughout the pre-production stage. The crucial point was to make it shorter, while do not lose the initial idea. Therefore, I draw and redraw a lot of pictures, either making minor changes or draw whole sequences from scratch. After every meeting with either client or course leads or invited industry professional, there was a lot of work and adjustments to make. 

I found that throughout the pre-production step, it is quite crucial to make clear visuals and present the story in the right way and be confident about technical nuances to avoid future misunderstanding with the clients.

Even though I had a quite distinguish role in the first part of creating the film, I would say that overall, it felt more like a team effort. 

However, in contrast to the first stage of production, the next step was an absolutely different experience.

For this part, our director decided not to distribute roles between us (a stop-motion animator, an editor, 2D animator, colourist, etc.), but sections of the film instead. So, each team member got his own part to work on from the very beginning until the sequence is absolutely finished. I got the first 10 seconds of animation.

We got much artistic freedom, however, were provided with comprehensive instructions about what kind of actions Hsin would love to see.

Firstly, when we got access to the studio, I helped Hsin to set up the shooting space, by installing a camera, lights and computer for animating our stop-motion backgrounds. We shoot fist sequence in two days. For the first day, it was a lot of experimenting, cutting paper, pros and cons about which method will be more comfortable and faster.

Following, I worked in Photoshop, editing all images for my sequence, by removing unnecessary shadows and adjusting colours and lights. 

The next step was animation. Firstly, the background itself. I used our animatic with sounds to roughly time whole clip. I manipulated with images in Photoshop to add some additional frames to make more smooth flight of the platform without the necessity to go to the studio to shoot additional images.

When I was happy with the result, I started working with the main character, the Red Bird. 

While on the Red Bird animation, I got approval from the first pass, conversely, it took me a couple of tries to get the right movements for White Birds. I even made a test animation for how they are going to appear on the platform.

And finally, COLOURING stage: we got a colouring palette and list of tools that we should use from the director, so it was a straightforward work.

In the end, I want to add that in spite of it was a challenging project in point of time, however also a great experience. Nevertheless, for sure, a real pleasure to work with Hsin and Limbo.

The Children’s Society Project

Right before going for spring break, each of us got the brief and a sound record for our first project- a collaboration with Children Society UK.

Our guest Rachel Reay briefly spoke about society, it’s vision and works with kids and young people at the beginning of the presentation. And then we went moe throughout the technical assignment.

We got the information about how long should it be, that the mood, what is the audience of the film, that colours are prefered, the official typography.

colour palette

For instance, all audios provided are records of real young people who either working or found help from The CS. So, it is crucial that any editings to the soundtracks must be discussed with the client first. Even though some of the tracks are susceptible and personal shares, we should stay on, or at least finish the film on the positive, optimistic note and should keep a balance between negative experience and positive tones. And we cannot share our tracks at any points.

So, this project is, in fact, an animated documentary. We will use animation techniques to make a film that will help young people and children to represent their experiences through a sense of the safe distance of reality.

When I heard my audio for the first time, it hits me in a good way, because it was precisely my experience. So I knew what this person is talking about, I went through it. And remarkably, images and associations started to pop up in my head, and I draw the first storyboard, quick thumbnails, to snatch up this idea.

rough storyboard

And this is exactly that I wrote before in the post about storytelling: ‘The first method is to write a story you already know. Because you feel it in a particular way. … it is always good if the story will be initially from personal experiences.’ Even though it is not my narrative, however, I had the same encounter, that why it was easy to approach to developing a story.

Styles_01

During my research around styles for my graduation film, I’ve discovered works of Jeff Scher.
He is an American painter and experimental film-maker from the US. In his work, he uses traditional tools like watercolours, markers, crayons paired with collages. So it’s basically drawings sequences animated with stop-motion technique.
For instance, his animation “White Out” contained 2500 drawings.

Additionally, I’ve found a short interview for BBC and New York Times blog where Scher explains his work approach, processes and influences from emotions and experiences from life around him.

Most of his movies appeal to me because they are emotionally close, colourful and depicted memories, precisely what I’m looking for my film.

Furthermore, his films remind me about animation that I saw during the Cardiff Animation Festival in 2018. It’s called “That Yorkshire Sound” (2017) by Marcus Armitage. He is from the UK and graduated from the Royal College of Arts in 2014.

I think their works quite similar in style vice. And also, observation of everyday life’s events determine their animations.

Field Trip

On Wednesday, 8th of January, I enjoyed our field trip to London’s Natural History Museum with Mrs Maryclare.

We had two tasks for that day.

observational sketch

The first one of course- draw everything around you. But not only sketching objects, people or animals themselves, but most important was to depict them into that environment and in perspective to show that they are in the museum. So we must be included all surroundings elements to our sketches.

observational sketch
observational sketch
Natural History Museum Field Trip

The second task was to find a story around one of the artefacts and provide a short storyboard of at least not less than five frames. Frankly speaking, I thought this would be the toughest one since I always lack in stories. However, during my short tutorial session with the teacher, I ‘unexpectedly’ uncovered one :).

storyboard

I was so tired at the end of the day because I stood most of the time during sketching, but I very happy with the results and also these museums in South Kensington are my favourites.