Kwen in London

Big day today! I received the books! It took me a while to make them, I’m really relived as they turned out AWESOME, a bit more info here: BUY A BOOK.

So here is what I’ve done last week, I cut the whole film into sequences and shots. Then I drew thumbnails  so they could be quickly defined. Those thumbnails are purely technical helps, and certainly not piece of art! You can judge by your self:

The next step will be to work on the composition and feeling of each shot. I also need to start selecting sounds and songs for the animatic. Record some as well. 

This way by next monday I should have a first draft of the animatic. 

A Few words on how I worked:

I have been using free and cloud based tools. This way data is safe and accessible from everywhere.

So far I used Google Docs to creat spreadsheets for the over all organisation of shots and sequences.

I used DropBox to edit thumbnails and drawings everywhere.

And the big one is CELTX, which I highly recommend. It’s FREE and makes your script available on every  device. The script corrections are so easy to do, you can move scenes around, colour code them, and the whole formating is completely automatique. Once you’re happy with the script, you can turn it into a storyboard in one click. After that, You just need to load the thumbnails. You can even play it. It gives you a very badly edited animatic, but it’s incredibly useful to check framings extremely quickly!

One last thing I’d like to mention is the shot/sequence organisation.

Since I don’t have an edit yet, I needed a reliable naming convention for scene and shots. I decided to gather shots by location (i.e. Ranch) and call that a sequence, giving it two letters (RA for Ranch). After that each shot has a number as follows: 01_00. This allow me to add new shot numbers really easily, without renaming other shots. (i.e: RA_01_01). This naming convention makes the shots not tight to the scene numbers in the script or in the edit, meaning more flexibility.

Ok this is it. Today starts the making of Deadman’s Reach, my short film.

Where do I start? How to not Procrastinate?

I have six month to direct and animate a 13 pages scenario I wrote this summer,

meaning that I should have a finish film by the 7th of october.

Here are my goals:

* Finish the short film animation and backgrounds before I run out of money.  (Sound can be finalised a bit after that)

* Animation Backgrounds quality should be so that, at the end of the project, I can use them to have an exhibition.

* Finance the film by selling my Deadman’s Reach Book, more on this to come, Here 

*  Get all the song covers and rights that I need.

* Update this blog EVERY monday.

* Use the computer as little as possible

I have started a small planning, so far it goes like this:

20 days of animatic, sound and planning:

At the end of those 20 days i should have an animatic so close to the finish film, that you should wonder if I really need to animate it.

For those who don’t know anything about animation, an animatic is a rough version of the film, like a draft. So much energy is needed in production, that the animatic allows to focus this energy.

50 Days of Backgrounds:

I need the film to have only 50 backgrounds (or less), during those 50 days I will be doing one background a day or more. I will also start planning the final animation.

50 days of animation:

Those 50 days will overlap backgrounds obviously. I have very few experience in 2D animation, I’m planning to develop a simple technique that will allow me to animate fast and efficiently by using a mix of pixelisation and rotoscopy. We’ll see how this turns out!

That’s a lot of info for day one!

So this week I will be cutting my script into scenes and thumbnail so I get it into the 50 backgrounds allowed. And getting it ready for storyboarding.

preparing my edit tools, time lines, sounds etc… Starting dealing with production side of thing, music write, finance, paper buying etc… 

My friend Vincent Aupetit already had a go at storyboarding the whole film, talented chap. Here’s a little sneak pick:

Well it’s moving fast. Here is an interview I gave for Raven Brew, makers of the Deadman’s Reach Coffee, the coffee that inspired it all.

I hope my answers will give you some insight into the Deadman’s project and build up excitement. (I kind of have to make the movie now. Damn!)

Have a look at their websites and other brews, those coffee makers have just the right spirit.

Awesome art works too.

Enjoy it!

This is it, after a few month of writing, I’m happy to anounce that I am planing to start the production of my short film around April 2012.

I will log the progress here, so stay tune!