Final Piece - Short Film Animation "Town and Country"

Next Nick brought forward his very well composed ambient music ready for editing, which in turn (along with the choice of footage) would contribute and inform composing the rhythm of the movie edit.

After editing in After Effects and Final Cut Pro we produced this as our final Piece animation.

footage examples "Town and Country"

Here are some still photo examples of the footage we had captured for this project

'Town and Country' shoots

Here is some pictures taken from a few of our different experimental shoots

Sem A "town and Country"

This is a short-term level-2 animation group project: Our peers assigned us with an initial title to start our project: Town & Country. With this title as our starting point we would then be expected to develop and produce a finished short film animation from our ideas and explorations of space, subjectivity and vision within this project.

 

This is a  group project consisting of four members, my self and three fellow students the very talented: Helen Hayward, Nick Nenov and James Wills

 

The project is to make a short-film animation approximately 1 - 1½ minute long in screening.

 

Our aims are:

-To construct a narrative the animation will be based upon (or provide a supporting narrative, which may guide substantial direction for this short film

-To build and resolve a set/environment for the animation to take place

-To create virtual or physical subject/s to exist within the visual cinematic frame work

-To identify animated footage of some what within the short-film

 

In our exploration of development, process and production we must establish a balanced and pro-active work flow/ schedule within creating and resolving ideas as a group and provide effective individual support.

 Starting Point:

 As a group we had established our interest, shared ideas and influences and decided to go within the strongest common grounds... These initial group brainstorms lead us to begin our process unconventionally.

 As a group we looked at various works and other source material to get out creative juices flowing. We studied and scanned various productions and other artist’s works relevant to our subject/project, we analyzed approaches, techniques, styles, narratives and concepts of a variety of works. We investigated different practices and methodologies to allow us to interpret how varied works were made, from the cinematography used; shots and angles applied, the look and feel, the kind of materials that would have been utilized, the way sets and environment may have been created to the type of equipment that will have been used in these various works.

Here are some links to examples of what we looked at..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhX1tvTgqC8&feature=related

:Jan Svankmajer "Dimensions of Dialogue" part 1& 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xG4Nf9Dh4&NR=1 

:The Quay Bros 'Street of Crocadiles'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ppwV-2a40&feature=related

:An interview with the The Quay Bros 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

:Tim Burton "Vincent"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM2SKfD7WAc&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div 

:absolum  vs  Quay bros  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNQxESodFlE&NR=1

:The 25th Frame "The Eye of Silence"

 

 We also shared some individual animation, film and concept interests too…Here is some of the footage and source material we referenced our interests and influences from…

:The Knife "Heartbeats"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=qWLuqly6uCQ 

:The Eel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=-_nBXrNcayE&feature=PlayList&p=1D2C45B0BE66AA21&index=0&playnext=1

:Orsen Welles "War of the Worlds (part 1)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=4wf5TPVz56A

:TOCA ME design conference 08//trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2b2MBNCNiA&feature=PlayList&p=FFD20178663089E5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=29

From these sources we decided that had some ideas and aspirations for our project 

Here is a mind map generalizing brainstorms of our general group ideas...

We looked out for narrative inspirations and choose to loosely focus on 'Orsen Welles War of the Worlds' as what would be the notion of our film..

As a result from our group brainstorming and ideas critique we decided that our 'Town and Country" theme would touch upon conceptually an idea of the juxtaposition between the organic and scientific which would relate to the use of solid and liquids within the environment and subject within animation film.

We new taking the decision to only "loosely focus on Welles' WOTW as the notion of narrative" would not only give our work substantial guidance but allow us to be more free with our visually creative produce. So now that the narrative was to become more so ambiguous it was important that we created enough visual effective work to stand us in good stead for the overall film to stand strong. Experimenting with materials and capturing footage had become the major time consumption of the time-frame we had complete our project within.

Our group shared creative strengths and weakness's and mutually assigned each project responsibilities and sub-assignments.

 

Here is fusion of technical ideas that would stimulate our studio shoots and also a visual map of assigned tasks

My Artwork:

"Sleep tight kittens" Sketching and Painting - acrylic on canvas.

My Workshop practice

This is trail animatic produced for a workshop involved with our seminars at UEL. This short project was assigned by our tutor Pia Borg.

...It is my seconnd attempt at making an animatic. The technical tools i employed to make this was free-hand sketching, photography and editing software Final Cut Pro. The aim was to create a storyboard to inform the production of an animation. This would be a basic moving image sequence accompanied with audio. This practice is intended to serve a direction of visual language, timing and a conceptual idea by projecting a general outline of the animated film.

The first attempt of an animatic i made was last year. This was more of a brief animatic as it was a sequence of stills set up in Power-Point, not as effective, but i was still able to convey the idea and direction of the storyboard.

 

My Artwork:

My gallery:

My gallery:

My concept & narrative investigation

 After looking and collecting initially for this years project building, these pictures had become one of a few focal points of my creative investigations for my projects of this academic year (and may continue to be throughout next years practice also) . They convey an idea and a feeling which i have been trying to grasp and capture within my work.

In response to these pieces of artwork, or more so the idea i had thought of them to give, i had taken initially several photos at various occasions.

My gallery: Investigating 'Light'

  These are some of my photo's i'd taken, showing variation of light, subject, shape, tone-travel and time ...between almost the same picture..

Project work footage:

this is one of many pieces of raw footage which was part of the 'Town & Country" production experiment.

My Designs: A concept design for a still image 'ident'

These are some concept designs for a still image 'ident' to mark an establishment of, also promote  all of my creative artwork under one independent recognisable imagery label.

My gallery: 1st semester Animation Final Piece "Town & Country".

This is a short film animation i and three fellow students created for our 1st semesters group project at UEL Dec 08. This video is a finished piece, although throughout or project we had collected and made so much unused raw footage that any of our group may return using this collection to use for future composing and further productions as there was lots potential for the subject, idea, theme and so on to take on a diverse range of direction. 

Here is some raw still & moving image footage from our running project.