There was a celebration of Dick Arnall at the Curzon last weekend. What a lovely man he was, but what a life to celebrate too. So many great films and many many friends. The celebration was a little bit sad but inspiring too.

Scrap the last post

We're not quite going to make the deadline after all.
At Fonic, I was able to listen to the film in a proper environment with Barnaby and his practiced ears and brain, the holes in our sound were immediately evident and its clear we need to do a quite a bit more work on the sound effects before we mix.

All is not lost, we'll get it done with a bit of time and help and by the way the picture looks good after a grade and some extra work from Simon P. on FCP and we have a premiere date which is the 23rd April.

updatings

The deadline is the 30th March and we are on target to finish on time, but with everyone working around their other jobs, it's going to be tight. Kathrein is keeping everyone on track and I am just looking and listening to things whenever I'm not at a playgroup. Marek has done a grade, which I'm sure will make a big difference. Even once I had the hang of the white balance, the variation in tile white was significant. Tim's has finished and the music fits really well.
I am hoping that Fonic will be able to help us with our sound mix. They are very good, and their work is subtle and funny. I would like to be subtle and funny too.

The last shot

mumble mumble

I thought I would be twiddling my thumbs while Tim and Simon got on with the sound but actually the lip sync will keep me busy. The lip sync in Sawney Beane was random and misleading in parts, partly because I'm not a patient person but also because I was in the final stages of pregnancy and I was struggling to sit still and concentrate. Anyway, this time I'm going to give it a pop, there's a good page on it in Paul Well's Fundamentals of Animation, and I've got a couple of days, so how hard can it be?

The other awardees

The deadline is 5pm on 30th March. I wonder if we will be the only Hackney and Tower Hamlets Film Fund production team skidding in to the Brady Arts Centre at 4.55pm? I think there are 6 or 7 films in production and I'm really looking forward to seeing them all in April. I've enjoyed a regular cup of tea with one of the other awardees: Suzi Ewing, who has finished her film 'Hinterland', judging by her previous films, I'm sure it will be really splendid. At the early stages of my production I was also really pleased to have a drink with Phil Dale and his producer Liz Chan. Phil is best known as an animator but he and Liz have been making 'Tree' (or maybe the name has changed) in live action. I have really enjoyed reading Phil's blog about the ups and downs of his production process. (http://www.tree.gb.com/)

Scrap the last post

I'm going back in.
Mark has finished a second assembly and identified a few areas where improvements could be made to the sense of the story by swapping the order of events. I think there are three shots in all, that's two more mondays then I'll stop.

Back away from the rostrum

I think I had my last day animating this week. There are a few shots that I would like to do again if I could but it's time to stop now. My tile is quite scratched and my brushes are now looking as if they have done 15 minutes worth of wrestling with that shellac ink.
We have also moved onto the sound, so I really have to stop so that there is something concrete for Tim and Simon to work on. I'm really pleased that Simon Dye is going to help out with the sound design, Simon is also DeXter Bentley and I am a fan of his show on Resonance FM which is called Hello Goodbye (12pm on Saturdays). Tim Olden has been working on the music already, he is also very busy with Nina and Karen's new film Living with the Tudors. You can read about Tim on their website: http://www.somewhere.org.uk/Tim. He is quite brilliant in many ways.
The last few shots and Edward's Voice Record went to Orkney in the post and it arrived within 24 hours! Mark is going to do another assembly as soon as he can.

The Fantastic Mr Fox

The voice record went well. It's always hard to tell until it's chopped up in the timeline against the picture. It was the fastest one yet with only around half an hour to record all four characters. I was really fortunate to have been able to ask Edward Fox to do it, and he needed hardly any pointers, which was lucky because a) I was too nervous and b) my microphone wasn't active.
I didn't get a photo because his chair was a bit low in the booth.

First Assembly

Mark has sent the edit down by Royal Mail on a miniDv tape. I have got an ftp site but not all parties are able to use it without complications, so it lies empty at the moment. Mark is really good. I liked the first assembly very much and so did Shelly, she chuckled alot, (I gave her a portugese cake before she saw it). It's a different film to the one I thought I was making at the beginning and it's come out very funny in parts, largely due to the addition of a swarm of buzzing flies attendant at the Old Man's autopsy. The film is around 6"30' without the titles, Mark has taken off a whole minute. I note that I thought it would be 3"0' at the beginning of the production. What a pro!

Next is the voice record, then just a little bit more animation..there are a few shots that could be better before everything goes back in the post to Burray for another pass.

Yikes

Is it true that however long you have to make a film, it would always be a scrabble at the end? Things are speeding up here to my great alarm. Mark Jenkins (see previous post) has broken away from his reflections on the beaches of Burray. What a pal he is. He has set up his avid and the first swipe at the edit is on it's way down via the Royal Mail. I'm going to review it tommorrow with the help of my animator friend Shelly Wain and finalise the voice script for the voice record on 9th Feb.
I have a wonderful actor to record on friday, I just hope I don't goof up my part in the proceedings. Kathrein is swanning off to Berlin for the film festival but is skillfully paving the way for the voice record before she goes. I'm still animating on Mondays. Shortly someone is going to have to do the kind thing and snap my squirrel hair brushes in half and lock the bathroom door.

Mark Jenkins - editor

Here he is!
There are a few things that Mark wants to do before setting up his avid and editing the film, recover from the move, explore the beaches of Orkney, make a hen house, build a darkroom for Bec. Don't worry Mark, there's no hurry.

The Daddy.

Shelly and I went to Canada House to a screening and reception related to the Norman McLaren screenings at the NFT. I would earnestly recommend going to some of the screenings, they finish at the end of January. On this evening, Boogie Doodle and Neighbours were screened and whoops of joy were heard not only at the end of each film but during too. Go.

Dressed Fleas, Tring



Tiny things are amazing arn't they?

Shrewish

Some progress

The christmas break gave me a chance to stand back from my creative endeavours, plus a little plumbing review of the bathroom studio made me tidy up a bit and I found a handy envelope labelled 'script writing'. It spurred me on to address the structure and characters motivations again. In short I've made some more animation for myself to do in the two days that Ive set aside to animate. Saturday the 6th and Monday the 8th. Don't ring then ok.

Book Launch and Screening


The aforementioned Animate book Rethinking Animation, was officially launched last week at the Curzon in tandem with a screening of the shortlisted films for the Animate Award. This was useful for those of us who couldn't get to Brief Encounters this year. The award was for innovative work and it was certainly an exciting selection, thrillingly not limited to CG either. It was quite a boysy bunch of films, all except for Jonas Odell's Never like the first time, in which five people recollect their first sexual experience, the last two stories were extraordinary. It was the second time that I had seen Film Noir by Osbert Parker, the first time was last week when it was broadcast on Channel 4, did it look different? It seemed so. It's a stunning film, every shot is beautiful and the animation flawless, the narrative and pacing didn't quite work for me, I couldn't quite tell what the intention was, though I might watch it again and revise my opinion. I was quite glad to see Empire by Edouard Salier, I loathed his film Flesh, but in seeing Empire I could see how he came to make Flesh and look forward to seeing what's next. Other films shown were Park Football by Grant Orchard, which has been very popular on the internet and no wonder, it's simple and sick. Leviathan by Simon Bogojevic Narath was also shown, it's like watching the actors in a complex video game mutiny, naked, some finished off properly and others, roughly hewn, it's great actually. Have I made it sound terrible?

How it's going

I have managed to animate for three days in a row this week. It will be the last little stretch I'll get at it the film because we are hoping to finish it by the end of January. Presently there is six minutes of very untidy animation, and I cant quite tell how it will be when it's done or what I need to reshoot. Mark Jenkins is the editor who I lean heavily on for guidance, this will be a remote activity because he is moving to Burray in Orkney for a year. Wow. Last time when we edited The True Story of Sawney Beane, I was mostly in Canada and distracted by the imminent birth of my son, so not for us the luxury of sitting side by side and thrashing it out surrounded by Boaster crumbs. Not this time.

shot SC003sh005a - ruined

Using a straight ahead technique, there are some no no's, but yesterday I forgot myself. I found a mohair cardigan in the salvation army shop for one pound, I threw it straight on for the afternoon's animating and now it looks like shot SC003sh005a has been made on the floor of a pet shop.

The animate! book Rethinking animation book is good. It't hot off the press and I was overjoyed to get a free copy. It comes with a DVD and is a readable mix of essay and interview, mostly giving the artist's their say. It wasn't long ago that I was standing by the animation section in Foyles yawning and now my cup runneth over with the excitment of Paul Wells' The Fundamentals of Animation and Clare Kitson's insightful Tale of Tales publication too.