Premiere League

Last week I was in conference manager mode overseeing the official UK premiere for the Macedonian film The Third Half.

I will no-doubt review the film soon, but this isn’t the main focus of this post. Like most event management – organising a premiere is an exhausting process requiring a ridiculous amount of forethought and planning  (for what essentially lasts only a few hours). If it goes well, it should be seemless. If it doesn’t, well that doesn’t even bear thinking about!

Having run a couple of my own film premieres in the past, I was already reasonably aware of the type of requirements involved. This was on a grander scale however. We needed to make sure everything would run smoothly but there were a couple of bumps to overcome beforehand:

1. The local AV support team were down in numbers or unavailable to cover the event. Therefore I had to step up and make sure I was completely up-to-speed on any technical issues which might/might not occur during the evening.

2. The film was passed on in a format which would not work with our systems. I needed to convert the film into a compatible form. This wasn’t totally straight-forward and took a bit of time to figure out. The biggest obstacle were the subtitles.

3. Despite having a guest-list it was impossible to predict the exact numbers attending (film journalists/media were invited, but we were not sure if they were going to show). This made things interesting as a drinks reception planned for the end of the evening. It needed to be flexible, classy but not  over-indulgent. We couldn’t afford go wildly over-budget or under-cater, a surprisingly tricky balance.

4. We were planning to do a Q&A with the director Darko Mitrevski. Unfortunately it transpired Darko would in LA for the premiere date agreed, so we needed to do this using the wonders of technology (also factoring in any time-differences). This created some additional complexity to the event.

Thankfully, I’m happy to say all the hard work paid off and the entire team helping (many of whom were volunteers) did a fantastic job. There is usually something a bit magical about a film premiere. Even though I was there in an official capacity, I’m pleased to say that this was no exception. Well done to all involved!

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

Yesterday the world learned the sad news that stop-motion pioneer Ray Harryhausen had passed away. To me he was one of the most important special effects geniuses within the film industry, with a career spanning 5 or so decades. It all began for Ray after watching the original 1933 version of King Kong. This clearly inspired him and he began making his own stop-motion films in his garage. It wasn’t long before his talents were spotted. He went on to create some of the most startling on-screen beasties, although for me the most impressive was his skeleton army for Jason and the Argonauts back in 1963. Yes 1963!

This really upped the ante from his original (but also brilliant) solo skeleton fight in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), by a factor of seven. It has proved so enduring that even popular video games such as Golden Axe (one of my favourites as a youngster) paid homage to it.

Anyway, point being – without his work would we have had the likes of Henry Selick, Peter Jackson, Phil Tippet, Rob Bottin, Aardman, Tim Burton, ILM or countless other talented animators? They are all clearly big fans and indebted to his efforts. Personally give me his stop-motion animation over most of the glossy but clinical Computer Generated Imagery we see today.

The web and YouTube are rightly being flooded with tributes, so to end here is a short compilation of Ray’s creatures:

You know the score

I’ve faced problems focusing on my film-work over the past few months so have decided to simplify things. Rather than juggling multiple projects all at the same time I’m planning to consolidate my efforts on one project at a time. I will begin with Spare Change, a project which has been in limbo for too long. Adding additional focus to the mind is the fact I will plan to enter it for this year’s Virgin Media Shorts. In order to do this I need to resolve the following:

1. Some of the shots are under-exposed meaning some shots look too dark. Sadly the video compression (h.264) didn’t retain darker black areas particularly well. We shot most of the footage on location over one evening so our shooting ratio is extremely low. This means we do not have the luxury of alternative shots we can fall back on. Reshoots are sadly not going to be an option (much as I’d like to do them), so there needs to be some other way to address this problem. Plus the picture also needs grading. So if there are any after-effects or colour grading gurus out their listening who want a new challenge – please get in touch!

2. The whole thing needs to be edited down to 140 seconds to comply with the Virgin Media rules.

3. The sound needs finishing. If you recall, I threw all of the sound out and started from scratch. At the moment people are still gliding across the pavements.

After addressing the run-time (point 2), I turned my efforts towards the final point: sound. Initially I made a list of the sounds which were obviously missing (most of which were footsteps). The next part wasn’t originally planned, I composed a score for the film. This wasn’t strictly necessary but it was part designed to cover some of the missing sound. This is easily some of my most understated work – you barely notice it’s there. I wanted to create an ambient and slightly alien soundscape, so it is mostly synthetic/electronic (with the exception of some bowed cymbals). You could argue with the exception of two tonal moments that it is less scoring and more sound design. The interesting discovery I made whilst doing this was how much quicker I am able to work when I am also the director. This also follows exactly the same pattern as my previous directorial projects – presumably because by this point I understand the requirements inside-out.

With an underscore in place, I set about doing some additional foley work. I clearly could use better sound recording equipment, but one thing I did take away from this experience was how enjoyable this was! I paced up and down the street recording myself walking in various types of shoes and in different manners. The neighbours probably thought I was raving mad. I swung around the washing-line in the back garden as if I was holding on to a hand-rail. I cursed the fact I did this on a beautiful Spring morning when the birds kept interrupting with their twittering. I had some therapy by thumping against the sofa to get some solid-bass thud sounds.

All of this was terrific fun! Now comes what I suspect is the less fun part – which is layering it all together.

Die Hard-R

R vs PG-13. Fight!

Warning: wild rambling post alert!

Recently I watched two rather similar films back to back. One was The Raid (still loving the viseral punch of this movie) and the other was Dredd (which  has more meat on the bones). The reasons for watching these could be attributed to the strains of making a small bear who can walk! I’ve already covered The Raid. So I’ll just write a couple of quick lines about Dredd.

After the mis-guided mid-90′s Stallone effort (which I see more as a sequel to Demolition Man than a Judge Dredd movie), you could say I was “Dredding”  this film. Thankfully the latest incarnation is a significant improvement. In particular I would single Olivia Thilsby out as the heart of the movie. Then there is Karl Urban who grunts his way through the movie as the eponymous character mixing in some elements of Dirty Harry and Robocop (both iconic characters and movies in their own right).

Similarities between Dredd and The Raid are unavoidable – even if Dredd is set in the future. Both were released at roughly the same time (despite the fact Dredd was made much earlier and had a much longer post-production period because of all the special effects). They have the same exactly the same premise : underdog protagonist(s) trapped in a high-rise building with vast hordes trying to make sure no one escapes. There are nasty slimy villains who do their own dirty work when necessary but are more happy to hide behind technology where possible. Both are ludicrously violent.

Doesn’t this sound familar to another action movie? Possibly the most iconic action films of recent times? The title of this post has given it away. Let’s just say there is a reason people use the phrase “It’s Die Hard in/on a …”. For me, I doubt Die Hard will ever be bettered in this particular genre. I also many of the other  mid-to-late eighties Joel Silver action films (Commando, Lethal Weapon 1/2, Predator). They were daft, spectacular, over the top with a charming/witty quality about them – a quality sorely lacking from today’s gritty post 9/11 films.  Plus I wasn’t quite old enough to watch them legally in the cinema, which only increased their appeal.

Today it seems most films are marketed at the teen-market PG-13 (or 12A in the UK’s case) audience rather than an adult R rated (15/18) audience to increase the demographic. They did this with the fourth Die-hard installment and this is where the franchise lost its way. I have lost count how many recent “horror films” I’ve seen which have a PG-13 rating.

Recently the movie going public were inflicted to yet another Die Hard movie. I say this although I must confess I didn’t see it (thanks to the terrible looking trailers and scathing reviews). I really wanted to rally behind this film, but it was clear from that this franchise is out of steam. Long gone is the original under-dog blue-collar cop John Mclane (who now just seems Bruce Willis playing a gruff wise-cracking – er – Bruce Willis for a hefty pay-day). There was no memorable side-kick. There was no memorable uber-villain. The focus shifts to his offspring (presumably as some sort of cynical passing the batton exercise). The film was colour-graded so much so that it looks sterile. It was handled by a sub-par director. Sure – it is pretty noisy, flashy and looks slick – but nothing really separated it from any other action film. Just like the previous All of this is the same with the previous Die Hard movie in fact! But at least this one was going to be R-rated (hence wanting to like it). However reviews made it clear that there was very little in the film to make it R-rated bar some curse words. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they originally intended it for the PG-13 market – which clearly isn’t the Die-Hard I remember.

Thankfully these Die-Hard sensibilities were satisfied by the gloriously “dumber than a bag of spanners” Olympus has Fallen (“Die Hard in the White house” – you just know this is how it was pitched!). In some ways the timing is interesting being as it has a group of North Korean terrorists on the war-path (I’m sure this country has been in the media about something recently?). My expectations were admittedly low going in and yes – it can be argued it is mostly predictable/generic – yet it knows exactly what it needs to do. It follows the gritty violence trend a bit too much which detracts charm despite the daft premise. It pilfers mercilessly from the original Die Hard as well as other clones Under Siege and Air Force One. So much so it was almost laughable spotting these liberally lifted scenes – which DID give it a certain charm (for me anyway). I was willing to forgive some of the mortar-sized plot holes as this is clearly a “switch your brain off” movie. Actually I’d wager this is by far a more satisfying Die Hard film than Die Hard 5  is. Much like Dredd/The Raid, there is another film with exactly the same premise out later this year (Roland Emmerich’s White House Down). This practice is not uncommon in Hollywood. However, I’ll bet that one is a PG-13!

Technically both Dredd and The Raid were not traditionally made Hollywood films. With Olympus it’s nice to see someone in Hollywood has identified that the adult audience doesn’t always want profound works of art or teenie stuff. Now they just need to lighten up a bit with the “gritty” stuff. Sadly – news such as this won’t help the cause much.  News like this hopefully does!

I’m not sure if this in part inspired me to write the following track:

I really enjoyed making this one even if I was originally intending to do something more along the lines of Hans Zimmer (who I find a bit Marmite at times). The plan was to make it feel less orchestral and more electronic (I even had some dub-step elements in at one point). For whatever reason these didn’t make it in and this was the result. To be fair it is normal for me to compose a section but later realise – even if I like it – it should be removed. I will share one such unfinished moment with you from this current track which you can download from here:

Hostile Takeover outtake (mp3)

Anyway hope you enjoy and sorry for the rambling post!

Getting animated

I’ve been meaning to post a progress update on The Lonely Bear.

As already mentioned, I am using Flash for the animation. The truth is I’m not a Flash expert and I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to get things moving. The last version I used was when it was owned by Macromedia (circa 2000). Therefore it was back to the drawing board when I fired up the latest version in my Adobe Creative Suite. Some bits were  still familiar, most of it I needed to relearn.

One of the discoveries I made early on was the bone tool. I had a play and all seemed to work well on my demo with Mr Circle Man – I was very excited!

This excitement was short-lived. My project kept crashing whenever I tried to save it – extremely frustrating. The only way I could save anything at all was to export to an earlier Flash format. The downside was that the bone tool didn’t appear to work properly now – despite my numerous attempts and following online guides. Eventually I gave up.

At this point I decided to return to my trusty old friend “Tweening” for help. Tweening is a process where you set two key frames (a start position and an end position). The “tween” then attempts to fill all of the frames in between these two points. Just to confuse things – Adobe Flash has a fancy new tweening method which I wasn’t quite able to get my head around.

Momentarily frustrated again, I decided to try stop motion and just move each leg, arm, foot, hand etc manually. Now I have to say I adored the crude look this produced. However even I was able to foresee the world of pain this would ultimate cause. I was hoping to finish the film this decade with some sanity remaining. I decided to take another quick look at tweening and I stumbled onto “Classic Tweening” – this appeared to do what I needed. At last!

Okay – enough talk, time for a visual demonstration as things currently look. The timing isn’t right, although I like the effect that produces:

Right, that only took most of the week – let’s hope I can get things moving a bit quicker next time.

10×10 April

Despite some exciting talks planned over the next couple of months, April was  a rather subdued 10×10. Kicking off, I offered a completely impromptu test-screening for  a project I’ve worked on called Legacy (formerly Dad). The film isn’t an easy sell being as it deals with the topic of parental child-abuse. As I expected, the early cut shown played pretty much to silence – particularly at the end whilst people collect their thoughts.

The main purpose was to highlight any problems (and there were a number identified thanks to the audience). Happy to say that the final version which premiered earlier this week has since resolved some of these issues. I was also pleased that people seemed to appreciate the musical score for the film. I found this more emotionally challenging to create than anything in the editing process.

The main showcase for the evening was Zoe Broughton’s documentary Taking on Tarmageddon which covers the environmental consequences of the tar-sands in Canada. The film was a bit longer than standard 10×10 fare, but it was a captivating 50 minutes. You can watch it by clicking the following link:

https://vimeo.com/tarmageddon

This film is freely available and feel free to promote it further. One criticism you might level at the film is that it feels a little one-sided. However this isn’t through fault of the film-makers, every-time they tried to speak to a tar sand representative or Government official they were asked to stop filming. You could draw your own conclusions from this! The aerial shots give a dramatic look at how the beautiful Alberta countryside has been devastated as a result of the tar-sands. Having visited Alberta on a number of occasions, this is indeed very sad to see indeed.

By this point you might conclude that the recent 10×10 was a rather somber affair, but it ended on a fun note. Recently Film Oxford ran a stop motion animation course (there is another one running this weekend). It appears that many families have been getting a bit creative with the plastercine. Most of the films shown were only a few seconds long, the only one I can find online is this one:

The biggest star of the show was “Spider football”. This was simply a delight to behold – watching our eight-legged friend kicking the ball around rather competitively with himself.

The next 10×10 is scheduled to be held on Thursday 2nd May at 7pm. For further announcements you can visit the facebook page.

The Lonely Bear

Over the weekend, my daughter completely surprised me. I was busy snoozing before getting woken by a little girl full to the brim with pride and excitement. She presented us with her latest creative endeavour, a self-written book entitled The Lonely Bear. She has only just turned six so I wasn’t expecting miracles in terms of spelling or grammar.  I was also not expecting anything as  long as twelve pages. Yet it completely astounded me how much she has already picked up from reading other stories (setting up the characters, repetition, an ending etc). I felt so incredibly proud that I made the flippant remark – we have to turn this into a small animation for you to keep.

I have been looking for a change of pace and style after both Legacy and Spare Change. An animation for children is just the ticket (I’ll document things here as I go along). I’m planning to use Flash (most probably very badly) to do achieve this. The animation will look rather crude, which I hope also lends it a certain charm.

I am currently working alongside my daughter who is helping me create the characters. The process is: I’ll doodles, she tells me the ones she likes and she mentions a few refinements. At the moment we have just finished our main character: Clare the bear (descended from the bear doodle on the right).

So without further ado – I present to you the first of the characters and the title for my next little project:

Please show her lots of love as she is feeling rather lonely on her own right now.