This year, the final of my three years
studying animation at JMC has been amazingly busy, especially working alone for
most of the graduation short film, Suffragette
Molly. When I started I knew I would be working on my own and this short
would have spoken words, but I was quietly confident that in the end I would
have a film I would be proud of. This
final blog post is looking back at the entire year of the film, the processes I
went through, what I faced both positive and negative and my overall opinion of
the project.
Before I can get into detail about what
happened behind the scenes, I will summarise the film first. Suffragette Molly began as a story of a
young suffragette woman who after meeting a Victorian politician is transported
in time to the future. My inspiration for the film came from a variety of
classic movies and current television shows. Wizard of Oz and the character Mrs Banks from Mary Poppins gave me the when and who quality while Doctor Who and The Time Machine stimulated the time travelling aspects. A Canadian
Police television show, Murdoch
Mysteries, based at the turn of the last century has very strong female
characters that helped to inspire the character of Molly. I wanted the audience to think what it would
be like to take a person from the past and place them in the future.
Before any animation was required,
pre-production was conducted from February through to June and during this time
the storyline was developed and scripted. Every element was designed from these
scripts be that props, characters and sets etc. I worked almost solely on my
own developing a range of different ideas for the characters and props. Sean
kindly suggested Toby Alderton, who came onboard with useful tips and his wonderful
help greatly put a final polish to the character designs, taking my draft
cartoony versions, into designs I could use to create 3D versions. His designs
were perfect for the time period and were of a high quality.
The whole process during this period was
quite intense and many things needed to be considered, a lot more than what I
thought. However, it was during this period I really enjoyed coming up with
many ideas as I had no restrictions but I discovered while many of my designs and
style although slightly rough were good for draft processes only and would not
be the highest quality needed at the production stage, hence getting help from
Toby to improve my character designs was a great idea. I realised that my
technique in future needs to be a reasonably high standard. For this to occur I
will need to practice regularly, both by hand and by tablet, and move away from
the cartoony drawing style. It may take some time but I think I will be able to
get to the standard required.
Another part of the animatic process is where
the drawing styles don’t need to be as highly detailed, thus suiting my current
drawing style. This process took some time, but was quite enjoyable as I could
see what I wrote down and drew on paper coming to life. It was also during this
stage I started casting, writing a number of emails and making phone calls. It
was almost straight away I heard from Jess Collet, who was very keen on the
project. This relationship has continued to develop, where I have learnt from
her how to direct actors while being patient, providing detailed information
regarding the character and storylines also learning how many takes are
required. I helped Jess to understand what was required during the animation
process. This relationship will continue on into the future where I hope we can
continue to learn from one another. My
male lead unfortunately changed towards the end of the film as contacting the
original cast member was quite difficult.
This entire pre-production was interesting
and having worked on my own, I certainly learnt in this early period about what
was involved as well as to trust and be patient with people while understanding
that you can’t do everything yourself as the process is so large. The need to
get help and share ideas with others on such a major scale was a must. While I
think I handled this early process well, it paled in comparison to what would came
next during the production where my patience was tested along with my own skill
level as well as working with difficult people.
The production of Suffragette Molly was quite an enjoyable process with a full range
of emotions. I had always known it was going to be hard working on my own;
however, when Seon came onto my team, despite my reservation on her first day
as I had nothing for her to do I was very pleased in the end to have her on the
team. During the break I had done massive amounts of work including the basic
lounge location set and character modelling. After my character modelling were
dismissed as being not as good as it should, I gave Seon all of the characters
to remodel from Toby’s drawings, looking back at this now I believe it was a really
good decision.
I did lack confidence in character modelling
within Maya so I used Mudbox instead and as I was on my own at the time I went
ahead with a program I have more confidence in using. Looking back now, I am so
pleased Seon worked on all the characters, she did such a wonderful and great
job, if it wasn’t for her, I would never had this film finished as I would have
spent 2 months just on the modelling the characters. Having Seon on the
character modelling allowed me to focus on the sets and prop modelling.
While Seon moved onto the next character and
although I knew rigging wasn’t my strongest element I gave it a go. I knew
Molly was going to be the most difficult because of her wide range of movements
and I tried to reflect this within her rig. I thought I would have problems and
that came true. I literally spent weeks testing and retesting. With every
mistake I learnt something new, including the need for accuracy of the model,
rig and correctly placed controllers. Within the script, I decided that the other
characters weren’t to move as much, either they were sitting down or standing, therefore
their rigs would be simple and easy to create.
I
feel my strongest asset is my animation skills. While this may not be reflected
within the film due to limited time I had, I know I have learnt a great deal of
what is involved in undertaking animation for longer than 10 seconds. During the animation process, I noticed all
the problems associated with my rig, particularly with my weights of the body.
Many were only discovered during this process, so it was quite often I had to
go back and fix it. This was at times quite frustrating as it slowed me down.
However if there were areas I couldn’t fix or had trouble with i.e. the hands,
I would move the camera to hide any of these mistakes. Despite many mistakes and the time it took to
fix it, many problems still occurred and I believe this is simply because of my
rigging skill level. Nevertheless I preferred to focus and concentrate on the
animation as I have confidence in this area. I would rather take an object and
animate it to life than rigging it. I realise my animation isn’t fantastic at
the moment but the more I practice in the real world, the better I will become.
I
found the most difficult aspect of the entire project was working with some
difficult people. During the second half of session two, I had difficulty with the
sound guy who wanted to take control and decided everything for himself without
consulting me. His main emphasis was his own assignment and wasn’t focused on
mine. This was quite a difficult period
where my stress level was quite high. Making both Head Teachers aware of my
difficulties I found this action actually made it worse, to a point where he
get quite nasty. But after a bitter two weeks, I found someone else and our
working relationship is far better. I think I handed this situation quite
badly, simply because I was so focused on other aspects of the film, I failed
to check in regularly with how the sounds were going, therefore leaving him to
think everything was OK.
I
realise as a Director I need to check every aspect of the project and this was
one area I failed to do so. I learnt a great deal during this time, but then
again, I may come across people like this regularly in the future and the best
thing to do is find someone who I can trust and know will do the job and not
slow me down by having a big ego and preventing you from moving forward in your
work.
So,
in general, how do I feel about the entire project, be that good or bad?
Basically despite the occasional setback, the entire process has been
thoroughly enjoyable. The idea of creating a film was frightening and enjoyable
at the same time, especially undertaking almost all on my own. The idea of
creating a film and going through a wide range of emotions was something I was
expecting but the pressure to come up with something was enormous. I wouldn’t
lie that there were many, many times I doubted myself to whether I would finish
or if the final product would be any good. I was concerned about every detail
and whether anyone would like the project. I also doubted whether my skills
would be up to the task to create a film that would be good enough to get me
work, but my biggest concern was time (funny that considering the film is about
time travel) and whether everything would be completed. This primary concern
was that we were a group of two whereas other groups had three or four people
also my disorganisation of the entire film.
I
realise that working on three or four large tasks within the project at once
wasn’t ideal and I lost control at times i.e. audio side of things. While
ideally I should have been better organising tasks between the two of us and I
should have had regularly contacts/meetings with others, I was far too focused
on getting the animation/rigging correct. Looking back at it now, I should have
asked for more exterior help that would have allowed me to focus on the
directing and the thing I love the most, animation. Despite this, I estimate
this film would never had been finished if it wasn’t for the great skills of
Seon, who worked really hard on getting all the characters right and on time. Nevertheless
with all the problems, I would still love to one day direct an animation film
and this entire project hasn’t put me off. When reviewing the entire process, I
completely understand the hard ache that goes people go through making an
animated film.
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