Last Tuesday, Sapfron and I worked our butts off to ensure we had some kind of cutout animation ready to present on the following Tuesday. Here is some of the work we did:
Brainstorms
On the day we were supposed to brainstorm, I wasn't in the best state, so here is what I ended up scribbling as a 'plan':
These ideas unfortunately did not stick, as we moved forward to the...
Proposal
In case you're struggling to read that, here is the written piece in full:
“It hurts. I miss my kids. I miss my kids in
so many ways that I can't explain.”
There are few words that have been spoken
truer. Val Kilmer said that, and while it doesn’t have anything to do with this
proposal, or my life, I really struggle with starting written pieces and
generic people often seem to start with a quote so I just did that.
Our animation will start on a background
filled with clouds, and people will be milling about in the background. All of
this will be drawn on rather than individual pieces, like with Mr Benn, to
create a set-in-stone background of locations and characters without
distracting from the key narrative at hand.
Then, limb by limb, someone will pop out of
thin air into scene, soundtracked by a scream. I aim for this scream to be
blood curdling in its design, a backing track to the existential pain of being
ripped into existence by a reality you don’t understand. Each limb will be
taken from a different celebrity, and the head will be from a portrait of Henry
VIII for that extra renaissance touch.
(Does Henry VIII count as renaissance? Oh
wait, I don’t care. This is TV & Film, not History. GOODBYE FACTS, HELLO
CREATIVITY.)
Following this, a second being similar in
its body structure will be popped into existence, only this time topped by the
head of Pop Superstar and Beloved TV Everyman OLLY MURS. An exchange will be
shared between the two on the benefits of living within cutout animation, eventually
resolved by the Olly Murs creature having its own arm force fed into its mouth
and down through its body.
In a final touch of beautiful poetry, the
animation will end just as it began. An awful, traumatising scream.
It will be shot on location at Hector’s
house with a Canon 700D and some lights.
Surprise, surprise: the idea changed yet again after that. But this time we were confident we were sticking to it, so Sapfron got on with the...
Storyboards
We had of course also had all of this planned and scheduled beforehand, as shown by this wonderfully complete...
Production Schedule
That was pretty much all the necessary paperwork out of the way, and we were set to get on with the shoot later that week. But as a special bonus, here are pictures of both Sapfron and myself as we were producing paperwork and resources on the Tuesday.
