kate and bradbury: online at last

Just wanted to announce that Kate and Bradbury is now available in full for viewing online, here!

I've secured some studio space to work on my new film, and hopefully that'll help things start chugging along. Not too much to announce other than that!

Hey, Kate and Bradbury was honoured with the Best Animated Film award at the EcoFocus Film Festival in Athens, GA this week. This is the first time a film I have made has been honoured in that way, so thanks so much to the good people at EcoFocus.

just getting started

I haven't had too much time to get started working on my new project yet, which is somewhat distressing. However, my dayjob time goes down significantly after October is through, so I'm hoping to make November doubly productive. I think I may have a tentative design for my main character in the film, and I'm getting some cards on which to redo the storyboards this afternoon.

Also, I am going to try and start collecting things that I find on the ground to use in the film as the items that the character finds on the ground. Oh yes, and the character has a name -- Celeste. That may change as well, but it doesn't really matter as it will never come up in the film.

things that are new

So, here we are. It's been far too long, and for that I apologize. I feel like I'm never sure what to do with this blog, but I have a new project on the go and I think that's good cause to revitalize this old place and clear out some cobwebs.

Here's what's been going down in the past half year:

Kate and Bradbury:
All done, the sweat and blood part over with for the most part, and the applying to festivals when I have some spare time at work part is in full swing. It's been accepted to a few already, from screening on subways in the Toronto Urban Film Fest last month to the always wonderful Atlantic Film Festival here in Halifax, where I was also working at the box office. It played in Georgia down in the states last weekend at the Ecofocus Film Festival, and later this month it'll be playing in Toronto at the Planet in Focus Film Festival -- one of my favourite festivals to work with. The lovely folks at PIF have been so kind to me, and I'm really happy to be screening with them again this year. K+B will be up on vimeo so's you can see it in full if you haven't already. Until then, you can watch an edited (no credits), soundless version here.

The New Project:
Tentatively titled 'Collectables' (this will change, but hey, it's a working title), I recently was hounoured to receive the Helen Hill Animated Award from the Linda Joy Society to work on this film, and I'm really excited about it. My deadline is September 2010, and I am finishing up storyreel work this month. It will be animated with watercolours and crayons, and will be about a girl who starts collecting random objects on a whim. You'll most definitely be hearing more about it as the work gets done.

There you have it -- an update! I will attempt to not let this fall by the wayside for so long again.

the rest of the story

I've been meaning to chronicle these ups and downs as they happened, but haven't had a chance thus far. So: I thought I was all good and such with my film once I had turned it in the first time, but it was not so! I managed to get my film back on the same day as the rough cut screening, and I ran in to chop it up a bit and make it more presentable, but the middle section of the film turned out to be totally blank! The beginning and end were there, but there was a chunk in the middle that was whited out (though not entirely; the black frames of the Oxberry were still there, just nothing in them).



I'm still not sure what I did that screwed it up, but it was a pretty sad time....until I was informed by the lovely people of AFCOOP that I could reshoot! This was wonderful news, as I had been trying to resign myself to the idea that after all that work I didn't have a film. Later that week I went in and reshot -- Martha sent the film out right away and it came back early the next week. Looking at that reshot film almost gave me a heart attack -- it would fade to black and my heart would start racing before remembering that there was an intentional fade-out that was supposed to be there. This second time round it all turned out fine, fortunately. Whatever it was that happened the first time didn't repeat itself.



I edited up my second take (or rather, spliced together the part that turned out the first time with the stuff I had to redo), and recorded some sounds at home. I ended up mixing the sounds with a combination of Audacity and Premiere (due to Audacity not being able to import video; I would create a certain sound by layering and cutting in Audacity and then drop that into Premiere and do a bit more playing around). The delay because of reshooting did mean that I had missed the audio deadline, but Natalie was kind enough to come in and dump my audio tracks to mag stock for me. After that the audio edits and sync went really well and I somehow had everything in on time!

So there you have the belated story of the rest of my technical problems. I am seriously so grateful to AFCOOP and all the people who helped me out because without their patience, understanding, deadline flexibility and last-minute assistance, I wouldn't have a film.

shooting

So here's a shot of my little animation setup -- I have some more photos over at my flickr account of my sketchy line-test setup (my computer was too slow to be able to test anything over 80 frames at once, but it helped me get a sense of things at least) and of the process in general. Animation mainly happened in the week or two before my deadline (as these things will tend to do, as helped along by a trip to Alberta when I got nothing done and the holiday season in general), but for the most part it went well.

Shooting. After the last minute scramble to get all of the animation done (including animating all of the sponsor/afcoop/omf logos which took longer than I expected but which I think were worth it in the end), I first went into the animation room on the evening of the 31st of January. I had gotten my mentor to give me a quick reminder session and go through all the steps of loading the camera and shooting fades and such the night before, so I was feeling pretty confident. I still had a bit to ink, so I shot one chunk that day and one the day after -- the process itself went fairly quickly and I got into the groove and just went for it.





On my way to my second day of shooting I came across some NSCAD students in the parking lot beside the animation room, shooting a film about -- bikes! I took some photos of them (like a stalker) and we chatted for a bit about bike films. I deem it to be a good omen!

Turning in my film was a wonderful feeling, after a week of craziness and scrambling. The OMF coordinator had forgotten that I was still shooting and sent the main batch of films in so I had to wait a few weeks before it would be sent for processing (with everyone else's credits), but to have it all shot and done with was incredible.

a month later

Here's some visual evidence of one of the more succesful moments described in that last post (Thanks to Ralph who came out and documented it):

My film has come back from Toronto and I am highly apprehensive about seeing it. However, since I expect basically nothing to be on it, it'll be a treat if anything IS on it! I hope. Regardless, the hand-drawn portion seems to be going pretty well....I got zero work done over the break, but since I've gotten back things have gotten off to a good start. I may post some pictures of my little workspace later.