Paul Smith has produced an excellent little Christmas ECard. Those who have seen his "Love of the Game" film will recognise both the humour and the modelling style.
http://www.hdgreetings.com/preview.aspx?name=xmaspub-h&cat=welcomefriend
Something I was sent on Myspace, sounds interesting:
DeltaEchoPapaZulu launches a Video Contest on the web for the realization of the video of “Pleasure Railways”, a song from the cd Download My Love.
The song, as explained by the author Alberto Fabris (DeltaEchoPapaZulu), refers to the Kraftwerk’s Transeurope Express putting a question mark and possibly disagrees to the original concept of the “Transeurope Express” being the most beautiful railways journey due to the unique landscapes of Siberia and the great analog technology of the trains. Infact “Pleasure Railways” argues that the most beautiful railways journey is the Japanese Sanyo-To-Kaido-To-Hoku Sjinkansen
On one of my work trips to Copenhagen my bag was stuck in the airport handling system and I arrived at the hotel with nothing. I duely payed for a new pair which cost a fortune from the hotel reception and some body spray from the local convenience store. So the next day I left my old pair of pants in the room and headed off to work in the new pair. When I arrived back to the hotel I found the room was open and my old pants were gone. Despite various protests I did not get any refunds and my pants never arrived. Things were made worse by the fact that my new pants accidentally ended up on the expenses bill to the client.
On a separate occasion I was reading "Digital Lighting and Rendering" a top book from Jeremy Birn which not surprisingly is about Digital Lighting, and Rendering. I left this in the hotel room as it's quite heavy and I already had a laptop to carry. When I returned that evening it was gone. The hotel made some enquiries but non of cleaning staff turned out to be part time computer animators. They promised to send me a new copy. On another visit a few weeks later, I quizzed about progress and they denied all knowledge. So I shelled out for a new copy and since then it's been know as the book that was so good I bought it twice.
"Why should an amateur animator be interested in project planning for their animation?"
In my case it's to solve the problem of working on the film very intermittently and forgetting what needs to be done and what is important. For a large project or a project with many people working on it, project planning can help communicate between the team members.
A good project plan links together the tasks that need to be completed, the resources (either computers, materials or people) and time. A plan can also be used to communicate to non animators such as project sponsors if you are lucky enough to have some. A plan can help provide an estimate for your budget or highlight problem areas in your project.
There are different techniques for project planning, I'm going to describe just one which is task based planning as I feel that is more suited to smaller projects with one or a few resources.
Tasks
The first and minimum requirement for a plan is just a list of tasks to be done.
A simple example framework for these is outlined below for character based short story with two characters and three scenes.
Resources are any materials, places, equipment or people associated with the project. For example you may only have one sound studio hence you can only record one voice at once or you may be the only person on the project and hence if you are designing characters you can't also be animating. However, coming from a engineering background I liked to refer to Fred Brooks' Mythical Man-Month book which makes the point that you can't just throw resources at a task and expect it to get completed more quickly. Fred's comments really apply to most projects and not just software so I recommend his book.
There are several reasons to add resources into a plan. The first is to find the areas in the plan where people or other resources are over booked. The plan can then be adjusted in an attempt to balance this. Some software can do this automatically and others will require you to manually make adjustments. The second reason is to help budget the project. For example you may need to pay for studio time or for CGI projects for rendering time and the plan should be able provide this information for you. You may also have need to book resources some weeks in advance so being able to get this information from the plan is vital.
Software
Like anything you need to pick the right tool for the job. The right tool might be dependant on your computer, your budget and will definitely depend on the needs of you plan.
One of the things I find annoying is the assumption that if you need project planning software then you must be a big corporation and capable of paying lots for a fancy project planning tool. For example Microsoft Project costs £499 for the latest version which is well beyond my budget given that I'd only be using it for maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. There is a way out of this for students in that Microsoft have teamed up with Software 4 Students to provide Microsoft Office Professional.
However all is not lost, there's lots of Web based open source solutions for project planning, track one of these down on Google if you have an international collaborative project. There's also a few stand alone software options such as Open Project. However, I choose to forgo having gant charts and resource calculators and simply put my project details into a spreadsheet.
I'm not an expert on Apple software, so here's some comments from a user on Mac planning software.
Final thoughts
One important thing to remember about a project plan is that is should not be carved in stone at the beginning of the project. The plan can be based-lined, either by taking a copy of the plan and setting it read only or by using your software's baselining functionality. This allows you to then compare your current plan with the original. This can then be used to ensure the next plan you start is better. The plan can become a working document with new tasks being added and time estimates being more accurately reflected as the project goes on.
My other thought is that the project should run the plan rather than the other way around. Although this might sound counter intuitive you should think of the plan being there for the benefit of your project. A good project plan can help you provide budgets, with booking of resources and ensuring you don't end up trying to animate before your sets and models are ready.
Happy planning!
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
There's a new version of Blade Runner available on DVD
http://sffmedia.com/content/view/156/1/
Shaun the Sheep"How would you animate acid?"
This was how I was greeted when I met some colleagues after work. My first thoughts were of a green bubbling liquid in a glass jar with smoke rolling off top. However there was further clarification of "like in the 60s"
"Psychedelia" was my instant response and a chap from across the table followed quickly with a mention of the Beatles Yellow Submarine. After jokily suggesting that watching this from the third person would be a little boring, we discussed swirling colours and Alice in Wonderland before moving onto other topics such as why it was taking so long to get a beer and time travel.
One the way home I got thinking about animation of drug deduced psychedelia and thought of a curious but subdued character interacting with a blob like creature which I think I remember from the film Sphere and I also thought of surrealism /paranoia from the films eXistenZ and Videodrome both Directed by David Cronenberg. However I also remembered an excellent sequence from Disney's Dumbo, "Pink Elephants on Parade".
Whilst searching for fleas and circuses, I came across a synopsis for a schools musical called Circus Mystique. The website had some samples of the music which I listened to and liked the style of. So I wrote to them with some thoughts about how the flea film could use music.
The composer of Circus Mystique, Daniel Laubacher has agreed to look into some music for the flea circus film. He is enthusiastic about the challenge and is happy to work on the project.
Perhaps it's time to look into "Designing Sound for Animation" and see how we can best make use of sound to build the suspense and excitement of the different acts.
The Whitechapel Art Gallery is screening the films of Jean-Gabriel Périot and 6 new films from Animate!, this year's Animate! artists are Andy Martin, David Alexander Anderson, Let Me Feel Your Finger First, Mark Simon Hewis, Semiconductor and Thomson & Craighead.
Later this week is the Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol. The Festival, is now in its 13th edition and takes place from 21-25 November. There will be screenings, interviews, panel sessions, master classes, a film school and on Thursday 22nd, an Animation Symposium.
The Encounters Short Film Festival is launching a dedicated channel on Babelgum. From November 21st internet viewers will be able to watch material uploaded from the Encounters Film Festival for free, by downloading the Babelgum viewer.
Babelgum is also hosting it's own online film festival with Spike Lee named honorary Judge of Jury. Beginning 15 February 2008, submitted films will be showcased on the Babelgum Online Film Festival Channel, where the public will be able to rate each film. A prize of €20,000 will be awarded to winners in each of the six categories: The Babelgum Looking for Genius Award, The Babelgum Short Film Award, The Babelgum Documentary Award, The Babelgum Animation Award, The Babelgum Social/Environment Award and The Babelgum Spot/Advertising Award.
Babelgum is a free on-demand TV over the Internet that lets you watch whatever you want, whenever you want as often as you want. Content is uploaded by professional film makers.
http://www.babelgum.com/
Swansea Animation days is also soon, this International Animation, Games and SFX Conference runs from Monday 26th till Friday 30th November. "SAND includes conference sessions on games, procedural animation, films, post production techniques, TV commercials, motion capture, also with animation screenings from around the world, professional sector workshops and business seminar". Guest speakers include Apurva Shah, Effects Supervisor from Pixar Animation Studios and Shelley Page, Head of International Outreach from DreamWorks Animation. Workshops will be held on the topics of Acting For Animators,
Scriptwriting, Charac'ature Animation , Character Development and Claymation.
Along side the conference will be an exhibition at Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea.
http://www.sand.org.uk/
The Barton Hill Animation Festival is now in it's third year. It consists of animation workshops and a cinema showing both amateur and professional films.
Following a successful event for 2007 the festival is now looking for submissions for the 3rd Barton Hill Animation Festival in Bristol on Sunday 16th March 2008.
If you would like to submit a short animation, please send them as either AVI or MOV files on DVD. Please send your animations to:
Sarah Winch
Community at Heart
Wellspring Healthy Living Centre
Beam Street
Barton Hill
Bristol BS5 9QY
Unfortunately they are unable to return any of the work received unless specifically requested.
Deadline for submissions: 31st January 2008
For more details about Commiunity at Heart visit http://www.ndcbristol.co.uk/
As part of the Brighton Digital Festival, the animation event organisers Paperbag have organised "a night of the best animated shorts around, interspersed with live local musical talent".
18 Nov 2007, 19:30
Joogleberry
Manchester Street
Brighton,
BN21TF
United Kingdom
http://www.myspace.com/paperbaguk
I've managed to see Pixar /Disney's latest film, Ratatouille and I must tell you it is excellent. It's not just me that thinks that, the film has already been shorted listed as one of 12 animated films for this years Academy awards for animation. Because of the quality of the film I've decided to include a more in depth blog article than usual. There are a few spoilers in here so if you've not yet seen the film (or DVD) then look away now.
The rats are the key characters in the film with brothers Remy and Emile providing the setup for the story at the beginning of the film and soon the screen is full of scurrying rats. Unfortunately for Pixar, Eadweard Mybridge did not include rats in his Animals in Motion
One of the major concern of a film about rats in the kitchen must be the hygiene issue. Remy explains this to his brother who is confused why any rat would want to walk on just two legs. When the family of rats help out with the cooking there is a very humorous scene where they are all washed in the dishwasher.
For more details about the design challenges of rats see the cinematical visit to pixar.
The other characters are also fleshed out in detail in terms of their positions in the kitchen and backgrounds. My particular favourites are the critic played by Peter O Toole and the mad head chef Skinner who reminded me of Inspector Drefus from the Pink Pather films. The bulbous waiter also reminded me of the Monty Python, Mr Creosote character.
One of the stars of the film is the food and Pixar have ensured that it's treated with as much skill as the characters. The sheer variety and details of the food is incredible. The food is chopped, prepared, cooked and tasted by the chefs and rats and the kitchen and store rooms are full of it.
The film has some excellent cinematography so it was not surprising to learn that the director of photography and lighting Sharon Calahan and production designer Harley Jessup has spent lots of time researching Paris and films such as Amelie, Bon Voyage and An American in Paris
One clever technique which is close to my heart is the use of a shallow depth of field. This is used when in dark world of the rats and contrasted with the sharp focus of the world of the humans and outside scenes around Paris.
Games, Merchandising and DVD Releases
When I saw the sequence in the sewer when Remy's boat goes over the rapids I had two imediate thoughts. The first was that it reminded me of the Dragon's Lair game from the 1980s and the second is that was definately going to be in the game version. There are in fact a range of games associated with this film including ones specially designed for the Nintendo DS.
Mattel who did the toys for films such as Cars are also making Ratatouille games such as a mouse trap variation and a selection of plushies and figurines.
http://disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk/QuickSearch.aspx?str=ratatouille
Even before I saw this film, the DVD versions were being released in the USA and Australia. Unfortunately there is no sign of a UK DVD arriving in time for Christmas.
My showing of Ratatouille came with a short "B-movie" - Lifted. This space film looks a young alien and the problems of abducting a sleeping farmer from his house. The team have also produced a short about Rats, "Your Friend the Rat" a 2D educational piece covering everything you want to know about rats. "Your Friend the Rat" also includes sections in Stop Motion and Chalk animation based on production sketches.
Script and trailers
The film starts by a little old ladies house with the family of rats scavenging for food. Remy is experimenting with blending foods and his brother Emile eats that and anything else he can get his paws on. Following a fight at the house the rats escape by river. Their preprepared collection of vessels reminded me of Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Trailers for the film can be seen on the Pixar site or the Apple site. http://www.pixar.com/theater/trailers/rat/index.html
http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ratatouille/ http://upcomingpixar.blogspot.com/
Credits
Director: Brad Bird
Produced by Brad Lewis
Executive Producers: John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton
Associate Producer: Galyn Susman
Original Story: Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird
Music: Michael Giacchino
Story Supervisor: Mark Andrews
Film Editor: Darren Holmes
Supervising Technical Director: Michael Fong
Production Designer: Harley Jessup
Supervising Animators: Dylan Brown, Mark Walsh
Director of Photography/Lighting: Sharon Calahan
Director of Photography/Camera: Robert Anderson
Character Design: Jason Deamer, Greg Dykstra, Carter Goodrich, Dan Lee
Character Supervisor: Brian Green
Sets Art Director: Robert Kondo
Sets Supervisor: David Eisenmann
Shading Art Director: Belinda Van Valkenburg
Shading Supervisor: Daniel McCoy
Global Technology Supervisor: William Reeves
Effects Supervisor: Apurva Shah
Simulation Supervisor: Christine Waggoner
Groom Supervisor: Sanjay Bakshi
Crowds Supervisor: Ziah Sarah Fogel
Production Manager: Nicole Paradis Grindle
Sound Designer: Randy Thom
Cast
Remy: Patton Oswalt
Linguini: Lou Romano
Colette: Janeane Garafalo
Skinner: Ian Holm
Emile: Peter Sohn
Django: Brian Dennehy
Auguste Gusteau: Brad Garrett
Antono Ego: Peter O'Toole
Git: Jake Steinfeld
French Waiter: Brad Bird
Horst: Will Arnett
Lalo & Francois: Julius Callahan
Larousse: James Remar
Mustafa: John Ratzenberger
Lawyer (Talon Labarthe): Teddy Newton
Pompidou & Health Inspector: Tony Fucile
Ambrister Minion: Brad Bird
Narrator: Laurent Spelvogel
Links
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/fullcredits
http://upcomingpixar.blogspot.com/2007/10/plethora-of-ratatouille-interviews.html
http://upcomingpixar.blogspot.com/2007/10/ratatouille-gulps-down-500-million.html
http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/ratatouille/
Imagine Magazine speculates on how rats might be the next turtles.
http://www.imagineanimation.net/?q=node/7036
Other Reviews
Dante Kleinberg's look at Plot, Character, Theme and Execution.
James R Hull ponders why the film seems too long and looks at Time lock and Option lock plots.
Final fact
The Secret of NIMH http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/ was produced by ExDisney Don Bluth who also did the graphics for Dragon's lair.
Aardman's latest creature comforts is made for Leonard Cheshire Disability charity. Leonard Cheshire provides services for disabled people and campaigns for their rights and have provided input for Aardman to create a range of new characters including Spud the Slug, Peg the Hedgehog and Flash the Sausage Dog. The characters explain some of the prejudices that are still common in the UK and are all voiced by real disabled people. The director Steve Harding-Hill described working with disabled people as being incredibly satisfying.
The Creature Discomforts characters appear in adverts that will be seen online, in magazines, at bus stops and on the Tube from this Thursday.
The aptly named "Creature Discomforts" series is previewed online and can be seen in full in the spring of 2008.
Brighton Digital Festival is having an animation night on Wednesday 14 November to showcase and discuss animation. The 4 hour session includes screenings and a panel discussion.
Wednesday 14 November 6.30 - 10.30pm at Salis Benny Theatre, Brighton
Thanks to a fellow blogger Darkmattr I've discovered a technique called SmallGantics.
The idea is that they take a photo of a real place and adjust the depth of field so that it looks like a model. You can see that the picture of Oxford above demostrates this effect very well.
Given the impressive results, I've decided to take a further look into simulating this effect in Carrara 6 so that the flea film has a distinctively different look between the closeups of the flea circus and the longer shots of the Ring Master or Professor.
The London Film Festival Started today and has a promising line up of animation including some distinctly grown up films such as "Persepolis" directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Parronaud. Persepolis has been nominated for the Sutherland Trophy for the Most origional and imaginative first feature. Also showing is "Lucidi Folli" an erotic black and white animation which is Ursula Ferrara's debut film from 1986. I'm glad that the festival has chosen to recognise animation as something more than films for kids. Ursula's 1999 film "Five Rooms" is also showing.
Here's the details of all the animated films on during the festival:
Animated Shorts for Younger Audiences
Sat 27 Oct 16:00, NFT2
The Bee Movie (USA 2007)
A gala special screening.
Sun 28 Oct 15:30, Odeon West End 2
Five Rooms (Italy 1999) and We Want Roses Too (Italy-Switzerland 2007)
Fri 19 Oct 14:00, NFT3
or
Sat 20 Oct 15:45, NFT2
Lucidi Folli (Italy 1986)
Mon 22 Oct 18:30, Odeon West End 2
or
Tue 23 Oct 16:00, Odeon West End 1
Max & Co (Switzerland-Belgium-France-UK 2007)
Sat 20 Oct 14:00, NFT3
Persepolis (France 2007)
Mon 29 Oct 21:00, Odeon West End 1
or
Wed 31 Oct 15:00, Odeon West End 2
International Animation Panorama
Sat 20 Oct 13:45, NFT2
or
Mon 22 Oct 14:00, NFT3
The Thread of Life (Syria 2006)
Sat 20 Oct 19:30, BFI Southbank Studio
or
Mon 22 Oct 13:45, NFT2
Vexille (Japan 2007)
Sat 20 Oct 23:30, Odeon West End 1
or
Sun 21 Oct 16:15, ICA Cinema
Yobi, the Five-Tailed Fox
Sat 20 Oct 15:30, Odeon West End 1
or
Tue 23 Oct 12:00, NFT2
Nick Park from Aardman Animation is kindly donating his own van to the Wallace and Gromit's Children's Foundation. This is of course no ordinary van but the one that inspired the anti-pesto van from the film the Curse of the Wererabbit. The vehicle is an International Austin A35 van which was made in 1958. Please note that this is Nick's own van, not the replica one that was shown at the premiere. Money from the sale will go to the children's foundation to improve the quality of life for those in hospitals and hospices. Previous events from the Wallace and Gromits Children's foundation include the Wrong Trousers day.
Nicks Austin Van for Sale on Ebay
For those who don't know it's blog action day today, so what can animators do for the environment?
Here's my quick list:
For model animators, recycle materials and re-use old materials rather than binning them. Think about what paints are being used and how they will breakdown when disposed of.
CGI animators, think about how much energy you are using, turn off un-necesary computers when not in use.
All animators could make a film about the environment and raise awareness.
Nick Park teams up with Bob Baker co-writer for wrong trousers and close shave to make a 30 minute film called "Trouble at' Mill". The favourite Northern Team Wallace and Gromit set up a bakers with a windmill on top of the house and a collection of robotic tools to "help". Whilst they are out delivering their Top Bun - Dough to door delivery service, Wallace spots Piella Bakewell cycling past and instantly falls in love. However trouble is afoot as Gromit spots that 12 bakers have disappeared this year alone. You will have to wait to find out what happens.
Nick and team expect to take 7 to 8 months to complete the film and hence plan to release it with the BBC at the end of 2008. Nick reports that he is happier with the short film format as it allows them to keep Wallace and Gromit who they are rather than having to make adjustments to please an international audience who may not understand some of the cultural references.
If you need some help making your own Wallace and Gromit creation then you can attend a workshop at Woking's Lightbox with an Aardman model maker on 20th October and again on 17th November.
Links
Official Wallace and Gromit Site
Manchester Evening News
BBC
A fascinating interview with Gerry Anderson, covering his move from puppets to CGI, the Captain Scarlet series, his views on Team America: World Police and what's planned for the future.
http://www.3dworldmag.com/trackback/3dworld/Weblog/gerry_anderson_interview
The Academia Rossica and Apollo West End launched their Russian Film festival last night with a multi-screen showing of all 10 films of the festival. The festival continues till Wednesday 3rd with Sunday afternoon being reserved for a section of animation.
The animated film section includes the following films: My Love, Forgetful King, Zhiharka, Lavatory - Love Story, Foolish Girl, Kroshechka-Havroshechka and World Lullabies. The films have all been made over the last year by what Academia Rossica describes as a new generation of Russian animation artists many of who have won international awards.
So if it's still raining and you need something to do at 4pm on Sunday, head down to the Apollo West End for some Russian Animation.
http://www.academia-rossica.org/films_info/content/animation_programme/
Following yesterday's discovery of Straight8 and the discovery of Dime Films on Facebook/MySpace, I got wondering just how many other short amateur film nights there were?
So far I've found:
London
http://www.sleepnomore.net/shorts/
Brighton?
http://www.myspace.com/showreelsessions
and Cumbria
http://www.cumbriafilmmakers.co.uk/
Shooting People have a wide events list that includes some screenings
http://shootingpeople.org/calendar/index.php
Finally, a couple of short film links that are not related to film nights
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/
http://www.britfilms.tv/
A good friend and old work college Richard Hare (aka Flare) is premiering his film this weekend out West in Chiswick with Straight8. His film "One Across" is about Carter Bridge, a very distinctive pedestrian/cycle bridge across the railway in Cambridge. Richard has been making films for some years now and I've seen his "Trigger Finger" film which was made with another ex-college of mine "John Aspinal" (no not the one who owns the zoo).
Is This Wisdom?: "One Across" premiering at Straight8 'Art'
Next month De Montfort University in Leicester plays host to the Machima Festival Europe, a first for Europe.
The event runs for 3 days (12th-14th Oct) and will have workshops, debates, presentations and film screenings with of course an awards ceremony. The 3 days will be aimed at different levels, schools and students on the Friday, general and novices on Saturday with an expert day on the Sunday.
Speakers include:
Here's some tips about Film Distribution from Wild-Sound Film Making that I found via a friend of a friend on MySpace. I will definitely be applying some of the comments about the press kit / electronic press kit to the Flea Circus Film website. My cast biographies are a little light at the moment and I've don't have the more detailed synopsi yet but these are good ideas and I will endevour to apply them. There is however, the full script available for those who are interested. Full credits and the basic details like running time will also be added as I think that's a good idea too.
The comment on the distributors controlling the casting is interesting and reflects the issue that many film directors have that the distributors have too much control over such aspects of the film. Luc Besson commented a few months back how the distributors can completely kill a film by their bad choices. Voice actors are key to animation and to swap actors later in production although not impossible can add significant extra effort to the animation and film editing and could fundamentally change the character of a film.
I have seen animated films where they were successfully voiced in multiple languages; Terkel in Trouble for example; but it was almost a year after the Danish release that we saw this in British dubbed version cinemas. The lipsync would likely need to be redone following a change of actors. It helps with the Flea Circus that there are no lips on the fleas (and that the fleas are invisible) so the Flea Actors can be changed if necessary but I would strongly resist such a change. I have contemplated having other languages or subtitles on the film and have been investigating how this can be added to a DVD.
The actors/distributors issue further re-enforces my thoughts that the Flea Circus Film will have to be independently distributed via the internet.
I stumbled across Dime Novel Screen via a real life friend on Facebook.
Thursday, 6th September 2007
From 8 pm — FREE ENTRY
THE SASSOON GALLERY
rear of BAR STORY
213 Blenheim Grove, London SE15 [underneath Peckham Rye Station]
It sounded interesting so I thought I'd quiz them further, Patrick Samuel kindly provided some very comprehensive answers.
Flea Circus Director: What is the typical length of a Dime film?
Patrick Samuel: The length of films tend to vary greatly. Sometimes from short animated clips or visual experiments lasting under 2 minutes to documentaries and stories that last 15 minutes long. Most films fall into the region of 7 to 12 minutes though.
FCD: How many films do you show at each session?
PS: The night itself is split into 3 sections. The first part is the Welcome Screening. This usually lasts anything from 15 to 30 minutes and we always show the Favourite of the Night from the previous month along with other "welcome material" (a music video, or an animation, things which did not quite fit into the next part). The next part is what filmmakers generally aim for. It's called the Selection Screening and usually comprises of 5 short films. It all depends on the length of the films themselves.
Each film in this selection is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, questions from the audience and discussions with special guests as well.
The final part of the night (after the audience have voted and the Favourite has been announced) is the Open Screening. This is for people who just happened to bring a short film with them on the night. We show it then and there for them. If the panel agrees, then we include it in the following month's Welcome Screening or Selection Screening.
FCD: Who is a typical Dime Novel Screen film maker?
PS: Our filmmakers range from students to first time filmmakers to industry professionals. We’ve had Ben Hopkins, director of the modern British cult classic The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz and 37 Uses For A Dead Sheep showing his first ever piece National Achievement Day as well Nadya Brand, producer of the most recent music video for Within Temptation and star of the horror movie Broken showing her short film Prey. Soon we’ll have The History Boys and Amazing Grace actor Stephen Campbell Moore as a special guest with his short film!
FCD: Do you have animated films?
PS: We love animated short films and it’s great that Dime Novel Screen attracts so many of them. From the very first night we had Christoph Steger with his animated documentary Mother; Leo Bridle with Still Life With Flowers; Katy Davis with Gone Fishing; Elinor Geller with The Spirit Child; and Max Hattler with Collision to name but a short few who brought with them their award winning animations.
FCD: Given that I'd have never heard about you had you not been on Facebook, do you think that social networks are reducing the numbers watching and making films or do they help?
PS: I think that social networks such as Facebook and Mysapce are a great way to promote events such as this one. The amount of promotion that we do through them is astounding and the best of it is that it’s all free. The development of the internet over the years has allowed us to upload, view, comment on and pass on videos to each other is another great step forward in making filmmaking accessible to anyone with a camera and allowing them an outlet for their creativity. It has also meant that there is also a lot of junk floating around the internet as well and events such as Dime Novel Screen is a great way to sort through it all and present to its audience the top of the bunch and let them vote for the ones they like!
FCD: Finally, how would people get involved with Dime Novel Screen?
PS: People can get involved with Dime Novel Screen in a many number of ways. If they’ve made a short film they can of course contact us and we’ll let them know how to submit their film (usually by posting a DVD). We then invite them for an interview and photo shoot to promote them on our site with a filmmaker profile. Filmmakers are also encouraged to attend on the night of their screening for their Q&A. You can also get involved by of course coming down and member of our audience, voting for the films, participating in the Q&A’s and letting us know what you thought of the night. Another way is to support us by promoting the event and/or helping us to fund it as it’s all non-profit. As the organiser, I cover the costs myself and work with a team of volunteers and together we keep it going because we all love film and want to support the people who make films by providing them with a lively screening event.
Many thanks to Patrick and hopefully I'll be providing a report of one of their sessions at some point.
The Dime Novel Screen night of short films and live Q&A's with filmmakers in the unique setting of the Sassoon Gallery on the 6th of September from 8.00pm.
The upgrade and full versions of Carrara 6 can now be bought from the Daz shop. I downloaded mine yesterday before the rush started.
Carrara 6 details of features
I've been playing with python in Poser a bit and found the E-Frontier version was just a list of objects and methods so I was very glad to see this new product available from one of the known experts on Poser Python, Phil Cooke (known as PhilC on Renderosity).
The "book" consists of:
The book cleverly hooks the examples and scripts into the menus of Poser and in the manual it explains how this was done.
Whilst following the discussions about Carrara 6 on the forums I saw a small comment about IClone having importers for Poser content. I followed up and was surprised to find that IClone was a full film studio in the computer. I've heard about people making Machinima films using various computer games and even online using Second Life. Now IClone's current content and films do look quite like most other machimima films with a noticable limit on the polygon counts. However with the ability to import from other sources such as all of the Daz3d, Content Paradise and Turbosquid plus all of the big 3D packages such as 3d studio, Maya, Poser and DazStudio should mean that there will be some quite sophisticated films.
Daz is previewing some of the new features of Carrara 6 on their forum and on youtube.
So far they have announced:
I've mentioned options for sharing videos online on this blog before but there's a couple of new options. ReelDump is a site for sharing just 3d CGI work in progress, show reals, trailers and finished work. It has all the features you would expect, tags, channels and ratings as well as a search capability.
If you want to roll your own video sharing site you can do what I've done on the Flea Film Video Gallery and use the Youtube API. However if you want more control and sophistication then you could use the same technology as ReelDump which is called Clipshare a PHP/MySQL solution which at €153 is good value for money, check that your hosting company can support this solution as it's quite demanding with regards what needs to be installed.
At Siggraph 2007 this week there was also a Computer Animation Festival, films from around the globe were shown and a couple were picked out for special merit.
