I’ve got a new “fun” project on the horizon, and I think I’d like to take the time to publicly document the process of its creation. So here’s the beginning of a film log, I guess.
Earlier this year I was working on a screenplay that I had intended to produce with some people in my college town, but as I had only a few months before I was moving back home to Chicago, it sort of fizzled out. Drafts of the script were completed, and the story was practically all there, but production never got a chance to begin.
Rather than let the story die, I’ve decided to try something perhaps a little ambitious but so tantalizing that I feel I just have to give it a try.
Over a period of twelve months I plan to release chapters of the film to Youtube—unless I get a better idea—in five-minute increments.
The film, however, won’t be live-action, it’s going to be animated.
Truth be told, I do not have a background in animation. I didn’t go to school for it, I don’t really practice it, I have no training in drawing or 3d-work.
I have, however, done some experimenting in the past few months. Here’s Fingernails and Wisdom, two shorts that were made over the period of a weekend each.
The film—its working title being Ocular Migraine—will be done in a similar style. Very scratchy, fast, and wiggly (hehe).
My intent is to draw from some of my favorite low-budget animations; examples being Jack Stauber’s Pop, David Lynch’s Dumbland, and John and Faith Hubley’s Moonbird.
The story pays a lot of respects to Martin Scorsese’s Afterhours, a movie that I really adore, and is intended to be a dark oddball comedy.
The subgenre called “The Yuppie Nightmare Cycle”, which wikipedia calls
“…a subgenre of films which combine two genres in itself – screwball comedy and film noir.”
is a major influence, although the story takes place in a small suburban town and its protagonist is a librarian, not a yuppie.
Back to production aspects, I am going to begin storyboarding the first chapter as well as condensing the scripts down into a shooting script of sorts this week, and will begin to inquire to people I know about specific roles.
I considered voicing all the characters myself as a means of keeping things simple, but that really goes against my intent to collaborate with all the great people I know. So, roles will need to be divided and audio recording will need to be researched. People are all over the country so I’ll need to find a way for them to be able to work from home. But that’s a future post.
I can tell that this is going to be a great experiment. It’s very exciting. Animation is a new world, and I don’t really know any of the rules so at the moment it appears very freeing. The visuals might not be beautiful, but I’m prepared to put a lot of heart into this.
See you next week.
Cheers!