Final Project - Even more Research

A particular 1920s 'gangster' I have researched is Johnny Torrio and his 'mentor' relationship with Al Capone. Torrio was the man responsible for Capone's move from Brooklyn to Chicago, as Capone needed to dodge a murder investigation, and was also the man who hired Capone to a bar in Coney island that was owned by a renowned mobster.
Once in Chicago, Torrio put Capone to work as a bouncer at one of his brothels, and a year later when prohibition was implemented, he had his associate Giacomo 'Big Jim' Colosimo (who was against venturing into bootlegging and perfectly happy being a plain old pimp) killed (possibly by Capone, or some bloke called Frankie Yale, who was Capone's original boss in New York, and is the renowned mobster mentioned earlier), took over his criminal empire and began bootlegging himself, with Capone's help. Colosimo was, at one point, married to Torrio's Aunt, and was being blackmailed by a gang calling themselves 'The Black Hand', so at his Aunt's request, Torrio arranged to pay off the blackmailers, then murdered them all when they showed up to collect. Wonderful. However, shortly before his assassination, Colosimo unceremoniously dumped Torrio's Aunt in favor of a young actress, so Torrio probably had no real qualms with having the horny tubster whacked. There's a lot more, but it's relatively inconsequential and I'm not trying to write a Wikipedia article here.














I plan to use this relationship as inspiration for my protagonist's descent into crime.
I will start with my protagonist working a legitimate job for a certain 'Torrio-esq' individual at the start of the prohibition, who will be an entrepreneurial mobster and owner of a speakeasy, then the protagonist will be offered the chance to bootleg, which he accepts. I will not be basing my protagonist too much on Al Capone, definitely not in looks, as Capone was a fat ugly bastard, and i plan to make my character a lot less of a raging psychopath than Capone was, mostly because there wouldn't be enough people in the cast for him to kill, plus I intend for him to survive the events, as he is the narrator, and that would be very unlikely if he was a trigger happy nutter who shoots everyone in the face.
This relationship is also partly inspired by two characters from 'Boardwalk Empire' - Nucky Thompson and Jimmy Darmody, with a few differences, as in the show Nucky wants Jimmy to avoid a life of crime, whereas my protagonist will be encouraged to indulge himself in heinously illegal activities at others expense.

Final Project - More Research

One source I have been using for aesthetic research is the HBO series 'Boardwalk Empire', the show is set in 1920, centers around the prohibition, and the attempts made to capitalize on it. The first episode of the show is perhaps the most interesting, it begins on the night of prohibition being enforced, and tells a story of corrupt politicians and up and coming gangsters. It follows historical accuracy to a certain point, but obviously is a bit liberal with it in a lot of places as it is an American TV show.
In terms of aesthetic appeal, the show is a good way to see what sort of clothes were worn back then, my own research has already given me more or less what i need, but 'Boardwalk Empires' pilot episode was directed by Martin Scorsese and supposedly cost $18 million to make, so it couldn't hurt to take note.

One thing the series unfortunately lacks are speakeasies, as the scenes set in Chicago take place in a Bordello, and Atlantic City, where the show is primarily set, was infamously popular for largely ignoring  prohibition and getting everyone pissed out of their faces, (albeit expensively) earning it the nickname 'The World's Playground', which is lovely and all, but it doesn't really help me, as I plan to have a speakeasy as my primary set. I've found several (grainy) images of speakeasies from 1920, but i was hoping that this series would feature them extensively. Oh well, back to the research...

 Hang on, the DVD extras have a speakeasy tour on them. Cool.
And it's on Youtube. Awesome.

Final Project-Revised story, and more research

After researching the living crap out of 1920's America, and the effect the prohibition had on the development of organized crime, i have decided to set my film in Chicago, although I probably won't make any direct reference to this, just imply it. The main character of the film will begin as an old man, dying in a hospital bed (the same bed from the BAA film, just altered slightly to keep it fresh,) and the whole story will be told through flashbacks, that will be narrated by this old guy as he reflects upon his own past, eventually culminating in him dying in his sleep. The hospital scenes will basically be a framing device for the whole story, and the narration will allow me to avoid lip synching, as that would triple the production time and drive me insane.

The general way the story will be told is inspired by Adam Elliot's 2003 Oscar winning stop motion film Harvie Krumpet, which is narrated all the way through, with none of the characters actually saying anything (although they do make noises, usually just incoherent gibbering) . The amazing thing about this film is that the animation is relatively simplistic, the characters don't really move all that much, they spend most of the time fixed on one spot, and their actions are quirky and twitchy, which is very effective and gives the film a unique, almost childlike charm. I plan to use a similar method, but instead the characters movement will be more subtle and less cartoony. I also quite like the idea of following an individual through the course of his life, from beginning to end.
If you have the time you should watch Harvie Krumpet, it is 22 minutes long, but it's proper good like.

Final Project-Story Ideas and initial research

As I'm writing this, I have already decided exactly what my story is, so I'm going to have to start from the beginning with how i got to this point, and how my original idea was a big cliched bag of arse. (my current story is still a little cliched, but i don't think it's nearly as bad as it was) In the original story, my main character and plot focus was going to be the boss of a mafia that operated during the prohibition era, basically trying to take over as the 'kingpin' of organized crime through a series of delightful murder based japes.
But after a lot of research on the subject of prohibition, i realized that organized crime wasn't really all that organized back in 1920, as the Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) had only been active in the United States since the late 19th Century, was made out of poor Italian immigrants running away from Mussolini and made relatively little profit from protection rackets and robberies, it was the huge profit made from bootlegging that propelled many small time thuggish criminals into something resembling the modern day 'mafia' archetype. The closest thing to a Godfather style 'Don' would probably be Arnold Rothstein, who was basically the Steve Jobs of organized crime, and was supposedly the first of many individuals to look at prohibition as a business opportunity.

After all this research, i decided to shift focus to a younger character who begins with nothing, as many did in 1920, gain his riches through bootlegging and a light sprinkling of murder, only to lose it all through a combination of too much bravado and basically being a dick to those closest to him. He would then grow old filled with regret at how he destroyed his life, and die feeling bitter about his life choices.
I have kept that basic plot line, but it has been altered many, many times, with characters being invented, designed, scrapped and replaced several times a week. For SEVEN MONTHS...

Final Project

Right then, it's about time I started writing on this thing again, I have a lot of posts to do, (so this is all going to be in past tense for a while) as i have been working on this project for around 7 months now, and pretty much all of my notes, research, designs ect. are written on paper in mad chicken scratch writing that no-one but me can read, so I am finally copying it all up onto this blog before i lose it, or mistake it for rubbish and throw it away.
When thinking up ideas for what the film will be about, my first thought were the aesthetic considerations, I basically wanted to make a film with characters that i would enjoy making, and develop the rest around that, the films primary goal is to serve as a modelmaking portfolio, so it will have quite a large cast. So i came up with four different types of character genres I fancied having a go at making, they were Cowboys, Pirates, Victorians and Gangsters. I've already done Cowboys before, so that one was out, and Aardman seemed to have Pirates pretty much covered. So I had to choose between Victorians and Gangsters, initially i went with Victorians, and came up with a plot involving a sort of spoof Jack the Ripper and the policeman hunting him, but the more i thought about this idea, the less i actually wanted to do it, so... Gangsters.
Well bootleggers actually, i diverted my original concept of a mafia-esq group of characters to a 1920s setting, using the American prohibition as my initial starting point.

BAA - Finished

All done!, heres the final product. There are a few things about it i don't quite like, but had to compromise due to the 25 second specification, for example, i would like to have had the patient chart and the farmer's reaction shot held for longer, but this would have extended the length to over 25 seconds. The sound is also very quiet, but I care more about the animation than that. I used Mozart's Requiem for the music, or at least 25 seconds of it, no particular reason for that, but i think it works, particularly towards the end of the film.
The animation went better than expected, considering that i made the armatures myself, i wasn't sure quite how it would work out, it was a bit of an experiment really, but now i know that the armatures work well, i will make more in the future. They're not as good as the ball and socket ones, but i only have 2 of those and they cost a hell of a lot more.
I'm very happy with the lighting, at least for the first part, i think that the lighting change when the nurse comes in was a bit lurid, but it was necessary for the story.
Animating with glycerol was great, i animated it a bit too fast, but it's not really easy to control once it starts dripping, it did the trick though, and is now all over the set.
I also spent about 30 hours making that bloody nurse, and she's only in the film for the best part of 5 seconds, it was worth it though, and I'm definitely going to have to re-use her at some point in a future animation, along with the bed. (Oh, and i know that the Youtube video is 26 seconds long, the animation is actually 25 seconds long, the final shot of the logo got extended by about 0.2 seconds when i uploaded it for some reason.)

BAA - Logo

Incorporating the BAA logo into my film was a bit harder than i expected, originally, i was going to have the logo on the back of the nurse's clipboard, but her hand covered most of the back of it, so i decided to try a put it in one of the paintings on the wall, but i scrapped that idea because it was crap. I then had an idea that would have involved the logo sliding down the outside of the window, but this seemed pointless and had nothing to do with the story. So in the end i decided to replace the farmer's patient information on the clipboard with the logo, and basically just chuck it on the floor, implying that the nurse had thrown it in exasperation. I will end the animation with this shot.
I hand drew the logo because it suits the 'handmade' look of all my props, plus i don't have a printer...

BAA - Mid shoot clean up

Filmed a little over half of the film now, it's going quite well, apart from a few reshot scenes due to camera issues, and switching from shooting at 24 fps to 12 fps, as the animation was just far too fast. now that the nurse is about to enter the scene, i have a chance to clean up the set a bit. The farmer has slumped a bit too much, and one of his legs has fallen off, along with one of the sheep's heads (his eye came out too, due to the glycerol getting in his eye socket.) I also need to re-arrange the pillow and duvet, as they have both moved a bit too much to the right of the bed during filming. Also, there are eyelids and glycerol everywhere...

BAA - Research

Another film i watched for research is an odd little animation called 'Tomorrow' directed by Bob Lee. The film itself, in terms of story and characters, whilst interesting, wasn't really inspiring, the lighting in the film was fantastic, and very well conveyed the anguish of the main character. This is exactly the sort of lighting i wanted for my film, particularly using a blind to create a unique effect.

Heres the film - http://vimeo.com/33974752
And a screenshot of the lighting

BAA - Research

Meant to post this a while ago, my research for this project was, unsurprisingly, 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'Shaun the Sheep', particularly the latter, as the show has no dialogue and all the story is told through facial expressions and movement, a technique i will be utilizing extensively. I have avoided imitating Aardman's model-making style, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of the look of their sheep, although using Glycerol to animate the sheep's tears was directly inspired by the crying sheep from 'A Close Shave'. Also my farmer and the farmer from 'Shaun the Sheep' do look somewhat similar, especially the hair, but that is unintentional, or i did it subconsciously. (i like my farmer more anyway, he has eyes.)

BAA - Cut Sheep

Unfortunately, due to the positioning of the camera, i have to cut one of the sheep, guess which one? yes it's the retarded one. I was originally going to have 2 on either side of the bed, but it didn't work out with the camera angle i wanted, so i put 3 on one side and 1 on the other, but i felt it would have been pointless to have a single sheep on one side, as it would be out of shot for the majority of the film, and then randomly appear at the end, so most people watching would be wondering where the hell this sheep came from, and might mistakenly believe it has significance to the story, which it doesn't, so he's gone.

BAA - Finished set and lighting

Here's what the finished set looks like, with all the props and characters in place and the lighting that will be used for the first 2/3rds of the film, the last part will be when the nurse enters and shows the farmer that he is being an over-dramatic div, so to change the setting a bit, when she enters, she will turn on the light and 'ruin the atmosphere'.

BAA - Farmer + Bed

Heres the farmer in the bed, as he will be filmed and without the duvet, so you can see his 'legs' (but you're not supposed to see that...)

BAA - Chair

Made a chair, it may not even appear in shot, but i am planning to reuse it at some point in my next film.
Going to test it's stability by glueing a small piece of metal to the base of one of the legs, and hold it to the set with a tiny magnet.

BAA - Props

Added some props to the hospital room set, mostly just pictures on the walls and some furniture, makes the room look less empty and helps it look more like a private room in a hospital, which is the look i was going for, mostly to avoid having to make multiple beds that you would find on a ward.

 Not sure why i decided to make a syringe triptych, but i like it nonetheless...

BAA - Bed

Making the bed for the farmer was a lot harder than any prop i've ever made before, it had to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the farmer and the sheep, and needed to have blankets, pillow, ect.

 Bed starts with the mattress, which is just a big bit of MDF cut to size and rounded at the corners

 Bed posts are 4 metal tubes, cut to size and smoothed at the tips so they're all the same level

 Mattress is painted and the 4 legs are stuck to pieces of balsa, which are stuck to the bed

 Material is stuck to the mattress to make it more mattressy, and side skirts are added to make it look like a bed instead of a table.

Backboard added, pillow and duvet added, (cheers to Angie for sewing the pillow together, i can't sew to save my life.) bed finished.

GLYCEROL!!!

I got me a bottle of glycerol to make the sheep's tears!, i've been looking for this stuff for bloody ages, i finally found it in Boots for 89p.

BAA Nurse - Finished

The nurse is now completely finished, her feet worked out quite well, she is held down very securely by the magnetic tiedown. Also gave her some props, a clipboard with then farmer's patient information on it, and a wee pencil.

BAA Nurse Feet

The nurses feet have little metal strips on the bottom, so she can stand using the magnetic tiedown. Will have to secure them to the legs quite tightly, so she won't snap in half.

BAA Set

Nearly finished the hospital set, all i need is a floor, the bed and a few props. Also did some lighting tests with the window, the blind gives the shading a good dramatic effect.

BAA Nurse - Head and body finished

The nurse's head and body are now finished, unfortunately, her heads balsa core was a little too wide at the base, so she has quite a wide jaw and looks a bit like a man in drag, however, her bodies balsa core was also a little too big, so now she just looks fat, and her head and body match.

BAA Nurse Armature

Head and armature for the nurse are finished, I used a lot of balsa wood, so she will be very light and easier to handle and animate. Her head will also be light, so she shouldn't be too top heavy, i may have to give her a big fat arse to balance her out a bit, but i probably won't film her from behind, so this won't be too noticable.

BAA Farmer - Finished

Finished the puppet for the BAA farmer, I deliberately made his hands massive, as his main forms of communication will be through hand movements and facial expressions. His arms are set quite loose in their slots, as this allows pivotal movement, otherwise his arms would be locked at the shoulders, and that wouldn't be very good at all, and would heavily restrict his body movements to just his head and forearms.
I put him in a set of long-johns, as i figured this is what a farmer would wear in bed, it also makes him look a bit older and bedraggled, and helps to make him appear a bit more pathetic.

BAA - More Sheep

Finished all of my sheep, decided to make them all look sad, except the first one, i think i'm going to have to make him the stupid one.

Their armatures are quite stiff, so their actions will have to be limited to head movements and facial expressions. 

This sheep, which i intend to be my 'main sheep' is a combination of a sheep (obviously) and Courage the cowardly dog, i like the end result.