Story Board Artist: Jamie Hewlett

I have been a fan of the band Gorillaz ever since I saw the video to Clint Eastwood in the year 2000, as a child, I was fascinated by the unique and cartoony artwork of Jamie Hewlett, the original artist of Tank Girl, which I would come to read much later in life.

However when I started seriously started following the band, I became interested in the processes behind creating the videos and came to understand how important  the storyboard is to the finished production.

The following video is the storyboard animatic to the music video for Dirty Harry



As you can see it is fairly close to the finished video.



The storyboards are an essential aspect of the film making process,  helping the film makers to visualise how they want the film to look, although changes may be made during the actual shoot.

Film Director: Zack Snyder

Ever since I watched the film Sucker Punch, I have been a fan of Zack Snyder's work, I enjoy the camera work, and the dark and gritty feel in all of his films I have seen that seems to be his signature.

The majority of his films are shot in studios against a green screen background. This is perhaps most evident in 300, where the green screens were used to help create the same colour tone as the original comic by Frank Miller.

He also has a unique way of filming fight scenes, using slow motion and a zoom on each hit for emphasis, as opposed to the traditional method of quick cuts and fast pacing.

Zack Snyder's use of Green Screen allows him to create the fantastical environments his films are well known for

Group Film Project: Sulking Winds

For the second film in our group film project, we decided to work from the poem Sulking Winds.

This time we worked from a storyboard written by myself, following the general theme of the poem, it is about a traveller who meets a ghost, who then turns out to have hostile intentions. To present a feeling of isolation and wilderness, I decided to film up on the Ilkley Moors, to which the rest of the group agreed.

In order to prepare for this shoot we required a gun prop, which I borrowed from my friend due to him having one spare. I also wrote a rough script which Joel helped me touch up on. It was also my job to make sure we all knew when we were filming and where we were filming. I also booked out the equipment we needed, and made sure we had it to hand on the days of filming.

It took us two attempts to shoot all of the intended footage due to the 1st day we shot, it started snowing which hindered our filming. But this helped with our story, the weather helped to create a passage of time effect. I also starred as the traveller in the film, and really enjoyed the fight scene in which I'd be pushed down the hill.

The weather also helped to influence my acting, allowing me to behave realistically to the idea that the traveller was exhausted and on the verge of collapse.

The roles amongst the group for this film were:

Tim Holland (Me): Storyboard Artist, script writer, Producer, Director, Actor

Joel McCusker: Script writer, Joint Director, Actor, Joint Camera man, Join Editor

Yoni Cohen: Camera Man, Joint Editor

Wisdom Makubile: Boom Operator, Joint Editor, Sound Designer

Group Film Project: Isolated

For the film module, we were put into groups and tasked with creating a film interpreting a poem  written by someone from the Asian young writers group in Bradford.

Our group was as follows:

Tim Holland (Me): Producer, Actor, Tech Crewman

Yoni Cohen: Cameraman, Storyboard Artist, Director

Joel McCusker: Actor, Co-Director

Wisdom Makubile: Editor, Cameraman

The poem we were given to work from was Isolated by Zenam Bi, we each came up with a storyboard, but decided to follow Yoni's due to the fact it had a stronger narrative than the others.

We decided on our roles early on with myself acting as producer and "Roadie" sorting out the physical equipment such as tripods, and getting the camera into position, whereas Yoni and Wisdom would deal with the settings of the camera.

Instructional 1 minute video, green screen background

For the film brief we have been tasked with creating a one minute instructional video, for this task, I decided to go for a humorous approach. The instructional part of the video would be how to make a stir-fry, a meal I really enjoy making.

My film contains green screen in order to give the appearance of an apocalyptic wasteland. I felt that this would add a bizarre yet amusing twist to the video,  however the humour may have been lost by the lack of relevance to the video.



This is the screenshot used for the background during the green screen segment of the film.
This was created in photoshop taking random images from the internet as well as a picture of the stove in my flat where the footage was filmed.

I thoroughly enjoyed filming the green screen, and enjoyed setting up the physical set, including the screen and lighting. Post-production however is not my strong point, and I did not enjoy it so much, instead finding it a bit tedious and hard to understand, but once I got the hang of it, I was able to finish my work quickly.

Jessops Film Competition

Recently my friend entered the Jessops Film Competition in which the film was to be shot on an SLR Still Camera's video setting, for this he came up with a simple plot centred around the game Bioshock, and asked me to star in it.

I found this to be as much a learning experience as, the film work I did for my film module. Although at the start of the course we were advised not to work on group projects with friends due to fallings out and an inability to give and receive constructive criticism amongst friends, I felt that the friends I worked with on the Jessops project to be great to work with, we shared an understanding of the film's setting, and we were all able to communicate easily what needed to be done, with only one scene being difficult to coordinate effectively.

We also worked in a variety of interesting locations around Leeds, including abandoned buildings and even some areas in central Leeds, which required a fair bit of preparation and notifying the police to what we were doing, and when we were set up in the public areas, the crew (cameraman and actress who wasn't in those scenes) had to wear high-vis vests with FILM CREW on the back.

It was also amusing to wear costume around pedestrianised areas, and I got a few strange looks off passers by, although I believe the mask helped to shield me from embarrassment.

Next time I take part in a group film project, I know I would like to work with this same group of friends again, due to our ability to understand and effectively communicate with each other.

Below are a few screenshots from the film:

Mirror's Edge: Cel Animation

I'm a big fan of the first person shooter/parkour game Mirror's Edge from Dice, a game I found appealing for all of its differences to most modern shooter games, including the Battlefield series also created by Dice.  However what sold the game for me was the cel animated trailers and cutscenes. The Cel animations had the feel of an independent comic publication, and seamlessly blended with the CG animated game world.

The following video trailer is the 1st story trailer, this trailer helps to establish the setting and premise of the Mirror's Edge story, but also visually establishes the world without showing gameplay.



The style of the artwork and the animation also adds an additional element to the story. The Artwork has a stark contrast between the "Runners", the Police characters and the environments. The environments and the police characters have sharp angles and a colour scheme consisting of blues and greys, giving them an artificial feel, while the "Runners" and the parts of the environment they use to travel from rooftop to rooftop, contain smooth angles and a warm colour scheme consisting of reds and yellows to give off a more natural and flexible feel.

The flat and solid colours of the cel shaded animation, with only two colours on an object, the "main colour" and the shadow allow for the emotional feel of freedom vs authority conveyed by the character's colour schemes. The animation style is also reminiscent of Japanese anime, particularly cyberpunk works, such as Ghost in the Shell or stories about freedom in the sky such as Air Gear, however the artwork has a much more western feel.

Coraline: Behind the scenes

As a fan of stop-motion animation, I felt that the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, directed by Henry Selick was worth a mention. Using the puppet animation techniques favoured by Tim Burton, especially in the highly successful Nightmare before Christmas, also directed by Henry Selick, Coraline succesfully captures the twisted and fantastical fairytale world within the book. The film uses beautifully sculpted puppets that reflect the strange world that Coraline inhabits.

I always find behind the scenes footage of animated works to be interesting, it allows you to get close to the thoughts, the effort, and considering the amount of time it takes to animate, the dedication, that go into making a feature length animation

The following video provides an interesting insight into Henry Selick's way of thinking, treating the puppets as though they were living actors, an attitude that shows in the finished animation, with the puppets showing the same level of emotion that a real living person would.




The following video shows actual behind the scenes footage, and a small amount of commentary from the director, animators, voice actors and even Neil Gaiman who wrote the original story.




Further behind the scenes videos can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/FocusFeatures#g/c/6D09CFA73C054466, and I highly recommend watching because it provides a fantastic insight into the world of stop-motion animation

Stop Motion feature film: Aardman's Chicken Run

Since I was a child, and for as long as I can remember, I have been a big fan of Aardman animations. This love started, like many other Aardman fans, with Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, shown to me my a friend of my parents when we went to visit. Although for a long time I had only seen the Wallace and Gromit shorts, my personal favorite Aardman film Chicken Runm directed by Peter Lord, soon hit the cinema, and I was instantly hooked, loveable characters, an amusing plot based upon the PoW camp escape stories popular post-world war 2, the amazing soundtrack, and of course, the stop-motion animation.

When the film was released on DVD, I began watching it religiously, and I still watch it occasionally, and every time I find something new happening in the background. But I soon found myself in the special features sections, and I was captivated by the behind the scenes parts, learning that each  character had at least 3 models to work from, the main characters would have more. One of the reasons there were multiple models was to work with a shot depending on wether it was a human character or a chicken who's point of view was taken. For example, the roll call scene where the chickens line up while a goose stepping Mrs. Tweedy marches past them, examining a clipboard, would involve three scale models. For the long shots, there would be scenes where the humans could be seen full body, with tiny chickens at their feet. For the mid shots on the humans, the animators would use slightly bigger models that wouldn't have any legs, and the models of the chickens would be bigger and more detailed. And finally for the shots that concentrated on the chickens, the animators would use a larger model that they could easily animate the facial features on, and the humans would really only have their boots visible.