Persepolis

I watched Persepolis last week when it was broadcast on TV, because I had heard a lot of good things about the film. But I've got to say that I'm really disappointed. I just don't understand the fuss about this Oscar-nominated animated feature film, and therefore I would like to recommend a short animated film based upon similar themes that I found to be much more effective - Maryam Mohajer's And Life Went On.

Persepolis seems like a film trying to tell other people about the terrible impact war & revolution had on their lives; and although small parts of the film are quite effective at this, for me the story just dragged on and on for way too long with major parts of weak material, which ruined any impact that the shorter parts had.


On the other hand, Maryam Mohajer's And Life Went On is a short animated film, that uses a simple plot to effortlessly evoke very powerful reflections about the impact of war within the mind of the viewer.
It is a 6 minute film made at the Royal College of Art in 2007. The story is set in Tehran during the 1985 Iran/Iraq war, but I don't want to give away any more of the plot than that because when I saw it at the McLaren Awards in the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008 I knew nothing about the film.
While I was watching And Life Went On at the Filmhouse I thought that the story was progressing slowly and felt quite mundane (just like Persepolis),but here (in this short 6 minute format),it works much better and genuinely built the film to a powerful climax.
I would even go so far as to say, albeit controversially, that And Life Went On was as effective as Saving Private Ryan for portraying the devastating effects of war!

A mine of design

While drawing a new PoV shot for my film over the last two days I've spent even more time on the Internet looking for design influences... I just couldn't help myself - i love 'research'!
Over the last two days I've found so many wierd and wonderful things!!! Here's a round-up...

WebUrbanist is a great resource with loads of databases of very unusual things... One such database is 20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase & Bookshelf Designs.

WebUrbanist also had these evocative databases collectively known as The (WU)ltimate 33-Part Guide To Abandonded Cities. I found it really useful for ideas to develop the spooky run-down aesthetic designs of the house in my film.

Another similar link is at Askville where people replied to a question asking 'What defines a house as spooky or haunted?' Although most of the answers are fairly common, it also has a few really unusual answers, and lots of good imagery and related links.

I found this blog post about Weird Chairs called That's What You Call Pain In The Ass. There are chairs made from cutlery, sharpened pencils, screws, and even featuring 3 sheep heads! But this set above, designed to look like a child's drawing, is my favourite.

Opera78 is a design board established in 2005 by Fiodor SUMKIN, and has lots of cool illustrations.

Tim Sale is the graphic novel illustrator who creates the artwork for Heroes. I just checked back on his website yesterday for the first time in ages, and forgot how great his work looks.

Earlier this evening I saw the advert for Ladyhawke's debut album on the TV, and it looks so awesome! It has wonderful watercolour illustrations and the coolest rotoscoping I've ever seen!
I checked out the music video for My Delirium on YouTube... It mixes live-action with the really cool rotoscoping and even has long sequences of animation created by digitally manipulating a series of watercolour paintings.
The illustrations and paintings were made by Sarah Larnach. And her watercolour paintings were turned into the awesome animation sequences by Frater at Partizan Lab.

Some backgrounds for my film

I survived my "acting" debut on Monday, and despite being the director I've not yet seen any of the footage... The whole process actually went really well, but I doubt I will be challenging Heath Ledger or Anthony Perkins for the most convincing psycho award.

Over the past week I have been adding coloured backgrounds to my rotoscoping. I've never had the opportunity to do precise backgrounds for character animation before, so this is something new to me, but it works well enough so far... My only concern is that the backgrounds look pretty flat, although if I have the time available I will manually add more depth with blur and focus frame-by-frame in Photoshop, which should really enhance the images. In the meantime here are some of my first backgrounds...

Storyboarding for a psycho

I'm shooting live-action for my third and final character (a murderous psychotic artist) on Monday so that I can complete my film.
Due to popular demand (well, two people) I am going to be doing the 'acting' for this final character, which is going to feel awkward to say the least! (Who in high school EVER imagined that I would do some acting?!) But with a little help from Ally, Jess, and Topher last year I pretty much perfected that character, so it's not completely new to me!

In preparation for my acting debut on Monday I have been storyboarding some murder scenes from various films (for research and development), and I'm now trying to create an extensive collection of original thumbnail images (that don't copy shots from other films) with detailed notes for my own film.
I thought I was doing really well and had created a unique sequence, only to discover that the composition of some shots is almost identical to some of the shots in Hitchcock's Psycho... (dammit!)
But at least I'm getting some really useful stuff done, and hopefully these thumbnails will give me a good shooting schedule to ensure that I do not forgot to shoot any important shots (like I did in January while filming stuff with Darryl).

I'm pretty excited (if not also nervous/self-conscious) about attempting all this crazy stuff on Monday, but I've arranged for Klodya Menting (whom I also worked with last year) to come into college and film it all for me - so I can't back out of it now! And even if Klodya pulls out, Marianne had also offered to film it for me - so I have to commit to it now! (Those responsible for the "popular demand" had better appreciate it!)

In other news:
- I've been creating some backgrounds for my film with watercolours after a few earlier tests produced intriguing results.
- I made a 2 minute preview of my film (one that doesn't ruin the ending) to show the family on Sunday, and during this quick editing process I devised some more interesting revisions of the film... I really liked the climax "ending" so I'm going to fight hard to keep it in the final version.