A Descida Escura is finished!

On the 14 February I came back home. Production had finished, but there was still alot of tweaks to sort out. The edit needed to be more tight, sound and music needed to be synced up. Joe Donohoe who composed for the film back in May came back to help us compose the score. He did a fantastic job and it really makes the film feel more refined than before.

By the time i had finished putting the film together the film had a run time of 14.30. Which is insane thinking back in university where we had a bigger team and proper equipment. I guess after learning after our mistakes and knowing our strengths, me and Tom became a good team. Our work flow from an outside few probably seemed ridiculous, but it worked for our way of working.

This whole project has been a great learning experience and the fact that I now have a film completed feels the more better. I guess the next step now is to enter it into festivals and see what happens. But even if it does not do well, the fact that I've done and I can show it to people, feels like a big enough reward.

And by the way, the films name has changed to "A Descida Escura". I finally got the actual translation for the Dark Descent :)

Breakdowns

Here is some more breakdowns of the backgrounds.

Half time

It was the 8th of December and we had been working solidly for a month and a half. It went very well and we had nearly 2 whole scenes done. There was the odd background and shot to be done but it was getting there. So the plan from here was for Tom to go back to Torquay and i would meet him there on the 3rd of January.So fast forwarding to the new year and i was in Torquay. Its pretty cool, has a hint of inland England aswell as keeping that South west feel. Unfortunately it rained alot so I didn't get to see it all sunny and nice

:(.

The goal now was to finish the film by the 14th February. We had alot to do, 3 whole scenes, backgrounds, animation, coloring, composting, editing, etc.  But we got through it with the help of coffee. 

Heres a few shots from that month of work.

Helicopter Scene Shots

Heres a few shots picked from the helicopter scene.

Shot Workflow

These are a few breakdowns in the work process of creating a background. I begin by making a technical drawing where I would plan the actions of the animation and the cinematography of the shot. Once that is done we determine how long the shot would be so we can see how long we should put into each shot. I then begin colouring the basic shapes and forming the values of the painting. Textures are then added if the shot requires them. Throughout the actual painting process, in preparation for composting, I carefully plan each painting so when the time comes to import it into after effects with the animation I have the shot cut up to add

effects and masks. 

This shot below is cut up into various layers. The sea, sky, boat and clouds are all on different layers. This way I can animate the individual layers to what ever I need it to do

Production Begins

I started working on a new colour board for our new scene that we were planning. I wanted it to feel safe, warm and a contrast from the rest of the film which would be a lot more harsher and dark

Heres a few finished shots from this scene :

Round 2

So when we stopped production back in May we had a reasonable watchable but broken film, the goal was way too adventurous but we tried our best.  So as soon as Tom moved in, the pads and pencils were flung out. We had a couple of choices to make about the film as it was. One was to clean up and add shots in between the film we had aimed to finish for the graduation deadline, another was to push the film to more of the original idea and go all out making the film longer and more polished. We chose the latter.

Going from what we had learnt from before in production, we looked at my original animatic and saw the options to follow. Since we were only a 2 man team, we had to fully understand how long this would take us to complete the film. We underlined key scenes and story points that had to be more emphasized and made a schedule that would show us what needed to be done and how long it would take. 

We both agreed that working around our current work instead of cutting shots/scenes would be more easyer and result in a more tighter film without the loss of work. Scenes that we thought that needed to be in the film were :

A Scene were we see the Old Man collecting a good memory  -See the old man in a more comfortable stat The Helicopter scene                                                               -Because we knew it would be fun ;)
A better build up to the ghouls
A good climax                                                                         -This was the most important



Here is the original animatic i made which shows a few of the scenes which we intended to add.

So with the knowledge of what that had to be done, we began.

Fast forwarding...

Fast forward to September now and its getting close to my graduation date. I had just been on a 6 week holiday to Portugal with my girlfriend  and I felt refreshed and stress free. And i had the graduation dress to look forward to. So the time came to be smart and smile. It ended up being a really great day!

It was great to see everyone again, tutors and friends.

Also in September we had our very own screening in London for our films. We had people from cartoon network and other well known studios come to view our work. It was my first taste of mingling with the executives.The day ended nicely with a couple of pints  in our belly's and business cards all over the floor.

Now I was back home. What to do?

Well I needed money and I wanted to move out ASAP so I began to job hunt and work on my portfolio for a couple weeks. And the fact that my parents own a restaurant meant that I was going to spend some quality bonding with the pots and pans. Despite this it was lovely to be home and feel the comfort sink in. Food at home naturally tastes better.

Now with the job situation... I do live in a wasteland called Cornwall by the way. And when i say wasteland I mean in the winter its a bloody ghost county. Shops close, roads are empty and jobs are non existent. I guess living in a small village were the closet food shop is a newsagents, shows that getting a job is pretty much impossible.

It was at this point that Tom my work colleague on the film, got in contact about the current situation of the film. We had planned a while back to enter it into festivals but we felt it wasn't finished enough to waste all that work on a couple festivals. We both ended up agreeing with our current situations that if were going to ever finish it, now would be the time. So plans got made for him to come live with me for 2 months and then I would go to his to finish it off. Dark Descent round 2!

End of Uni

So were i left off...

Well with the final week of university drawing closer, times got desperate. The production of the film was being pushed to its limited. Me, Tom and Grethe where pulling 12- 16 hour days to get the film ready for a screening later that month. I even did a full 56 hour grind without sleeping towards the final days.At the end we had a 6 minute film that felt very gratifying to see infront of us. And seeing it on a big screen, with the score kicking in, it was a great feeling to be had.

All the films that got completed were brilliant in their effort for completion, and the quality that was achieved with the time and resources that we had was second to none.  And with that, my degree was coming to a close. I look back now and think of how i would have changed and done to improve myself, but when i think about how focused and hard me and my team worked its scary to even think about attempting it again. So after a good few days of drinking and celebrating it was time to pack up and head home. I got my certificate detailing my degree (2:1) and weirdly stared at it for ages, just thinking how strange it was how after all that, a peice of paper is what is exchanged in for all that dept ;). But seriously the experience and knowledge that came with on the fly problems and learning curves, made the course feel like a real important in progressing myself forward.

Here is my graduation showreel from May 2012



Everything is done by apart from the character animation on Escuridao Decente

I'm Backkkk

Well my poor blog has been abandoned for so long that it feels painful to see it in such an unloved state. So, i'm going to re-cap the following months with the events that have brought me here.