Week 7 & 8

At the end of Week 6 I pitched the new film to Andi, with the more fleshed out character previously known as Rick, now named Conrad. It went down very well with a rough but clear treatment and rough character bio. There were a few tips received such as taking note of a number of film nor style films, especially those that involve some kind of interrogation scene. After searching for film nor film examples on YouTube.com it was a bit difficult to find anything other than poorly done student films. I did find a few good examples of the kind of acting I'm after in films such as "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Accentuate the Negative" however these are very serious films, I'm after a comedic drama style of film, so I've also been watching some of the old "Police Squad" series and "Naked Gun" films where Frank Drebin has an inner monologue going on which parodies these older films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGx5JUp_i-A.



After taking some tips from these old films I went off to prepare for my presentation in week 7. I created a few concepts for the background characters, got some music tests, a properly formatted treatment and my first rough storyboards. I have come up with a weekly schedule of what should be done week by week up until the end of the semester also. It is now week 8 and I am currently working on timing out my first rough animatic and getting my first draft of the script formatted properly with some rough dialogue. I have also sent out for some voice auditions on voices.com and posted a request for a sound engineer.

Catch up

Ok so first of all it appears that my week 2 and 3 have not been posted for some strange reason so I will pick up from where I left off. It is now week 6 and over the weeks there have been a number of changes to the film. Starting from week 3 Andi asked that I try and get my thesis sorted out before moving much further forwards with the film, so I left the script as it was for Andi to read over and concentrated on some more animation tests as well as getting my thesis topic well under way.

On my next meeting with Andi we discussed the first draft of the film. Andi said it was too ambitious and told me to throw the story aside and concentrate on the main character, Rick. Gave me the task to come up with a character bio of Rick and create a story that revolves around him rather than a story which just has him as a character within.

I have been meeting up with ex student James Lee and my composer Hania Lee quite frequently to discuss and flesh out Rick's character a little better. It is so good having a group discussion rather than sitting around a week wondering if the ideas I have work on an audience. We came up with a fairly different approach to the story having it set as an interview situation. Two characters in a room talking, a much simpler idea, where Rick's character is revealed through the events of the film.

The new idea involves Rick being seized by a suspicious law enforcement agent in Heaven who questions him in regards to recent events. Instead of selling real estate in heaven, Rick is escorting immigrants into heaven using his inside knowledge of the system... for a price of course.