Week 9 & 10

By the end of week 9 I had received dozens of auditions for my film. Unfortunately most are for the cop character in the film. On top of this the majority of the auditions received have been very inspirational, sounding like the actor is simply reading the lines without actually reading the kind of acting I want or the examples I have given of reference characters. For example, I asked for the main character, Conrad, to talk very much like Robert Downey Jr's characters in "A Scanner Darkly" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", and I've been getting actors saying, "I was going for a J.D from scrubs kind of acting style." Very frustrating, fortunately I have received a very promising audition for the cop at least. As for the other characters, I think I will post another job, this one being even more specific to the kind of auditions I want. I have also sent my script and concept art as well as a budget to a number of high profile, professional voice actors, I figure, what's the harm? If I hear back, fantastic, otherwise, it was worth a shot. So I have sent emails off to Phil LaMarr, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Richard Horvitz as well as a number of others. As well as voices I have sent out requests for sound engineers who might want to work on this project with me. I have also completed a lighting test for the interview room that I am quite happy with. By the end of week 10 I had completed a timed animatic to the voice auditions I had received, because many of the auditions only read out a few lines though I had to cut and splice it together just to get a rough idea of the length of the film. At just over 4 minutes I believe it is very achievable, especially after trying to make the most of reuses without being blatantly obvious. I have also completed a rough test of the Cafeteria and the Pearly Gates in my film. I am up to draft 5 of my script, and it is shaping up very nicely, I want to get the script as strong as possible before too much production is done. I have now started work on my second, more cleaned version of the animatic, this will have rough animation, scene transitions, voice and music timed to it so it is ready to animate in semester 2.

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.

Week 1

Ok so the first week of Honours year kicked off with us being thrown straight into the deep end. Luckly I had been working on my film idea over the break and had a first draft of the script fleshed out and some rough character concepts drawn up.









The idea for my Honours film is about an angel named Rick, who is sent to earth as punishment for his incompetence, however instead of serving out his sentence as a nobody on earth, he partners up with a saleswoman to sell space in heaven to those willing to pay top dollar.

The story was thought of for my business and policy subject in 2008. The idea came to me when I heard of a crystal church that had been built in the United States and paid off in a single day. (http://www.crystalcathedral.org/inchurch/) There is also the scientology belief where it seems the more you donate the higher ranking you receive within the church, hence Tom Cruise being one of the churches highest ranking figures. There was also the time Pope John Paul the Second was given the proceeds from the worlds 400th Ferrari Enzo, a US$1,274,229 car. I started to think, there is a lot of money in religion and I’m sick of hearing of people who seem to think they can buy their way into Heaven. I did some background research on the many beliefs that believed in an afterlife to get some ideas on what heaven could generally look like. I plan to stylise the traditional view, but keep aspects like using a lot of white, and a lot of cloud and mist, however I plan to make it more of a society, that's why I also looked up the different rankings of angels, and their names, and using these pieces put together my first draft, using their rankings as the justice system of heaven. My aim was not to offend anyone in particular; I believe I have just used common elements to create my own setting so that people will recognise what I’m saying without people thinking I’m just having a go at one set of beliefs in particular In the last week I have also done a couple of quick animation tests of the two main characters.