Whirligig

made this film for my good friend and one time co-worker and music teacher Margaret Hancocks. Margaret is a brilliant flutist, I know a lot of people say stuff like that but it's not just my personal opinion as during the 70's she was celebrated as Australias premiere orchestral flutist in Europe and, among other amazing things, headed the Australian School of Music Woodwind divison. I met her when she was rehabilitating back into the workforce after her music career was cut short when she was institutionalised with bi-polar. I got to learn a lot about the illness during the time we worked together, notably that she is "plum crazy and has the government signed certificate to prove it". Yes, she has a wonderful sense of humour.

I guess this film is about what I've seen of people suffering from manic-depression rather than about the illness itself. I didn't really want to detract from the simplicity of the story so I didn't exactly spell everything out, so if you don't understand why I included something just ask and I'll explain what I was getting at.

If you are concerned about depression or someone who has depression you can always go here (Oz) or there are some links on this lovely persons page (USA).

Couple of apologies, firstly, I made this for the festival screening and it's not really suited to the small scale screen above, you'll have to take my word for it when I say how absolutely brilliant it looks on the big screen. Secondly, I couldn't find the final sound mix version (I have a suspicion it was on my old, now defunct, PC) so the sound levels between some of the scenes are a little dodgey. Ah well, if you want to see perfection, go look at an egg.

Background

It's probably time to put up another film, but I'm waiting on something. So this'll have to do in the meantime.

When I was a boy... OK, not that sort of background. The other type. I love using multiple medias in my films because I like the richness it gives to the look of my animations. It's also a lot faster and cheaper (hey, I wish it wasn't but for me it's a consideration) to use something like a photo for a background than having a matte or 3D artist create something for me. I've recently discovered HDR photography which when done correctly makes for some stunning photos and when done incorrectly or is overworked HDR has the uncanny knack of turning a normal photo into something that looks like it's been painted. Bingo! Exactly what I've been looking for in terms of my next production. Of course, backgrounds and environments in animations move and unless you're Harry Potter, photos don't. I can change that, the window in Knowing Strangers is a prime example of taking a still (of a closed window) and with a little movie magic making it move. So this is my first attempt at using HDR (nothing exciting, just my dining room, excuse the mess);

One of the originals


The final


Not great yet, but I know where it's going.

Oh yeah, and when I was a boy my parents gave me a bible I thought it was the coolest thing because it had heaps of pages and I could turn it into one of those flick animation books. I got into a lot of trouble, but it was totally worth it to see the swordfight that ended with one of the knights losing his head and then being chased away (headless) by a dog. Animation Rocks!

Beast Adrift

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That's probably my least favourite film. Mostly because I never really wanted to make it. It shows in lack of key frames and absolutely no development in the story, which would have been easy to produce with a couple of extra little scenes to show the passage of time.

Why did I make it? Well, last year I attended a film event called RoughCut that was being run by Tropfest and Sony. RoughCut's a pretty good event for networking. At the end of the event they announced that any filmmaker who had attended RoughCut could win a $10,000 High-Definition digital film camera and all they had to do was put a film into Tropfest. It didn't matter how good or, in my case, bad the film. From what I could tell there was about 30 or 40 filmmakers there planning to put films into Tropfest. I liked the odds. I didn't win the camera but at least I made a crappy film. I should have just had sock puppets dancing on the screen for 10 seconds, would have been easier.

As usual though, I did learn a lot from the process of making the film and the way I made it is going to come in very handy for this next project. I did like some of the modelling on the ship, the smoke and the lion. At least, this time, I have a story I believe in. To give you an idea of how I made the characters in 'Beast Adrift' here's a photo of the original Lion 'puppet' taking a ride on the back of my mouse.

1. Filmmaking 101

I've been around a lot of filmmakers for a lot of years. I'm sure I've picked up some pretty valuable insights along the way, maybe, so seeing as we're all about encouraging creativity here at G3tfilms I'll share a few tid-bits with you.

Lot's of filmmakers are paranoid about their ideas being stolen, and on that subject:

"Leave your scripts on park benches in the hope they're stolen" - Billy Marshall-Stoneking

I'm not sure if Billy suggested it because if someone stole your idea you'd at least know it was a half decent script, or if it was because it's easier to sue someone for stealing your ideas than realising your vision on the big-screen, but I do know that after following Billy around Sydney for a while in the hope of picking up a good script he doesn't leave his writing laying around.

Shame, he's a pretty good writer, but a much better if not tongue-in-cheek public speaker.

Yeah, OK, I just wanted to update and between work, a friends post-engagement pre-wedding party, another friends 36th birthday, and subsequent recovery time I hadn't really looked at the film thing last week. Although I did get to work out the 'hair' issue and introduce myself to the weird and magical world of HDR photography (which may or may not play a part in my film depending on if I can work out how to do it).

War On

Seeing as the super cool and always politically incorrect Squid wanted to see something serious AND funny or at least that's the way I read it, here's a little cartoon I did for TV. It's the second episode in a little series called War On. Not seen it before?! It wasn't picked up for reasons that can only be accounted for as my own silliness. It's kinda nice being a naive little Australian sometimes, but let's just say if you're going to a parody your countries involvement in the Iraq war don't pass your 'spots' on to your contacts in renowned pro-war media outlet. They're not interested and they never will be. So here it is.

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I'm not actually that political but I can say that although I don't exactly agree with our involvement in Iraq I do have the greatest respect for our soldiers. Yes, that includes the man being parodied here, Col. Mike Hannan, who I met personally on several occasions when I worked in Defence. He's a good bloke and an excellent officer, no disrespect intended. (He really does talk that way BTW, the voice artist did excellent work).