firefly: attempting a short film
These are a couple of panels of one of my latest storyboard work.
I was recently asked to do a story test for a studio abroad and I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to use it as an exercise to work out a story-board for a short film. Since the narration has to take place in only a 100 panels, the story itself is kept very simple. It’s a story about a small boy and unexpected encounter. I am pleased with the results and we are editing the animatic right now. I am hoping we can eventually proceed to making it into a short film.
This process of creating a story and its visuals under a very tight time frame really teaches us to be humble. It is so easy to criticize a finished film and see all the faults, but soooo hard to create one (even a tiny one). It’s a lot of fun though.
Once every little while I escape my little studio space and visit the big cities. Last weekend we drove to Berlin with an invitation to see the premiere of Laura`s Stern with family and friends. I think it ended up being a cute little film. Especially for little kids. I especially loved the art direction. Vancouver based colleague Matthias Lechner art directed and features some of his beautiful artwork on his personal website here. Also Hamburg based Manu Arenas created many of the designs for the film. I am a huge fan of his work. Besides his blog: Yaxin the Faun, you can see his artwork on his personal website here.
While in Berlin we took in some culture… – film culture that is of course!
We visited the German Kinemathek . It is located just opposite the cinema at the Potsdamer Platz and showed a rare exhibition of storyboards. Samples from Hitchcock`s “Birds” (check this link for more of Hitchcocks storyboards), Spielberg`s “Raiders of the lost Arc”, Ben Hur to name just a few (the exhibition will move to Toronto next year. So if you are in the vicinity and have the time, I recommend you go visit it). It was great to see the original artwork up close for a change. (I have to admit I was also really hoping to see some of Ridley Scott and James Cameron work as well, but unfortunately none of their work was on display) I nevertheless purchased the exhibit catalog for future reference J. We could also caught a classical exhibit during our short trip. We went to see the “Renaissance Faces” exhibition, organized by the Bode Museum Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Over 50 famous museums have contributed with unique loans. Allowing a great display of portraiture and busts from fifteenth century Italian Artists. The Exhibit shows the evolution of early portraiture, giving a great insight into the different Schools of Art and their main focus. Such great artwork, we spent hours looking at the paintings.
