Fantastic Mr Fox

Im not sure about this movie. I saw it at the beginning of the week with a few friends. From what i sae on the trailers it looked really good. I love stop motion animation, films like corpse bride and nightmare before christmas spring to mind, and series like robot chicken. I love all these things and admire the work that goes into them. Im not saying that i dont admire the work that went into the making of Fantastic Mr Fox, it has clearly had a lot of work put into it, i just didnt like the story that went with it. I know its a Roald Dahl classic, but the producers of this movie have made changes, probably to make it appeal more to the audience, or what they think will appeal to the audience. For me it didint work im afriad.

However there were certain parts I liked about it as a movie. For starters just the fact that it is stop motion animation saves it for me. Also the style of stop motion that was used appeald to me. It has an unfinished feel to it. The animation hasnt been smoothed out to look life like, it has a subtle jerky motion to it, almost like missing out every other frame, and i personally really like this method. It's the same with 'The Nightmare before Christmas' as apposed to 'Corpse Bride', both made by the same director, Tim Burton, but both with subtle differences that makes them a world apart from eachother.

On the whole i think it's a must see movie if you like animation movies, and it does have some funny moments. But if your a die hard Roald Dahl fan or just not that into animation then steer clear or it, wait till it comes out on DVD and then rent it for cheaper

Technically

Ok. I know this dosn't technically tie in with what i have done so far on the course but i just wanted to share with you a game i tried recently. It called Machinarium, available from the steam network. Its a point and click puzzle game but with an arty twist. I just love it as a game. Each and every character, back ground, speech bubble, all of it was hand drawn onto a PC tablet. I like the unrefined look of the game, the fact that you can tell it's been hand drawn and not had millions of pounds spent on making it look ultra realistic. Its a simple game that works well and is a treat to watch.

Whiteboard animation

Finally found the video! Not quite sure why i was having such a hard time finding it.
This was so much fun to do!

Short movie/advert

I like this video because it manages to introduce us to so many different stories in such a short space of time. This is how a short movie should be.

One shot short design process

The Discovery Stage

• As a group we met up at the pulse bar and had a brainstorming session. We bounced ideas of each other and wrote everything down in the hope of coming up with an idea.
• We discussed ideas that would not break the rules of the project, i.e. the fact that we couldn't move the camera.

The Develpoment Stage

• We decided to look more at an indoor shoot as that allowed us to make better use of the fact that we could move the camera. With an outdoor shoot there will always be too much to see for a stationary camera and this would deaden our film.
• We looked at various potential locations for ou shoot, namely the university buildings and shopping areas, however these turned out to beto busy and not what we wanted for our film.
• One of our group mentioned visiting the gallerys of justice and that a room there might provide what we wanted, so we went and had a look. As it turned out the location worked for us.
• Now that we had a location in mind and a general idea based on that location we had to write and develop our story. As a group we decided on a court case based story and wrote out script accordingly. As it turned out the script developed with every take as we decided on more to add to it.

The Defining Stage

• Once we had our story, script and location we felt confident about booking the location for our use. We were given an hour before opening time to do as many takes of our movie as we could.
  
• We did an initial take straight away, so we could see what the film looked like and where lighting or props might be needed.
  
• With each consecutive take our idea, and thus our film, developed and was refined until we had our final take.

The Delivery stage

• This stage we havnt done yet but i will write a post about it once we have.
  

One shot short

Well my group has filmed the one shot short. Im defiently pleased with it, great location, worth the eraly start this morning, should work out has having some interesting takes on our tape. just got to edit it now and make it better =p

Pin Hole Cameras

Did anybody else find getting a picture on the pinhole cameras hard? All i kept getting was a picture of the pin hole iteself, just a black dot at either end of the page. Not the greatest picture in the world by far. My best effort resulted in a shadowy picture in the corner of the paper of a tree. It looked so easy when we were showed how, but lining up that paper was oddly difficult. Anybody else have the same issue???

First post

Well hello

This is my first post, sat here with the rest of you writing your first posts too.
If we havnt met yet, my names Antony or Ant if you prefer.
Emails toni99@hotmail.co.uk if you wanna drop me a line about anything.

Cya