Short Film: Update #12 the animation continues...

This week has been spent mainly animating:

I completed three shots in total and made good headway on a fourth. As these things always do, the shots took a lot longer than I was expecting: I was hoping to have completed this sequence by now. But, I still have 2.5 shots remaining going into next week.

I also did the organised but daunting thing of writing out every shot/ sequence I still have to shoot and animate. Which has kind of made me reconsider the deadline I set for myself last week, as it might not be all that achievable. Though time will tell…

There’s obviously a balance I have to straddle between the quality I want to achieve of my film in terms of both look and story (plus sound design/ score) and how much time to spend making it/ the work life balance I want. In my mind, there is no doubt I would like to have it completed in time to submit to next years festivals, but I feel the compromise will have to be that I will likely not be able to submit it for the earlier, nicely discounted rates unfortunately. I also do not want to forsake the quality of my film for a, essentially arbitrary, submission deadline- that is something I am going to be stubborn about, so if, on the chance that it looks like I might not hit any of the festival deadlines in 2025, then so be it. The film is more important than that and I can then have it at least ready to submit as soon as the festivals open for submissions the following year.

All the above said, I do feel I need to be ramping up the amount of hours I’m spending animating on my film each day. I’m currently averaging around 5 hours daily most weeks, which isn’t really good enough- I would ideally like to be at 7 hours. It always feels like time just eats away for some reason, especially in the run up to Christmas: I’ve had various other commitments/ things that need doing as well. I still want to retain a good work-life balance and don’t want to be working silly hours on my film because that’s not healthy, but I think around 7 hours animating a day is a more than reasonable target, especially if I want any chance of the film not dragging too far into next year.

So what’s in store for the coming week? More filming, hopefully, as well as the completion of the shots from the sequence I filmed last week. If for any reason I’m unable to get the filming done, because of the weather for example, then I will start to look at colour ideas and background style development. I definitely need to be thinking of those things in the upcoming weeks as I am on the final third of the outlines, so the next stages are not that far off. Seeing that written down is both exciting and frightening all in the same breath! But if it scares you, do it, as the saying goes, so I guess that’s what I’ve got to do…

Below is an image where I upped the contrast and lowered the saturation of the reference footage to assist me to pick out some of the lines on the hospital gown a little more clearly:

And a pic below of the fantastic Grace Petrie gig myself and my boyfriend attended last night in Sheffield. Just to prove that I do other stuff aside from animate, skate and watch football! Anyway, it was a super fun (and empowering/ inspirational) time and would totally recommend watching her if she has any tour dates near you. Was also a nice surprise to see that one of the support acts was a poet (the fabulous Molly Naylor- I shall be checking more of her stuff out for definite in the future)…

See you same time next time xo