Director's Journal: The Process

It wasn't always fun or easy but I've made it!

First off pardon my English as I go into this rant about my 4th year.

Creating a film has been one of the most challenging thing and also the most satisfying thing that I have ever done with my life. I feel that I have done something worth while but it wasn't always fun. 90% of the time I really feel that I couldn't do it and I've doubted myself at the beginning of year on whether or not I would finish. I've doubted that my film would be any good or if anyone would care about my subject matter. I've gone through a painful first semester as I struggle to come up with a narrative structure to my father's story. I didn't really know how to tell it in a way that is true to my father, true to my culture or true to myself. I've been going in circles not really knowing where I'll end up with my project.

On top of receiving critiques on my story from my professors and my fellow classmates who are also struggling with their films, I was also worried about how I'll be able to technically deliver my film. I've decided to do puppet animation in After Effects. While I have done animation in after effects before I had never developed a fleshed out workflow for it and most of my production has been spent trying to learn how to build a character and putting it into an environment in After Effects for animation! After many trial and errors I've finally developed a good enough workflow for me to create my film. Overall, After Effects has been a forgiving platform for me to work with. I did not run into much technical problems that are commonly found with people who decided to do 3d films. Not being hindered by such technical difficulties allowed me to be more creative with my project which allowed for complete spontaneity. In the end I am happy that I've made the decision to create my film this way.

I feel that some people have the idea in their minds that what I'm doing is much easier compared to any other forms of animation. Any type of animation, whether it is hand drawn, digitally drawn, cutouts, stop motion, sand on glass, requires hard work! Yes I know 3d is hard and I've experienced the pain of 3d in second and third year. But to say what I'm doing or anyone else is doing is "easy" or of "less challenge" just isn't fair and it hurts me to hear some people say that. Am I really much less of an animator just because I decided to do cutout puppets in after effects? Well let me tell you something, in order to achieve the look that I was going for It took grueling hard work and many failures. I had to go through many trial and errors just to get one of my puppets to move. At that point I was worried that I wouldn't get my film done because it took so long for me to do a shot. My first shot took me around 3 days without any sleep and the animation was pretty shitty. But I've learned a lot from it and I was able to apply my knowledge to my other scenes. I had a total of 25 puppets in my film to build, rig, and animate. I've also had to build 8 different environments as my film takes place in multiple settings. Although rigging in after effects is not hard compared to 3d rigging, it was still a lot of work. so please, what I'm doing wasn't easy. Nothing is ever easy. (*phew* I just needed to get that out of my system.)

That being said, as I got familiar with my medium I was able to work much faster. I didn't need to worry about colouring my frames since it is puppet animation. In that regard I was able to finish my film faster with longer shots to edit. My Leica reel wasn't tight in that my timing and events were not exact. I was relying on my intuition as soon as I was able to animate something and the result of my film has been me sticking to my gut feeling and ignoring any doubt I had at the beginning of the year. This year has certainly been emotionally and physically draining. I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to spend an entire year on a single project. It wasn't always fun but I loved every moment of it and it was worth all the effort.

I live in Surrey, my commute is a total of 4 hours back and forth per day. I only work at school because I can't afford a computer to do my work at home but I prefer that because I love the school environment and the people that share the workspace with me. For the last 3-4 months, my work schedule has been me waking up as early as 6 am to go to school and going home as late as midnight. I even go to school on the weekends. And I am really going to miss all of this when I graduate :(

Tam Trailer

Finally I am close to completion, here is the trailer to my graduating film. It is going to be Screen In Vancouver Canada At the Rio Theater on May 6th!

Film Trailer

Tam Poster

Here is the poster for my grad film!

Film Proscess, 2.5d stage for animation

I'm making great progress but there is still much to be done. Here is the scene I just completed and a small sample of how I've been going about constructing my sets in after effects and placing my characters in them for the shot. This scene is the first apartment where my parents stayed for awhile when they first came to Canada and it is the night where my shrieking cry kept them up for hours.

P.S. The flag seems a bit ex-positional, I'll have to remove it.

This scene is finally completed! It took me a lot longer than I expected, I had to go back and correct many issues with the animation. I got it to look as good as I can possibly make it but even then I feel there are many errors. At this point I just got to move on to my other scenes. This one took way too long and my goal was to have 2 scenes finished by reading break. Gahh!!! I just noticed a seem in the middle picture!!!!

Here are some Test shot for the prison scene. I'm still deciding on composition and where the characters are going to be place in 3d space. I also have the ground to figure out but for now I just did a photoshop mock up on it because when I go to animate it the ground might look a bit odd.