Investing in yourself

Investing or backing yourself is something not many people do often and it is something I am starting to learn is needed to make waves. The Monty Biggs script I wrote exists to show my Directing and Writing skills to the world and for sure if it was to ever become an animated short it would be a massive undertaking. In fact it is so ambitious that the I never actually thought going into any sort of production was possible and from the onset I explained that I was only going to write the script and produce an Animatic (Animated Storyboard), but the more I worked on it the more I think it can be done - whilst working at Yomp I lead a team that Produced an animated short called "The Yomp Experience" , this 8min piece tool 3 fulltimers and a couple of freelancers over 4 months to finish but in the end I am proud of what we were able to achieve. I digress, Not many people realise whats involved in an animated short but you can think of it this way, a movie goes for around 2 hours and our short went for 8min (approx 7% of a animated feature film) - we had to model characters, Rig (skeletal structure for characters), texture, light, do cloth simulation, Motion Capture, Hand Animate Facial expressions and hand movements, camera tracking, Cinematography (by hand filming camera moves), water FX, particle and Fire FX, Editing, and finally rendering and Composting over 12,000 frames. If you have some time to download please do watch the short we did. Go through it once not thinking about the production and then the second time, look around at the smaller thing - like Doc's clothing or his facial expressions. Theres a lot of work.

I am not saying wow look at me, I am saying please take a moment to think about what goes into an undertaking such as that. For sure there were things I didn't like about the Yomp Experience but it is something I am proud of helping lead and complete. So now back to my script 'Monty Biggs' - so I have written the script and worked it through quite a lot of drafts to a point were I am saying - what the hell, I will put my neck out there and think whats the worst that can happen - Film Victoria knock me back baaahahaha....oh wait that is kinda bad. There is a theme with the books I read and it's - 'back yourself and get out there' so that's what I am doing. Theres a production funding round closing 5th September so timing is tight. The current freelance job I am working on ends 08/08/08 and If I take a risk and knock back paid work then that will give me a solid month to take what I have done so far and turn it onto something a funding depatment will be willing to hand over 100K for. errrrrrrr

This is the funding I am going for -
http://film.vic.gov.au/www/html/834-propeller-shorts.asp?intSiteID=1
Quote from website - "Emerging filmmakers can apply for production funding for original and innovative short narrative drama, documentary or animation projects that will hone their creative and technical skills and help to 'propel' them into long-form work"

Fits me to a tea - I have 'The Yomp Experience' and 10years experience to show have the ability and I am an emerging Director to fit the clearly defined critea. Let me just say one final things regarding this step - it is going to be massively f'ing hard for me to get this across the line. I am up against season funding veterans, skilled writers and basically every man and his dog with a camera wanting to find away to produce a movie.

So that's it - my plan unveiled to the people. If anyone is interested in joining me on this venture check out my previous work at www.arranpotter.com and drop me a line. I am definitely looking for a producer at this time. Part for the criteria is that there has to be a Director, Producer, and a Writer and they can't be the same person (they bend a little for Director / Writers being the same.

Next step - I have a meeting with the Audio group "Big Ears Audio" , there a cool bunch of guys I worked with that did all the audio for "The Yomp Experience". I will give them the script and a description of what I am after in voice talent for Monty and Demy. Book one day recording should be enough to get it all down. This recording will help a lot with editing and even script writing.


"Monty Biggs shack underneith score board" Early Concept drawing for Monty Biggs by Kyle Van Asperen.

go speed racer

Well well - I took my 3 year old son to the movies the other day, just a father and son day. Over the post movie days I kept asking him what he wanted to see thinking for sure it was going to be Kunfu Panda (my choice) which has a child appeal to it with the cute characters and what not but to my horror he wanted to see 'Speed Racer'. My brother who is a few years older then I am was a speedracer nut which meant growing up I often had to watch Speed over Inspector gadget for example (hey I was younger). Now anybody knows when you drag an old nostalgic memory back into peoples lives you better tread carefully or else there will be cries of outrage 'what have they done". When I heard 'Speed Racer' was going to be a movie I instantly thought - "that would be wicked", lots of exciting content, how could they go wrong. THEN.......I saw the trailer - OMG !! WTF was that - it looked like Spy Kids on acid. So for my son Ruben to say he wanted to see that well who was I to deny him some technicolour Spy Kids.

To jump right ahead 2 hours later I walked out of the cinema almost shocked and smiling a lot. Sure there was some shots of the worst green screen I have ever seen and there was a very annoying monkey...oh I mean kid but there was something else, something very cool about that movie. I worked out later what it was - there is absolutely nothing like it out there, it truly is an original, originally what I can't really say eloquently. Hey check this out - I just did a search on Speed Racer and found this blog on a review with a similar vein as mine - cept is wordz is betr. The Wachowski Brothers had a hard task here - on one one hand they wanted to make one of their childhood dreams a reality and on the other they would have had Warner Brothers demanding the film falls into a certain category (i.e one that sells the most merchandise). I think they did to a great job in delivering to all requirements. I enjoyed the movie and I have brought my son all the plastic crap that goes along with it. It's not just toys - he also has PJ's, undies, singlets, shirts - and he wants more.

Back to the movie - it is enjoyable, the driving scenes are exciting and if you can ignore the fluff this movie can really shock some enjoyment into the viewer. Don't take my word for because it could have possibly been that I went to the movie with the lowest of expectations (that would be a fat zero expectation) . Go watch the trailer, I am positive you will be thinking "can it really be any good".

A word on Freelance - Yaris commercial is tracking along nicely. The clients is being difficult signing off on the layout, but that's really out of my hands, I am but a pawn in this game baaahahahaha. I can't show anything just yet - don't want to upset anyone (NDA bollocks) - rest assured I will upload when completed.

Peace