First Steps for Cold Storage the Movie

Well the movie is actually complete already... you can view the latest version at http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2029848541

So the story is: I was blogging whilst making the movie it but was really concentrating on that rather than publishing the Blog. So now I've got a little more time I thought it would be worth publishing the entries over the next few months. I'll keep my "after the event" comments until the end of each entry so you get what I was actually going through at the time.

So here goes, the story starts in December last year...

15/12/06
OK so I now have the full version of Antics. I stumbled across it when looking for storyboard software to get started on my first feature. And then I thought, why not make a short and leave it animated.

I created a short "Western" with a guy shooting a gun. It took about 2 hours with most of that spent trying to get the hat to sit properly!

There is loads of stuff in the full version so looking forward to it.

In my own true style I decided to follow through the classic director's approach to making Cold Storage. This is so I can learn the classic steps and thenadapt to my own process. I'm using Nicholas Proferes book "Film Directing Fundamentals" as my template. He recommends the director reads and then does his "detective work" on the script. Despite the fact that I could jump straight into the animation I have gone through the process.

So far:
- Re-wrote the script to be shorter and fit into what I think I can get relatively easily from Antics
- Reviewed the script noting
- Whose film
- Characters
- Circumstances
- Spines
- Dynamic relationships
- Wants
- Fulcrums
- Detailed narrative beats
- Dramatic blocks
- Staging (and extra jobs needed)
- List of props and scenes

The last step was my own to help identify what I need in each set.

With this done (and I had to force myself!) I feel a bit better prepared to jump in. So I'm starting now...