Author Archive: Paul Charisse

First Motion Capture Tests

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We’ve now completed our first motion capture tests with mocap supervisor Alex Council and a few of the actresses. It was a very useful exercise, accompanied by much amusement at the silly blue costume and the somewhat surreal situation of performing a scene supposedly set in the mountainside, in a white room, whilst covered from head to foot in velcroed reflective spheres. Becky was particularly patient, as she was this session’s mocap muppet 🙂 We are now using the collected motion capture data to test out the rest of the pipeline. We also tested out some high quality hands free mics in an effort to test out capturing on-set audio, as an alternative to ADR overdubs later. This worked well (although a few worries about air-conditioning noise – hopefully we can turn this off for final capture)

The effects on the film are now to be provide by the newly formed FOAM Digital, an effects facility imbedded within the faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at Portsmouth University. The departments have been hard at work developing 3d assets for the production. The script is still under development by Red Rabbit Films and we are aiming get the first draft down by the end of Christmas. Concept and production art are still rolling out and we are aiming to accelerate the production of this in the next few weeks, as it’s starting to create a bit of a bottleneck in the production process.

Paul

New Cast and Production Roles Filled

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Over the last 2 months the production has grown massively. We’ve had a very productive time casting and doing workshops at the Gregg School in Southampton, who have been extremely helpful in facilitating this process. The part of Stina has now been cast and is to be played by the student Becky Waldron.  We have also cast the additional roles listed below. All the actress we saw were excellent and we’ve been feeding back a lot of the ideas explored in the workshop into the script.
Graeme and i have been hard at work organising the production process and writing the script. We have imposed a deadline of Easter for completing the screen-play, which should hopefully give us enough time for all the inevitable re-writes, external feedback and consultation. Graeme has also been doing a stella job on the website and has made what is going to be an essential production tool and hopefully a focal point for all the creative energy expended over the next few years. Please explore all the content we have on the site. We have lots of exciting new animation tests of the environment software we’re planning to use (VUE) and fluid dynamic simulations. Of particular note is Harry’s latest tests of waves hitting a beach which look stunning;  Also some splendidly creepy new concept art from Chavdar. The production is intended to be an open process, so we will be updating and uploading new art work, animation and designs all the time. The public will be able to follow the development of the film right through to its world premiere in Leicester square 😉
I’ve also been setting up the VFX pipeline and we now have a good idea how the animation production will work. We have leads in all the main departments and a production coordinator to hold it all together. We were surprised by the number of applicants we got from within the university and are filling up the roles very quickly. We are planning the production to be a rich learning experience for the students involved and hopefully a lot of them will leave it with some good show reel work and a realistic experience of the feature film production environment.
We welcome the following new recruits to the team this month:

CAST:
Stina – Becky Waldron
Mahdid – Evie Payne
Abriana – Jade Guillford Laishley
Isabella -Steph Chapman
Lia -Eden Glover
Olaf – Lucy Gates

PRODUCTION:
VFX Producer – John House

MODELS:
Lead – Razvan Arventiev
Steve Wadsworth
Ben Hall

MOCAP:
Ben Vere
Joshua Philip
Peter Campbell Smith
Owyn Abram

3D ANIMATION:
Lead – Ollie McDonald

ENVIRONMENTS:
Sam Hoffman

CREATURES:
Lead – Marcus Mills
Roman Diapa
Timothy Wilson

All for now,

Paul Charisse (Director)

Pre-Production

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So the film is staring to pick up pace with the pre-production now well under way. Some great new talent in modelling and environment areas with Harry Ellard already producing some splendidly dramatic  work on the fluid dynamic simulations. The script revision has started in earnest with each revision bringing the themes and characters sharper into focus. The addition of Graeme Herwig as script supervisor has provided a much needed check and balance to my story telling skills and has already added a tremendous amount to the narrative structure and focus.  We now have some storyboard animatics and it’s very exciting to see the first glimpses of the music working with the narrative.

We had our first round of auditions yesterday and the quality was frighteningly high, well beyond what we were expecting. Which is going to make choosing the final performers a real challenge.

The main character model is nearing completion with the facial animation system now reaching a somewhat ludicrous level of complexity (i just hope it doesn’t break as fixing it will be a project in its own right) But it provides the functionality to recreate some very subtle performances; useful as we have a fair few close ups planned.  The modelling of the final character has sent me slightly do-laly, as getting the specific age with its request subtle proportioning, keeping a certain look to the face and all the animation controls with their deforming muscle volumes has been a nightmare of balancing and revision. Not to mention the accompanying sleep deprivation. I start back at uni lecturing in 2 weeks (actually looking forward to a break from modelling!) so am trying to get this all done by then.

We now have a fairly smooth mocap to rig pipeline worked out, although the cleaning of the motion capture could be fairly time consuming and we’re looking for help on this. We presently have about 10 people on the pre-production team but will be slowly expanding to full production capacity over the next 6 months.  All in all the project is going swimmingly but rather a lot left to do 🙂

Storyboards Completed

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Finished the first complete series of storyboards. The story arc and characters are now fleshed out and it a comes in at around 246 shots. Should keep us all busy for a while! I’m very happy with how the story and various layers of narration and symbolism have knitted together and am really looking forward to the process of working these scenes up with the actors and also developing some of the visual ideas I’ve hinted at in the boards. The story and characters have come a long way since i wrote the original musical score, so plenty of adjustments will be needed for the final scoring (this was pretty inevitable. Or though the lazy musician in me was kind of hoping it wasn’t !) And I’m thinking of involving some other people in the writing process for a few of the new themes, as I’m much too close to the music now to really know what is/isn’t working.
We’re holding our auditions in September, so should have plenty of stuff to workshop now.  The Stina rig is almost finished and will be preparing it for a hopefully streamlined motion capture process over the next few weeks. Also going to start nailing the look of the environment and other characters, as i have the very talented artist Jackie West on as art director. So hopefully we’ll have some great visuals to work from soon.

Sucked into the Mind-Frazzling Vortex of CGI

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So, I’ve been working hard on the Stina model the last few weeks. Modelling, rigging, testing and shader writing.

Although she’s CG, i really want her to have a physical and textural presence, so i’ve been working to get the shaders used on her cloths/boots/skin to have a real sense of depth and physicality. This has been a real challenge and pushed my creaking computer to breaking point. Unlike the good old real world, you have to work your arse off in CG to make things look translucent/rough/dirty… anything but smooth and shiny in fact! I’ve posted some eye tests where i’ve been trying to get the translucent jelly like effect of the white around the eye and the glowing gem like highlight you get cast across the iris. She will be doing a lot of eye acting, so the eyes need to really have it.  Similarly with the clothes i’ve been experimenting with velvet like shaders to get a touchable, physical sense to the cloth.
I’ve also been trying to get the cloth to react well to the body. As with much traditional sculpture, i want to describe the body and it’s movements through the shape and movement of the cloth . (tests below) it all seems to be going well but has pushed my computer to the point where it crashes pretty much constantly. (Trying to secure funding for some new computer stuff, but as i’m in the education sector.. during a recession.. with a right wing government i’m not holding my breath)

These are admittedly fairly excessive production values i’m attempting.. verging on WETA DIGITAL levels, but as i used to work there it seem only right and proper. Of course, they have hundreds of skilled staff and a massive super cooled render farm. I have my home PCp.c. i bought in Portsmouth 2 years ago, and a dim memory of a well paid over worked job.

On the story front (easy to forget about story, once you’ve been sucked into the mind frazzling vortex of CGI) I’ve started storyboarding, which is a relief from the colourless tweaking of minute variables in digi-land.  Its actually a relief to see the story arc and characters coming to life and getting lots of the themes i’ve been mulling over  finally fleshed out. Unfortunately my drawing skills have become so god awful that only I’ll ever be able to make sense of the boards. To solve this, I’m planning on poaching a talented student to help me draw them (particularly as there’s about half an hour of them), as a director has, at some point, to start delegating. Even if he is a demented control freak.

Stina Character Tests and Story Ideas

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So, after far too many late nights of obsessive compulsive work on my laptop (i’m sure this is how i started the music blog!)  i have a first design for the main character Stina. I’ve uploaded a render test of the close up character model. It’s been done in the 3d animation package XSI using some subsurface shaders for the skin and eyes and my own custom setup for the facial animation system (check out youtube.com/filopastries for more examples of this system)

This is the result of many design iterations. She went through hundreds of different age/shape/colouring variations. I suspect she  may continue to evolve, but i’m happy with her look, at least for the moment and the underlying animation system seems pretty robust. She needs to be able to switch from looking young to old and also be able to pull of pretty and ugly so it’s been quite a challenge to say the least! The next stage is to do some animation performance test to see how well she can pull off some of these characteristics (not to mention to see if i have the chops to nail her performance for the animation reference; Or whether its time to seek out a proper actor / actress for the task!) .

I’ve tried to make her look tomboyish and blandly pretty, leaving the facial expressions to do all the expressive work, but still with a base appeal.  I toyed with the idea of making her look ugly, but it just drew attention to the fact and i decided it would distract from the narrative ideas i want to explore. Particularly as i want to be able to achieve a high level of aspirational romanticism for the viewer as well as visiting the darker side. I kept coming back to David Lynch, who i suspect will be a big influence on this film. Having visually attractive characters seems key to his ability to explore the darker sides of life and sexuality and clearly helps in creating real visual contrast with the darker, ugly and shocking imagery.  I still haven’t settled on the age range for this film, but i think it’s going up, as i want to get into the darker themes that lurk in Angela Carters “The Bloody Chamber” short stories (..mine being a rather poor cousin of the aforementioned!)

Matte Paintings

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So I’ve started doing some matte painting tests to develop a look and feel for the film. At the moment I’m focusing on The Red String section , trying to create a distinct atmosphere for Stina’s trip down into to the underworld. I want it to evoke the old 50s Technicolor film look, particularly with Jules Verne  “journey to the centre of the earth” in mind: massive in scale but with a painterly and surreal quality to it.

I’ve been testing out projecting matte paintings onto 3d geometry in 3dsMax, then moving the camera around to see how much movement and parallax i can get away with before the illusion is broken. The idea is to keep control of the backgrounds by painting them and only having to use 3d CG to light the characters and specific elements like water. I’ve posted a vid on the main page if you want to see the results. It seems to be working pretty well i think, the main problem seems to be that the images need to be massively detailed to stand up to zooming in. I’m planning to do the film at 1080p HD resolution so my paintings will need to be a least twice that detail i think.

I should also mention the paintings are heavily influenced by (and maybe a little borrowed in places from a painting I saw as a child by John Martin (19 July 1789 – 17 February, 1854) who was an important and influential English Romantic painter of the nineteenth century.

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion by John Martin

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion by John Martin

First Complete Draft of Music Uploaded

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So I’ve finished the  first complete draft of Stina and the Wolf. It’s been an obsessive month of late nights and neck ache but all very enjoyable. I shall be tidying bits up and tweaking stuff (mostly transition sections) as it still sketchy in places but the ideas are all in place now.

I’ll also be getting it ripped apart by some classical type persons to get some much needed perspective.

Now i have to pass it over to someone who really knows what they are doing with classical orchestration, to see how many liberties i’ve taken with instrument ranges and breath control! Oh and i need to work out the score.. I suspect that won’t be as much fun as writing the music.

A Bit About the Orchestration

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Thought i’d explain a bit about how the orchestration and leitmotif work in this piece:

Each Act uses specific instruments (orchestration) and melodies (leitmotif) to represent the characters and ideas, with the instruments combining and the melodies evolving as the story unfolds.

As the tale is of Stina’s transformation from human to wolf, her signature melody and main instrument (oboe) develop, intertwine and are eventually replaced by the wolfs instrument (muted trumpet) and melodies. On her journey she starts out:

– With the villagers (viol, or guitar viol in the case of this sketch)

– Has a day dream about the distant snowy peaks and a better life (the harp represents Stinas imaginative life)

– Becomes a wolf (muted trumpet)

– Meets the wolf guardian of the under world (muted trumpet, here Stina has reverted back to her human oboe form, but learns a new melody to get past him)

– Meets the horde of the underworld (French horns and trombone. Here Stina uses a new melody to skip on the heads of the waltzing horns unnoticed)

– Then the beast (fluttery flute. At first the flute reprises Stina’s new melody sarcastically, but then Stina tries out different  melodies and eventually he softens and gives her the key)

– And finally back to the village (viol here, but as the village is now overrun with wolves, the solo viol melody is soon copied and overrun with trumpets and horns. Stopping abruptly when Stina passes the threshold and turns the villagers back)

And finally she leaves for the forest and is a wolf (muted trumpet plays out the final melody, having first duetted with the oboe and come through triumphant, leaving the human Stina behind)

About the Project

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Stina and the Wolf is a project to turn a short story into a fully animated 25 minute film. At present i’m composing the music. It’s spilt into 5 movements (i’ve completed 4 so far) , each one based on the 5 acts in the story. Each piece is a narrative and attempts to combine orchestration and leitmotif to tell Stina’s story.

At present these pieces are sketched out on computer but hopefully (if i can organise funding) i plan to record them with a full orchestra. Being entirely untrained and having not the foggiest clue how to read music, I shall be working with a friend to help me through the final scoring and orchestration.

As for the animation itself. I am exploring lots of options at the moment. From full stop motion to painted and CG. I lecture in animation, so have an advantage. But i’m also very keen to involve other people in the process and am presently looking for talented artists to bring their own ideas to the project and help me visualise this world.