Boris Karloff narrates my work.

Ok, so that title is only part true. Being part of the week long Boris Karlof Blogathon, celebrating Mr Karloff's birthday on 23rd November, I'm given a chance to drag out a film I made during the first year of my animation degree. Before I get into it, please remember to take some time to check out all the contributing blogger's posts, a full list can be found on Frankensteinia's blog. There are some great additions on there honouring a great man.

So back to my animation degree and the year 2002. The task was to complete a short narrative piece, an animatic to be precise (An animatic is basically a filmed storyboard)to teach us how to tell a story with pictures. After thinking long and hard I decided to base mine on the story 'An Appointment in Samara" Not only is it a cool little story but I could also get Boris Karloff to narrate my film. Obviously as this was a project and I made no money from it (copyright notice covered there) I lifted said narration from the Peter Bogdanovich film "Targets" in which Karloff, as Byron Orlok, recites the story.

So I edited down the narration, created the storyboard and presented my work. Unfortunately it was under appreciated as the lecturers felt I was relying too much on the the narration rather than the visuals. In hindsight, they may have been right, but who cares. With Boris Karloff telling the story, you're guaranteed to end up focusing more on him than my rough sketches.

so for your pleasure, and if you can bear through a couple of my early works, you can watch the animatic I created for "An appointment in Samara"



And below is the scene from which the narration was taken, from the Peter Bogdanovich film Targets.



To finish off with here's a clip from The Bride of Frankenstein. It is the end so hopefully you've already seen the film. It's just a really cool moment in film and one of my favourites



On that pleasant note go and check out Brother Chris blog and, the rest of the participants, to share the love for a movie legend at Frankensteinia's blog.

Happy Birthday Mr. Karloff.

Busy-ness as usual...

So I’m busy, but only for the time being as the music video work is coming to a close. It’s been a while since I’ve made a complete short film and I’ve had to get used to the amount of work needed, not just in the actual animating but also with the planning, and just now, the actual time needed to render the video out. So far I’ve had to split the video into 6 parts, and each subsequent part into two when the effects were added. This is mainly due to both file size, and programs crashing after too long.

Anyway, when I have a little more time I’ll write up a complete review with pictures and links included as a making of style report.

At the beginning of the month at the Halloween inspired Son of Moviebar, my film In Case of Zombies was screened. It went down really well which was cool to experience, however the Q & A this time around was more me mumbling and not really giving any amount of decent information out such as how the film predated the Zombie boom and other factoids. Instead I umm’d and err’d a bit then sat down. Fortunately the rest of the Q&A’s were just as brie so I don’t think the audience minded much.
Since then I’ve kind of been well busy animation and editing.

Running out o things to talk about I’ll just mention the complete mess that was Channel Fours 3D week. Not so much a week than an evening as the same programs were repeated all week. On Monday I decided to miss The Queen in 3D, not the Helen Mirren film, but some old footage of her coronation converted to 3D (for some reason) So my 3D adventure began with Derren Brown presenting some pointless magic in 3D. It was pointless. The next 3D experience I had was on Friday, due to contradicting screening times I missed Flesh for Frankenstein.

Friday was Friday the 13th Part III. Awesome. This has my second favourite 3D moment (the first being the random man with paddle board in House of Wax) where a man puts his washing out. Great stuff. Having never seen it in 3D before I was not disappointed.
The film is still good. In 2d it manages to keep you entertained, however only in 3 dimensions do the Yoyo, juggling and popcorn scenes really make sense (to a degree).

On Saturday we watched The Greatest 3d Moments. Channel Four returned to their favourite top ten format to reavel ten 3d moments, however all of these were more interesting than the rest of the 3d programs to be shown on Sunday (JLS and Hanna Montana). However, only small clips were shown but not before a massive introduction by an assortment of “comedians” who watched the clips the night before, and then even when the clips stated we were interrupted by another talking head to explain the clip were were trying to watch.

Basically the whole week was a dissappointing mess. It could have been cool if they manged to get hold of as many 3D films as they could, or they should have just planed a single day as most of the programs were repeated this weekend. Also I got very annoyed as it came across that everyone thought it was 80’s kitsch, rather than 50s when it all started. So it was all a bit of a mess and was all kind of a waste of time.

Still, I saw a man putting his washing out. Excellent.

Next week is the Karloff blogathon. I shall return.