Blue Light

a thesis film

[bluelightfilm]

Hellooooo,

Looking for a Sound Designer who will work alongside my composer to help build this weird world.  Lots of tippy tapping seagull feet, ocean sounds, wing flaps, and crunchy crunchy sand.

This is a clip from the second act so you can get the idea of the style.  I’m currently in picture-lock and have some scratch sound for you to reference.  Shooting for an end of April deadline! :)

Runtime: 3:55

[bluelightfilm]

Failing Faster

There's a reason why great artists advise the newbies in their field to fail faster... So that things like this don't happen.

I've begun my animation process, and it's a little... well... amateur?  I'm here to get my Masters, I could technically impart wisdom on the youths when I'm done, and what am I doing? Fudging my way through the twelve principles and hoping something looks kind of cool when I'm done.

Now don't get me wrong, I definitely thought I was the hottest shit for all of a few seconds before my last weekly check-in with my advisor.  

Just casually throwing around timing charts, breaking subtler movements down by layers, testing out camera moves... Ya know, that advanced MFA stuff.

But

I was doing it BIG FAT WRONG.  The one technical thing we had to learn...

You see, I had the right idea, but because I'm a child of this fantastical digital age (and also because I'm not yet working on other people's projects), I haven't had to rely on timing charts to animate eases in a specific way or number of frames.  I was getting by just plowing my head through scenes, knowing somewhere in my gut that more frames=slower action, fewer frames= faster action.  BUT.  This does not help when you want to figure out how many frames you need to ease an arm away from a face in a way that says “I just ate sand and I don't care.”

You need to structure that kind of timing.

So that was my “ah” moment of the week (a couple of weeks ago), I’ve gotten very behind on posting here but BUT it will be better.  GOOD THINGS COMETH.

[bluelightfilm]

The Plateau

There's this cozy place right between the end of the animatic and the beginning of the rough animation... A place where you can curl up in a blanket, sip tea, and scrub through all your hard work knowing that “now it's just inbetweens!”

That's a later-you problem though.

Now you just have to move onto the next step!

The rest of it!

This is usually the part where I start dawdling for weeks on end, waiting for more and more “official” signals that I really am good to start animating... But there is no limit to the number of ways a person can tell me “yes, start now,” that I won't fully grasp until it's too late and the only thing pushing me forward is the threat of failure.

Now I say that I'm hanging out in this “cozy” place, right?

Really it's this hellish limbo where I complete the majority of my other work in a fit of existential dread... And yet for some reason I’m determined to stay here.

 I should find some sort of routine that keeps the work flowing in little increments all the time. You know, like how work works.  

But alas, we live in wild times and today I'm just trying to keep my head together!

GO VOTE DEAR GOD PLEASE VOTE

[bluelightfilm]

That Title Though

“Blue Light” might be a little too edgy for the project at this point, but I like it and I'm keeping it.

It was a left-over from my original treatment; a very cool play on the idea that both sunlight and screen light output blue-spectrum rays. But now it's become something much more literal!

Relevant, yes, but not as satisfying of a reason. 

Color has become a huge factor in clarifying the tone of this piece...  So much so that simply coloring one shot has explained the time of day, the mood, the eerie sensation that something is very wrong, and exactly what the entirety of the background characters are doing with their beach day.  While the (admittedly greenish) blue light plays a big role, the title doesn’t foreshadow any humor in the film... Which maybe it should?  

I don’t know yet and I don’t feel like thinking about it now!

HOWEVER, I do have a backup plan to prove how purposeful and well-formulated this title definitely still is.

If asked, I intend to have a speech prepared about the film's subtle references to Emily Dickinson's “I heard a Fly buzz -when I died-”

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

DID YOU SEE IT DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID

Yeah, not the most direct reference and certainly not an up and down representation of this piece, but that poem has stuck in my head since I read it in grade school.  It's always struck me as hilarious and so embarrassingly human, which is a feeling I'm hoping to convey in my film.

I could say there are more parallels to be drawn, but I’ll save that for the real paper.

[bluelightfilm]

Seagulls

So why seagulls?

In my many redrafting sessions, I thought about ways I could approach the subject less directly.  One of the goals listed in my proposal was to make really cool layouts and background designs, so I tried thinking of ways the story could be told through those backgrounds instead of right-up-in-your-face angstiness.  That, however, would require some sort of foreground thing to be going on separately!

ENTER SEAGULL

(guest artist: Hoss Wheeler, instagram: hosswheeler)

I want to say that the seagull was expertly crafted as a metaphor for our tunnel-vision in the upkeep of our virtual personas and participation in virtual spaces... But honestly I just love drawing dumb-looking animals doing dumb things. 

This trash-bird and his insatiable lust for free snacks came directly from my soul, but he does conveniently tie together the A plot and B plot.

There were a lot of directions this story could have gone, specifically with bird-guy as the leading metaphor.  Nature goes on without us, nature is oblivious to humanity, nature is scarred by humanity, the list goes on.  I think the idea I settled on is closest to “nature is oblivious,” but also kind of leaning towards “something buck-wild happened here today and everyone freakin' missed it.”

That original idea of a need for balance between real-world and virtual world experience still holds up, but definitely through a more cynical tone.  Which definitely feels more like me.

....

Here are some character designs for your entertainment.

[bluelightfilm]

A Very Long Introduction

This project started out different. Like SUPER different.

My first idea, and the one I proposed to a faculty committee, was a sad/serious drama about getting addicted to being online.  My main character was going to neglect her real-world life (including her DOG??) in favor of the cool new 90's-00's vaporwave dreamscape that was the internet....

It was going to be POIGNANT, and DEEP, and full of UNIVERSAL TRUTH.

......

And then Covid-19 happened.  A globally crippling event which devastated the physical and mental health of societies everywhere, not to mention forcing hundreds of thousands out of their workplaces and away from friends and family to shelter in place...

Making the internet kind of important. Kind of life-saving.  Kind of the only leg supporting us as we hobble along trying to work and live in the new normal.

(Not that it wasn’t these things before, but now the thought of criticizing how people can abuse it seems... in poor taste.)

So around August I was starting to feel some serious inner turmoil.  Every time I tried to board a scene it'd look stiff, awkward, uninspired...

LOOK.

LOOK AT THEM.

GROSS.

It wasn’t working and I was freaking the heck out.

I started thinking about other ways to approach the topic of technology and themes of addiction, focusing on ways that could be more lighthearted and humorous, but I kept running into the same wall of  the “CELL PHONES BAD BOOKS GOOD” trope... 

That was when it all became clear.  I had to go to the other side of the bell-curve.

 Lean all the fucking way in and own it.

And that’s how we got here:

Seagulls.

TBC