I thought this deserved a plug, especially as it’s Animation Forum West Midlands news. I’ve been wanting to go to some life drawing classes and ‘Dr. Sketchy’s’ looks very interesting. It’s not so much a lesson, as drawing wierd stuff whilst getting pissed at The Island Bar… with a competition thrown in apparently.
What I find the most interesting, however, is the fact that if it was just advertised as ‘Burlesque+Animal bits’, I would have probably blanked it. But, the only difference between the two is a pad of paper and a pencil… and I usually carry both! This confirms something that we’ve been thinking about. Audiences need to be told what they can do. Tell them to hand stands and they’ll do it (reluctantly). Tell them to clap and they’ll clap (much more British). More importantly, tell people to talk to each other and they will.
Most people aren’t the life and soul of the party. So Dr. Sketchy’s has given people extra options. Some people may be up for that. Some people may just want to stare a Fox-Woman with nipple tassles. That alone makes it an interesting experience, with a sort of counter-culture, hallucinagenic, cabaret ambience. The competition element however, puts a spin on it. People have now been told they might be interacting with the show somehow. That might put some people off, but it means the people who do go are prepared to engage and will innevitably make the effort to enjoy themselves.
Being a reserved, emotionally repressed Brit, I just don’t know what I’m allowed to do without being told. So, giving people the option to engage in an exciting way is something I’d like to see a lot more in nearly all events, whether it be in the form of a compere or just the theme of the event. A professional point in case are the AFWM screenings. Whilst they are essentially film screenings, they’re really relaxed and filmmakers are encouraged to talk in front of everyone so that you can put names to faces. What’s more you’re actually told to go and talk to someone, which at least prepares even the shiest members of the audience to socialise.
Next, I should have posted this ages ago. Now nearly racking up 10 million views this is Poykpac‘s interpretation of Mario’s post-mushroom kingdom stardom. I’ve always wanted to do a Mario Brothers Feature (Not a remake – the first one doesn’t count) but this quenched my thirst for the moment.
Third, in no particular order, ‘Hot Air Salesman’ produced by the amazing Max Fleischer. Ian & Tom spotted this gem in the Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham. Rubber hose animation and remorseless smashing only damped by the fact that Betty Boop was forced to clean up her act by this point in her career.
And last, a recent ‘smash hit’ commissioned by MySpace of all people. ‘Italian Spiderman’ by ALRUGO Entertainment is a fantastic spoof ’70s soap, detective series with some fat smacks of shovinism, moustaches, whiskey, and guns thrown in for free.
Having had a really crappy weekend and subsequently feeling like shite today, I thought I’d do an experiment. I typed ‘funny picture’ into Google images to see if it could cheer me up. It came up with this:
Suffice to say, it didn’t work.
If you can do better, send me a funny picture to ian@diceproductions.co.uk and I’ll publish a roundup of your efforts.
The evening of Film Dash started in true form, by dashing. I fetched a camera from the lovely Warren from @Warblefly and then ran off to the briefing – starting these things already sweating shows that you’re serious. A friendly atmosphere was brewing at the Custard Factory and Ian had even met a fan of The Outsider. All anyone knew about the challenge was that we had to make a 1-5 minute film in 48 hours based on a specific brief. Everyone’s brief would be different. The winning film would be screened at the event, ‘Into the Light’, a celebration of Birmingham born film producer, Sir Michael Balcon. When the time came we got our brief:
Incorporate the spoken line, “I don’t believe the world has been in such a terrible mess since the flood.”
How nautical. By now Ian really needed the loo so we headed back to my new flat/office, tip-toeing around the subject of trickling water, floods and the cruel ‘it just went down my leg’ sea.
The most exciting thing about the challenge was to learn what we could (or should) do in that time. We knew we could write quickly and wanted to work to that strength. We’ve also filmed sketches very quickly, especially with Tom acting. But bringing everything together and making it look good within the time was the trick.
Pizza, brainstorming and a couple of shakedowns of the whiteboard got us a nice script and a schedule by 2am on Friday night. Not too shabby. On Saturday morning Tom was getting into Mr. C. (Mr. C would have liked that) and all was go! We got a couple of shots done and Sara Leung kindly came round to fill in for the part of the girlfriend.
Apart from, or because of, the lack of crew, actors, and equipment, filming went pretty smoothly. By 3pm we had started editing the first lot of footage down and unleashed Max Fitness onto the world. Snippets of other people’s film’s were starting to pop up in various guises at this point which added to the chase. In the evening we unwound at the pub. Later, we started tightening right back up as Ian and I broke the back of the editing overnight. As expected there was way too much footage, so we stripped down and cross-faded our way to safety.
3 hours sleep later and in a cold sleeping bag, Tom said reassuringly something to me about sausages. I agreed that I liked sausages. A shower, a cupper and a McScwadge burger later, we were back in action. After a couple of reshoots, sound work and some tutting at some very dodgy cuts we were done! It would have been lovely to chat to everyone at the hand-in but by that point we were shattered. Unaware of the relevance we finished the evening with a couple of pints of Landlord. So, so tired.
In the end, I think we can be quite chuffed with our script. It had a few nods to Hitchcock and fitted the brief in a nice Ealing farce comedy sort of way. Whether it came though as well on screen I don’t know. Looking at other people’s films, particularly Dunkirk, maybe we should have gone a lot shorter, simpler and quirkier. Whatever the weather, Film Dash was amazing. It was a great laugh, it taught us a lot and we were part of a really buzzing filmmaking event. It did what it should have done, it left us wanting more! Bring on Film Dash ’09.*
Our Film Dash entry The Landlord is now up for public consumption.
A group of all the Film Dash: Digital Galore! entries, including our effort, has been posted on Vimeo
Check it out, leave us some comments on what you thought of it and remember, it was ALL done within 48 hours with limited resources and no actors, well apart from Tom. I recommend watching the other films in the group too, particularly Dunkirk by Pete Ashton and co, it’s like Wall-E but set in Digbeth.
We’ll be posting some photos and video from our shoot soon with a little bloggy round-up from Louis I think. So brace yourself for some behind-the-scenes action.
I quite like the BBC website as a pot of interesting nuggets to brighten my lunch hour. One of my favourite features is the caption competition on the Paper Monitor blog. It’s a quick, fun, exercise in wordplay, where mere mortals do battle for the small amount of kudos dished out to the top-five entries of the 600+ witticisms they receive each week.
I quite like scrolling through the other entries, laughing at the sometimes clever, sometimes painfully awful captions for the ‘begging for a caption’ image provided. Last week the image was of a church that allowed dogs to sit on their owner’s laps during the service.
My entry was the minimal “Pewdle”. A mix of pew (the type of seat) and poodle (the type of dog). A fair crack at it I thought.
Checking back the next day, I found I hadn’t been selected in the chosen few .
I thought no more of it until I noticed this in my other BBC blog vice ‘Your Letters’ (which must be exclusively populated by upper middle-class jam-makers and gardening enthusiasts judging from its tone). The final letter said:
“I can forgive you for overlooking my caption competition entries, but I can’t forgive you for overlooking the deceptively simple yet inspired ‘pewdle’. Sue, London“
Hilarious on many levels. First, my throwaway pursuit got some recognition from a woman named Sue from London, second, they felt compelled to write in to correct a perceived injustice, and third, that the BBC deemed it an important enough issue to print in their letters section!
My confusion only increased when I found this:
“Can I second Sue in London’s support of the simple but effective ‘pewdle’ caption competition entry (Friday letters). However I must admit the ‘dogging’ entry made me chuckle the most, although I can fully understand why it wasn’t chosen. Mark, Portsmouth”
How odd. I must have some form of talent for captions. Previously I won two Glastonbury tickets for a four-word slogan to stop ticket touts (“Tout and you’re out” if you were wondering), and five tickets to a Gomez gig for a description of what I’d do if I had wings!
So, thank you Sue from London, and Mark from Portsmouth. Your support was most welcome and brightened my day.
The most exciting thing about the challenge was to learn what we could (or should) do in that time. We knew we could write quickly and wanted to work to that strength. We’ve also filmed sketches very quickly, especially with Tom acting. But bringing everything together and making it look good within the time was the trick.
YouTube