Saturday 10 July 2010

Stills from 'Lilith's Second Chance'











Here are some selected stills from the film.

Friday 2 July 2010

Plans for refining Lilith's Second Chance

Hi everyone, I now have a vimeo account at this address:

vimeo.com/lewisanimates

You can see my videos in HD, particularly the version of Lilith's Second Chance showcased at the degree show. I have to admit that I made a lot of changes to it in the week between assessment and the show, so this one isn't the version submitted for assessment.

There are also may other changes or additions I wish to make to this film. I had to miss out some beautiful shots that would have been great fun to animate but also add a little spice to an animation which has been called slow and boring by one critic. This film should, therefore, be considered a work in progress.
Among the shots I would like to add are:
1) Before the shot cuts from the exploding Houses of Parliament to Lilith on the bridge, I would like to add a quick pan across to show the change in perspective - otherwise the point of view is unclear.
2) To do a proper 3D camera move in after effects with the bridge, so that I can add a cracked pavement texture to the road underneath Lilith, which is currently plain black. I had attempted a camera move before, but the bridge didn't move exactly in sync with the character animation. This will be very tricky.
3) When Lilith comes into view on the river, I would like to show her slowly emerging from under the water. This would be difficult because she is constantly moving, but beautiful and worth the trouble! It would also make it clearer that she is the same woman, as she looks so very different in her spiritual state.
4) My least favourite shot is when she turns to look at the wolves - it seems so wooden and artificial. I wanted to make her head turn slow to represent her stunned disbelief but instead it looks like bad acting, particularly since her body doesn't move. I would very much like to have her twist her torso and prop herself up on her elbows or something.
5) To add more movement and variation in the wolves.
6) After morphing to the bears, I want to cut to a side shot of the bears swimming, similarly to the shot with the fish. This will allow me to cut back to the aerial shot of the bears swimming out of sync with each other. It's difficult to explain, but morphing from the wolves to the bears meant that I had to have them swimming in sync with one another, which looks mechanical.
7) To drop the camera behind the last bear in the pack, to submerge the camera underwater and swim between the legs of the bears, before shooting back up through the water to meet the next scene, where the camera is looking upstream and then rises up to fly over the hills at great speed. This was a favourite point in my animatic but not essential to the comprehension of the narrative, so had to be sacrificed for more vital scenes.
8) To add more in-betweens over the hills, more form and more texture. At the moment, it looks like a rough draft, as there is no colour. I would like to make the river blue as in the other scenes, add some Celtic pattern textures to the forested hills, and add some sky with clouds.
9) To create a cathedral grove when she approaches the source of the river. This will then be taken out of context, changing to a symbolic space depicting the tree of life (e.g. Yggdrasil of Norse mythology) hanging over the earth before an image of outer space, smothered in a network of rivers and pumping like a heart. This will pull out to reveal the rivers forming a body of veins - a body matching Lilith's shape and movement on the river. Then I will probably cut to her being launched upwards by the last drop on water in the stream.

This final idea is a new one, actually, which came to me as I read a passage of Simon Schama's 'Landscape and Memory,' which never ceases to fill my head with ideas. I was just waiting for a friend in the library so I opened the book at a random page, read one passage and was instantly inspired! It was a discussion about the quest to scientifically explain the formation of rivers and briefly mentioned the ancient classical view of the earth as an organism with systems similar to those of the human body.