The title of this post is the title of a stop motion feature film created here, in Australia, Written and Directed by Adam Elliot; creator of the well known short film titled 'Harvey Crumpet'. First I'll give a brief description of the film before explaining the unique way I managed to gain a ticket for the first public screening in Perth.
Mary and Max is a dark comedy portraying the life of two people at opposite ends of the who, under quite childish curiosity circumstances, become pen pals. It's based loosely on a true story of Elliot and his own pen friend. Mary is an 8 year old school girl from Melbourne, and Max is a 44 year old overweight Jewish man with Aspergers syndrome from New York. Through out the course of two decades Mary and Max write to each other, each letter seeming to spark some sort of scenario; both characters learn from each letter and as they grew older, the friendship grew greater albeit from many bumps and spikes along the road.
I had the privelage of helping create a short ten second stop motion animation for the opening of the night, with help from Daniel, Crystal and Ebbie. The presenter from the ABC had requested it specifically asking that it was made to look very bad, or "crappy" if to quote everyone. So we set out to deliberately make this stop animation crappy, the morale of it is stop motion isn't an easy type of animation to create and present. The ABC Presenter pretended for it to be his own creation that took him 2 weeks to complete (2 days for us), but in the end we were given an honorable mention for taking up the role. Thus, Crystal, Daniel and I each received an 'Admit 2' pass for the first screening of Mary and Max in Perth. It couldn't have felt any more Awesome to help in the presentation of an even more Awesome stop motion animation!
At the end of the screening there was a Q&A session with Adam Elliot himself along with Melanie Coombs who took up the Producer role of Mary and Max. Elliot explained before the screening that everything visible in the film was hand made and that there was debate that the animators would digitally create the rain, water, fire, and smoke animations; in the end it was settled that they would stick with the primitive method of just using physical products in the stop motion aspect. I couldn't help but put my hand up and ask how they did the smoke animation as it was the one separate of water and fire that eluded me the most, looking so realistic. It was a little complicated in description from Elliot as to how it worked, they ended up using a sort of white wire with a particular clear product, fading it out slightly and just bending it each picture as you would anything else in stop motion; The end result looking excellent.
That pretty much covers my night, unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the screening of the WAM Bam competition animations; something I'm very upset about. There just wasn't enough time to make it down to Fremantle. Hopefully I'll be able to see the end result at school on Wednesday. Ciao!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Wam Bam Spectacular!
This evening was the beginning of the WAM Bam Speed Animation competition hosted by WAnimate in association with FTI, I left the Annex feeling a bit remorseful that I wasn't actually taking place in the competition but the thought of seeing what the outcomes of each animation is going to be at the screening on Sunday will make up for it.
Those out of the loop, in Wam Bam you're given 49 hours to create an animation based on 3 words randomly picked out of a hat. The animation can be whatever you want as long as it holds those three words one way or another.
Evangeline, Daniel and I were the only Animation students to attend the opening; we all agree that performing in the competition is something we'd want to do, alas other responsibilities take place and we all left an hour and a half after the initiation. Talked to Kate Vyvyan, inevitable obviously but for the sake of networking it was good to bump into her again after the WASA's. Also saw Khrob Edmonds, who the whole animation class had been introduced to a couple of days earlier as our 3D Animation lecturer; why he was there I'm not sure as the mans humor seems to revolve around masking answers to questions but I'm guessing he'd be judging much like Tim at the screening. Doubly assuming he's a member of WAnimate. Evangeline, Daniel and I also met a stop motion aspirant named Liam in the FTI kitchen who planned on entering the competition; he showed us some of his maquettes he'd created. So it'll be interesting to see what his team ends up creating.
Above that, just went around to each group and asked them what their words are, what ideas they had cracking. Some people seemed little to less interested in really having a conversation with a couple of students outside of their group but it was fun to find out what some people had going just from a couple of words. Tim also pointed out some other particular people in the industry(?) who's names I didn't take in extremely well, still something I need to get better at. Had a chat with an FTI graduate from T0803 who worked on Yo-Yo Wolf. Overall a fairly decent evening in terms of networking, it's something we're all still getting used to so all we can really be is optimistic in the social aspect of the industry.
Mary and Max plus the WAM Bam screenings on Sunday, should be fun ^.^
Those out of the loop, in Wam Bam you're given 49 hours to create an animation based on 3 words randomly picked out of a hat. The animation can be whatever you want as long as it holds those three words one way or another.
Evangeline, Daniel and I were the only Animation students to attend the opening; we all agree that performing in the competition is something we'd want to do, alas other responsibilities take place and we all left an hour and a half after the initiation. Talked to Kate Vyvyan, inevitable obviously but for the sake of networking it was good to bump into her again after the WASA's. Also saw Khrob Edmonds, who the whole animation class had been introduced to a couple of days earlier as our 3D Animation lecturer; why he was there I'm not sure as the mans humor seems to revolve around masking answers to questions but I'm guessing he'd be judging much like Tim at the screening. Doubly assuming he's a member of WAnimate. Evangeline, Daniel and I also met a stop motion aspirant named Liam in the FTI kitchen who planned on entering the competition; he showed us some of his maquettes he'd created. So it'll be interesting to see what his team ends up creating.
Above that, just went around to each group and asked them what their words are, what ideas they had cracking. Some people seemed little to less interested in really having a conversation with a couple of students outside of their group but it was fun to find out what some people had going just from a couple of words. Tim also pointed out some other particular people in the industry(?) who's names I didn't take in extremely well, still something I need to get better at. Had a chat with an FTI graduate from T0803 who worked on Yo-Yo Wolf. Overall a fairly decent evening in terms of networking, it's something we're all still getting used to so all we can really be is optimistic in the social aspect of the industry.
Mary and Max plus the WAM Bam screenings on Sunday, should be fun ^.^
Monday, March 23, 2009
Getting Serious
Notice how I didn't use "Why so serious" instead.
So Screen Australia is working with the ABC to support Educational/Training games and present it to a wider, public audience.
Being a gamer myself it seems like a bit of a toss up, mixing education and entertainment is like baking fish in cake; it hasn't appealed to me in the past and after working on an assignment relevant to said 'serious games' in highschool it's not an easy thing to pull off. Since that's the case the scale ends up either leaning towards education more, making the game a chore and no more fun that listening to a monotone lecturer talk about various types of plastic, or entertainment more at which case you don't learn anything. There's the issue of getting the 'message' across, which is obviously the crux of the whole scheme; doing that inside interactive entertainment doesn't really sound plausible.
Why? Well, being a gamer I've come to criticize games in the past for elements; those being story, graphics, sound, and other deeper things, etc. Plenty of past video games solely based on entertainment have wrapped up a message in all of its programming and visuals, true, but those are generally morals. Morals and Education are two very different things so try not to get them confused. Anyway; looking from a particular artistic standpoint, Interactive Entertainment is the most difficult medium to manipulate and bring together successfully as there are so many other mediums that need to be focused on in the process (Many would disagree as IE is still an emerging form of art, go watch 'The Most Powerful Person in the World'* if you do). Fixing education into it? making it a hit so that its purpose is actually fulfilled? Encouraging more of the same edutainment products to be developed? It's like you've taken the most difficult medium and turned it impossible.
You can't force feed someone certain information if they're not interested; majority of gamers could likely cut out the message in favor of entertainment, or not purchase the game all together. That involves both the core and casual market. Core: Obviously there for bragging rights, they'd prefer competition and challenge with a hemmoragingly deep story to get engrossed in over being bugged by the worlds typical issues that they're bombarded with every day. Casual: Similar deal, they're purely playing video games for the short burst of entertainment their mind requires just to get a break from the nag of reality. Try seeing it as traveling to another planet and attempting to mind control a heard of moose like aliens. You're targeting a poorly researched audience with a still emerging medium, good luck.
You might be seeing the quote "At least we know the message has been received by some people" in the future. This just turns the idea on its head, for me, as it's wasted time and resources which could have been spent on other more practical ways to get the message across; the same time and resources that could have been placed into actual Health and Safety, money that would be better off pushed into the current economic and environmental crisis. I won't tap into politics too much as it's a subject I'm clearly ignorant of, but I do understand that any support towards said crisis is support spent well rather than winging it on assumption with some other lackluster idea.
Then there's the other half of me which hopes this actually hits home and changes the world, at which case I'll likely stop blowing crap out of proportions.
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUbyMxSfSs4
You know Stan Lee agrees, and he supported comics when they were emerging and considered a childish form of entertainment with no orthodox methods of art anywhere to be found. Notice the pattern? (This part was out of the way so I didn't stray from the main topic, but I had to give an honorable mention)
So Screen Australia is working with the ABC to support Educational/Training games and present it to a wider, public audience.
Being a gamer myself it seems like a bit of a toss up, mixing education and entertainment is like baking fish in cake; it hasn't appealed to me in the past and after working on an assignment relevant to said 'serious games' in highschool it's not an easy thing to pull off. Since that's the case the scale ends up either leaning towards education more, making the game a chore and no more fun that listening to a monotone lecturer talk about various types of plastic, or entertainment more at which case you don't learn anything. There's the issue of getting the 'message' across, which is obviously the crux of the whole scheme; doing that inside interactive entertainment doesn't really sound plausible.
Why? Well, being a gamer I've come to criticize games in the past for elements; those being story, graphics, sound, and other deeper things, etc. Plenty of past video games solely based on entertainment have wrapped up a message in all of its programming and visuals, true, but those are generally morals. Morals and Education are two very different things so try not to get them confused. Anyway; looking from a particular artistic standpoint, Interactive Entertainment is the most difficult medium to manipulate and bring together successfully as there are so many other mediums that need to be focused on in the process (Many would disagree as IE is still an emerging form of art, go watch 'The Most Powerful Person in the World'* if you do). Fixing education into it? making it a hit so that its purpose is actually fulfilled? Encouraging more of the same edutainment products to be developed? It's like you've taken the most difficult medium and turned it impossible.
You can't force feed someone certain information if they're not interested; majority of gamers could likely cut out the message in favor of entertainment, or not purchase the game all together. That involves both the core and casual market. Core: Obviously there for bragging rights, they'd prefer competition and challenge with a hemmoragingly deep story to get engrossed in over being bugged by the worlds typical issues that they're bombarded with every day. Casual: Similar deal, they're purely playing video games for the short burst of entertainment their mind requires just to get a break from the nag of reality. Try seeing it as traveling to another planet and attempting to mind control a heard of moose like aliens. You're targeting a poorly researched audience with a still emerging medium, good luck.
You might be seeing the quote "At least we know the message has been received by some people" in the future. This just turns the idea on its head, for me, as it's wasted time and resources which could have been spent on other more practical ways to get the message across; the same time and resources that could have been placed into actual Health and Safety, money that would be better off pushed into the current economic and environmental crisis. I won't tap into politics too much as it's a subject I'm clearly ignorant of, but I do understand that any support towards said crisis is support spent well rather than winging it on assumption with some other lackluster idea.
Then there's the other half of me which hopes this actually hits home and changes the world, at which case I'll likely stop blowing crap out of proportions.
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUbyMxSfSs4
You know Stan Lee agrees, and he supported comics when they were emerging and considered a childish form of entertainment with no orthodox methods of art anywhere to be found. Notice the pattern? (This part was out of the way so I didn't stray from the main topic, but I had to give an honorable mention)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Western Australian Screen Awards
Or better known as the WASA's.
Getting involved with the industry being a particular unit itself in my course it's relatively a mandatory move to step into some of its functions; with the WASAs being potentially the largest and most sophisticated, it seemed the correct place to start. I placed my name in for some voluntary work at the Octagon Theatre, at the UWA (University of Western Australia). I was hoping to catch some of the ceremony but unfortunately the role Sally had given me involved working during the majority of the screening; I snatched up a programme for the sake of finding out the names of films and people though.
Slight occupation rundown: Started 3pm. Spray painting large, several gallon drums gold and moving them to/from the courtyard at the middle/end of the ceremony. Setting out each individual award programme on each seat in the theatre. Starting up heater things which generally disagree. Fetching speakers for the resident DJ, and cleaning up the courtyard once the party was over.
Slightly disappointed with the lack of Animation students not volunteering in the same area of work as me, but I established a friendship with a couple of the film students giving me a decent network into that particular group; considering Animation and Film students appear to stick to their own groups from my observation, I can ask help of them where required or they can do the same vice versa.
Attempted the odd mingle with several complete strangers but received awkward response most of the time, so both parties ended up back in their groups as predicted (Film substantially larger than Animation). After an unknown amount of time I spotted Graeme Watson (Our course coordinator), deciding to exploit the fact that he could introduce us to people and suggest to our small group of, Evangeline, Shani, Daniel and I that we move in that general direction. The suggesting paid off and we were introduced to Kate Vyvyan, Secretary of WAnimate. Our chatter covered several topics, namely the Wam-Bam competition which I was most interested in, and also Adam Elliots appearance the Sunday of the same weekend as the Wam-Bam; plus several other 'mingle' things. I was hoping in our time with talking to Kate that someone else would randomly join our group and introduce themselves but at this stage I've filed that under wishful thinking; if I actually want to 'chat' and get involved then it's something I'll have to push myself into rather than just hope it stumbles across me. Regardless, I was glad to meet someone in the industry tonight, more proud to think my suggestion lead to it albeit through Graeme.
After that it was a slow road to the Animators all heading home leaving me there with the selective hearing Film students. Fortunately graced by the presence of Ebbie, our course facilitator, who introduced me to Clancie (Sir name currently unknown) who was in Ebbie's Animation class with her. That conversation pretty much went over Tiki the Weasel and D20 Role Playing.
It got to a stage where everyone Animate wise eventually left, I chose to just wait until Packdown time considering it was around that stage where everyone was too intoxicated to mingle with successfully. Finished off the night at 1am cleaning up the place with Greg from Film, Graeme, Sally, and the crew from the Octagon.
Wam-Bam'll be up next. Assides from that I've established my Facebook profile among other things. It all seems to be sliding into place.
Getting involved with the industry being a particular unit itself in my course it's relatively a mandatory move to step into some of its functions; with the WASAs being potentially the largest and most sophisticated, it seemed the correct place to start. I placed my name in for some voluntary work at the Octagon Theatre, at the UWA (University of Western Australia). I was hoping to catch some of the ceremony but unfortunately the role Sally had given me involved working during the majority of the screening; I snatched up a programme for the sake of finding out the names of films and people though.
Slight occupation rundown: Started 3pm. Spray painting large, several gallon drums gold and moving them to/from the courtyard at the middle/end of the ceremony. Setting out each individual award programme on each seat in the theatre. Starting up heater things which generally disagree. Fetching speakers for the resident DJ, and cleaning up the courtyard once the party was over.
Slightly disappointed with the lack of Animation students not volunteering in the same area of work as me, but I established a friendship with a couple of the film students giving me a decent network into that particular group; considering Animation and Film students appear to stick to their own groups from my observation, I can ask help of them where required or they can do the same vice versa.
Attempted the odd mingle with several complete strangers but received awkward response most of the time, so both parties ended up back in their groups as predicted (Film substantially larger than Animation). After an unknown amount of time I spotted Graeme Watson (Our course coordinator), deciding to exploit the fact that he could introduce us to people and suggest to our small group of, Evangeline, Shani, Daniel and I that we move in that general direction. The suggesting paid off and we were introduced to Kate Vyvyan, Secretary of WAnimate. Our chatter covered several topics, namely the Wam-Bam competition which I was most interested in, and also Adam Elliots appearance the Sunday of the same weekend as the Wam-Bam; plus several other 'mingle' things. I was hoping in our time with talking to Kate that someone else would randomly join our group and introduce themselves but at this stage I've filed that under wishful thinking; if I actually want to 'chat' and get involved then it's something I'll have to push myself into rather than just hope it stumbles across me. Regardless, I was glad to meet someone in the industry tonight, more proud to think my suggestion lead to it albeit through Graeme.
After that it was a slow road to the Animators all heading home leaving me there with the selective hearing Film students. Fortunately graced by the presence of Ebbie, our course facilitator, who introduced me to Clancie (Sir name currently unknown) who was in Ebbie's Animation class with her. That conversation pretty much went over Tiki the Weasel and D20 Role Playing.
It got to a stage where everyone Animate wise eventually left, I chose to just wait until Packdown time considering it was around that stage where everyone was too intoxicated to mingle with successfully. Finished off the night at 1am cleaning up the place with Greg from Film, Graeme, Sally, and the crew from the Octagon.
Wam-Bam'll be up next. Assides from that I've established my Facebook profile among other things. It all seems to be sliding into place.
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