The last two years, I’ve taken part in the Rochester Movie Makers Summer Shorts Challenge. Two summers ago, I helped with a film called X-Girlfriend, and last year worked on The Wingman and Virgin Fang.
This year will be my first time directing a summer short, one called “The Interrogation” written by yours truly. In the writing phase, I decided to keep my characters and locations to a minimum to make it easier — especially since one of my characters is ANIMATED.
I’ve been wanting to try a live action / animation combo project for a while now. The process will be similar to how films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit or The Phantom Menace were shot. I’ll have an actor on set playing the cartoon character, and we’ll shoot his scenes two ways. One version with the actor, one without. That way I’ll have a performance to mimic in the animation phase, but I’ll also have a clean shot to use when I want to composite the character in. (No, I won’t be doing motion capture. That’s overkill for what I have in mind.)
It was a fun script to read to an audience, which is what went down at the March meeting of Rochester Movie Makers. We read 15 (!) screenplays that night. When everyone voted and the dust cleared, it turned out I was the winner of our script competition. It doesn’t mean the movie itself will be the best, but it’s nice to be loved.
Soon I’ll be finalizing the cast, crew, and picking some dates to shoot this thing. At the same time, I’m working on designing props and the cartoon character known as Mad Monster.
After looking through my blog archives, it turns out I never posted here about the H.P.Lovecraft Literary Podcast. (It must have slipped my mind when I was posting over at Unfilmable.com back in December.)
Listening to the podcast is like reading Lovecraft with sarcastic (yet intelligent) footnotes. What turned me on to it was episode 22, which covers “The Other Gods.” Hosts Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer dig deep into Dreamlands lore to review the story… and the short film I released through Subterranea Entertainment.
They’ve got a great understanding of Lovecraft’s work, and I was thrilled to hear their thoughts regarding the animated film.
So crawl over to hppodcraft.com to listen online. Or get obsessive like me and download every episode and listen on your iPod!
We all like going behind the scenes, right?
When Mike Schneider, director of the Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated project, asked me to contribute a featurette to the upcoming DVD release, I was afraid I wouldn’t have the time to do so. Well, last week I gathered strength and put together a 6 minute tutorial on interpretive rotoscoping.
Rotoscoping is an animation process that involves a lot of tracing. For NOTLD:R, I changed my style up depending on the shot — and sometimes that meant tracing 15 pictures a second with my Wacom stylus.
In this video, you can see some of that process, albeit sped up to make it more interesting.
Interpretive Rotoscoping for NOTLD:R from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
Now that I’ve completed three scenes for the Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated project, I thought it might be cool to show my cartoon shots next to the original movie footage. You’ll see where I applied faithful rotoscoping and where I deviated from the original acting.
The following video clips show the animation, then side by side comparisons with the original live action scenes.
NOTLD:R Don’t worry from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
NOTLD:R Here he comes now from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
NOTLD:R Down in the basement from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
It was a marathon session tonight. Just me and my Ustream channel and a few friendly observers.
Lo and behold, I’ve finished the scene. The leering, lurching Bill Hinzman zombie attacks Barbara, she screams, and Johnny leaps to the rescue. It’s only 14 seconds, but I think I put in more hours on this section than the last one, if possible.
All in all, my method is pretty… methodical. George Romero is a director who uses a lot of cuts and handheld work, which means time intensive roto.
Enjoy the scene below. I’m sending it off to director Mike Schneider and going to bed.