Execution of Film

Ok so I am having some difficulty in figuring out what exact road I should go to execute my film. Each time I come up with an idea or think I have things figured out a new problem seems to rear its head and sends me back to square one. It certainly is not helping any that my dc camcorder broke but I will be getting new equipment anyways. It has however limited my ability to do any more tests so I am going to present the ideas I have and hopefully get some feedback as to which one might work out the best.

At this point I do not think I have really outlined the plan for my film so I thought I would give a brief description of each method I have contemplated and tried and go from there.

Idea #1:
This first method is my original idea that I have really sort of veered off from over the summer. It was to have the main character at the beginning be pixelated by taking still photos with movement in between to create a kind of jerky animated motion. The backgrounds would be left as is or possibly changed in photoshop. This would mean that the character in the photos would have to be selected out so the changes to the bg wouldn't apply to the character. The other characters that enter the letter would be dealt with in the same way. Once inside the letter the characters would become more fanciful animated personages and at the end when the main character enters the letter he too would become an animated character and be in that world.

Problems: It is difficult to have to select out the characters in order to deal with the backgrounds alone. Also finding appropriate locations and getting all the proper clearances could take up too much time especially with me not having easy transportation.

Idea #2:
In the vein of the original idea just reversed so that the beginning world is all animated. Characters and animated in an animated environment until then enter the letter at which time they become real life people in some sort of still photo pixelation or manipulated photo characters like in the film Dear Fatty where I would take different poses of the characters and cut them out to use. This idea has been brought up recently but I think it could work.

Problems: Changes the meaning of the film somewhat going from animation to real life rather than the original idea of going real life to animation.

Idea #3:
I have a test video for this method that I will post after I get this outline of my strategy up but basically it is the same idea as number one with the pixelated character being selected out from the background. However the live person pixelation will be set in a animated world rather than set in the background from the photo. I am still uncertain about this but I will see what people think of the rough video I put up. Everything else will continue the same with all the other characters being dealt with the same way and being set in an animated world. Once the characters are inside the letter they will become animated themselves to fit in the world that they are living. Would eliminate having to find real backgrounds to photograph or record.

Problems: More drawn animation to do as every background will be animated. The still photo pixelation could be too harsh set against animated backgrounds and seem too out of place possibly.

So there are 3 ideas that I have kind of put together. There are tests for each that I have put up on here even if they are pretty rough they give an idea of each case I think. Basically there is a lot of different combinations that come up using these different methods. I think the main issues are taking still photos and using that as jerky pixelation or taking set poses of different characters and cutting those out to animate as separate body parts. The other is how to deal with backgrounds whether to have animated ones or keep the real life ones and change them. Let me know your feedback on these ideas or maybe even ones I have not thought of. I am just trying to find something I feel most comfortable with that people feel will work in this story as well.