Clean & Jerk Weightlifting, Blind shooting and Pete Lord

The week was all about making something look heavy. I think I underestimated the weightlifting and for some reason assumed it would be easy, about halfway through the week I was being sorely proved wrong. I think I got a bit bogged down in the detail which is kind of necessary but it meant that my shot took longer than it should have to complete.

Seeing that we were all getting a bit tense and conservative with our animation we were set the task of animating blind i.e turning off the monitors and using the force alone to animate with. Merlin kindly leant me his surface gauge which he used when learning to animate before video assist. The results were a bit jiggly but not as horrific as I'd imagined and I think the real difference was in the shoot rate. In half an hour I'd done 3 takes blind compared to my shot done with a monitor which took the best part of 3 days.

We also had a masterclass with Pete Lord who spoke about the early days of Aardman, how the company has progressed and about his time as a director. As the week wore on the studio started to resemble more and more a cross pyjama party/silent disco as we all felt the madness set in and resorted to slippers and ipods. 

I've also been informed that my two films from my final year at UWE, "Verglas" & "Facet" are to be shown at the next CineMe event on the 28th Oct at The Tobacco Factory Bar which is really exciting! Read more about the films being shown on the CineMe website.             


http://www.cinemefilms.com/index.php?com=events&display=show&id=97