two things I made about ten years ago that are still pretty good
It was originally shot in 16mm on a little wind-up Bolex camera. I had an old VHS dub of it and finally got around to wrangling with assorted DVD recorders, rippers and compressors to get it up on YouTube...phew...almost as much hassle as making it in the first place. I still have the print sitting in my garage.
This was edited entirely in camera. It's 12 seconds shy of being the entire 100-foot roll, which goes for exactly 3 minutes. I had no idea that post-processing even existed, and if I had I wouldn't have known how to go about it. So to shoot the opening and closing credits I had to film those cut-out letters in front of my TV screen (with nice tracing-paper fades..!) and then crank the camera back so I could make a double exposure with the action. When a character fell over, it was time to change camera angles...heh. There's no way I could repeat this effort; goodness knows I tried, perhaps I'll post the sequel another time.
Animating focus through a magnifying glass turned out to be more difficult than expected, but luckily I managed to get out of the corners I painted myself into. I wanted to play with the attributes of various lenses in this film, because I was a wanky art student. I also wanted to make something that went with the music, because it took me a really long time to learn that piece and once I'd recorded it I realised that it was exactly the right length for a 100-foot roll.
Sometimes I miss the days when I collected strange objects with the intention of synthesising them into stories, but then I remember my knees and how much they protested after a few weeks of crawling around in a darkened room pushing a camera mounted on a dolly constructed from Lego. Plus, the single-frame switch on a Bolex is this little sliding spring-loaded knob that's quite resistant to pressure but then shoots rapidly back into place once you've made the exposure....just what you need when when you're trying...to...hold...the....camera...very....still.
Now with workprint of the sequel, The Intermittent Transmitter :
(it's a bit dark and contrasty, owing to its having been telecined from the workprint instead of the negative)
Sorry, no audio in this version yet...I will replace it with a final copy as soon as I can find one.
Comments
Good job man! Superb! Now get back to making these and stop the medical nonsense!
there wouldn't happen to be others hanging around somewhere, would there?
}b
it sounds wonderful, and beyond my capabilities. i've bookmarked it. maybe i'll be somewhere i can watch it in the future.
cool you found it; from the description and accolades, i very much want to see it.
x
...OK, Miro says it's 6.5mb...come on, it'll only take a couple of days...!
also, great film making!
:happy:
http://blueshead.spymac.com/none.mp4
totally worth watching it, and mind you that stop motion never ages!
I have an inkling of what this is like. I lacked the room though, had to rent a studio spot for a day and mine ended up being pretty short due to time. I also used one of those magnifying things. You did a waaaaay better job then I did in its movements. mine kept falling over. I didn't think to cut to a new angle though. I think it happened too often for that to be feasible though lol. I used a digi camera so I was able to load things into PS to line everything up.
I wouldn't even think of redoing this one though, a sequel sounds pretty darn good though!
such gems are ageless.
Add a car chase next time though
vortexual
i understand the rightness of the mechanical to stop motion, i think... there's some integrity between the mechanism and the movement in stop motion....
still love to see more though
I'm a bit sheepish about the sequel, but it's got some good bits. You will appreciate all the clockwork bits and the printer's trays and blocks, at least.
}b
*boomarked for (yay!!) future enjoyment*
There's a reasonable amount of explaining to do, as far as that second film is concerned. I got quite carried away with the properties of that old duaflex camera in the first film and it became a sort of clockwork television. The woman in the fetching latex dress invented/discovered this "intermittent transmitter" (so named because it was powered by the intermittent movement of an old clock; film projectors work in a similar fashion and I was originally hoping to base it on one of those. It was a bit hard to draw, though), and it proved to be a portal to a two-dimensional universe. Everything in that universe was supposed to be made out of paper...yeah, it was threatening to get way too complex for me and my knees.
All of the paper parts were photocopied on A4 sheets and suspended from the ceiling so that they would show up in the viewfinder of that old duaflex. Actually it's pretty hard to remember how I did a lot of the stuff in this film. I was happy with the way the lead typesetter's blocks showed up the right way around for the title. I will write a bit more at some point if anybody's interested...I guess the whole enterprise represents about eighteen months of serious thought on my part.
you were so good. still are, i know.
but those ... the time and care you took only show in the quality of the result. i've been looking forward to watching, and t'was as great as i knew it would be.
yeah.. thank you.. so very .. thank you.
wow
Brilliant stuff Mondo, enjoyed that a lot.