Home Truths

Having spent the past few weeks working on the animation and the animatic side of my Honours film, I am beginning to see that I may have to modify my project to ensure completion. I've spoken to past Honours graduates and they have spoken about the fact that a completed project is more important than a half finished one and that makes perfect sense. I don't want to compromise on the quality of my project and in a sense undo all the progress I have made on the theoretical side of my study for the sake of over extending myself to create something that is incomplete or substandard. 


Another lonely thought rolling around my head is that perhaps the creation of an individual film on top of a full year of Honours standard study and research was perhaps a little too ambitious. I have a couple of options, I can continue the project in a modified format and graduate at the end of this year, or I can study part time and finish the following year on my film, or I could take a leave of absence and then come back to study. But to be honest, I really want to finish Honours this year. I don't have the luxury of being 18 or 21, if I'm going to make any sort of inroads into this new career then I have to start sooner rather than later. 




 Another thing that I have realised after 6 months of Honours study, and perhaps this may change once I am more experienced or after some time in the industry; but at the moment I don't want to be an independent film maker, I don't want to have to do all aspects of the film making- from storyboarding to animatics to character animation to backgrounds. I'm happy to do all of those things, just not all on the one project, I want a chance to be a part of a studio production line. I think my decision is based largely on the fact that my study is concerned with a single aspect of film making, layout/background and that it is only now that I am getting the chance to really get into the process of designing and rendering backgrounds. I've also been thinking that the creation of an entire film with the inclusion of incidental characters also detracts from the main thrust of my study which is the creation of backgrounds as a narrative device. 

Backgrounds are important :)

Phew, after all of that, here's what I'm thinking as a modified project. To compliment my research and study into layout and background development that acts as a narrative device I will create the backgrounds only for the short film. This will give the backgrounds an opportunity to be the primary focus of the film and will also allow me to continue production of the film after I have completed Honours, whether that be as a part of further study or independently. The background deliverables would be presented in context (as part of a film complete with camera movement and possible sound effects and music) and in isolation with identification of multi plane layers and use of background/layout techniques and devices. I think putting more of my focus into the backgrounds and 'forcing' the viewer to only consider the background, will further challenge me to move away from character directed narrative and instead use objects of significance and the environment to tell a story. Who knows, this may change again? But as one former Honours student said to me, 'it's better to think about modification now at this stage rather than a couple of weeks before it's due.' I agree.