Category — Production Diary: Shoot the Freak

The end of this summer hasn’t been the most productive for this project. Between two road trips, work, a overly ambitious Halloween costume, and assorted other smaller projects I’ve been working on, I haven’t really gotten anything done. In fact, I haven’t even had time to post some updates from months ago, so here we go. Hopefully this will help me get motivated again! As of my last post, I had completed the Wonder Wheel and its cars. Next, I set about working on the boardwalk. After much agonized sketching and re-sketching:

I finally managed to get it all painted.

I think it looks rather nice when the beach, the sky, and the wheel complete the picture:

After finishing the boardwalk, I got the brilliant idea to sink hours of my life into a under boardwalk tableau. This was inspired by a section of the interviews in which my mother discusses how all sorts of unsavory activities used to take place under the boardwalk until it was finally filled in with sand. I attempted to illustrate the unsavory activities, although I have to admit – my mother never mentioned aliens, escaped convicts, or battling dinosaurs. The idea is for there to be a very short animation made by having the camera tilt down as my mother talks about the boardwalk.

Here is the initial sketch:

And the almost finished product:

I have since filled in some more of the color, but then I decided to go on a cleaning binge and the unfinished painting ended up under the bed. Next up: The animated puppets that will march along the sand.

After weeks (months?) of planning, cutting tiny holes, testing paint samples, running to Curry’s for some random supply I didn’t realize I needed, the tiny scale model of the Wonder Wheel is finally complete!

Sketching out a circle this size was a real bitch, let me tell you. But cutting out tiny lattice work with an exacto knife was even worse. Hello, early onset arthritis.

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Today I started planning out the background for the main credits sequence, which will be an animated view of the beach, boardwalk storefronts, and the Wonder Wheel. I decided to track the equipment I’ve been using as well as the process of making this movie. This will either succeed in recording my path to success or, well, help me learn what methods fail spectacularly.

Here is the electronic equipment that has been used so far in the making of this movie:

Pictured: Canon GL2 Digital Video Recorder, Zoom H2 Digital Sound Recorder, MacBook Pro, DV Tapes, Canon Powershot Camera
Not Pictured: Maxtor 1TB External Hard Drive, Canon Rebel XT

Here are the art supplies that we purchased for use in the animations:

Pictured: Coney Island: Lost and Found (reference images), sketch book, portfolio, some sheets of heavy poster board, a set of gouache paints, several synthetic brushes, a palette, a glue stick, an Exacto knife, thumbtacks, a cutting board, a protractor and compass set (from Dollarama! this is a low budget film after all), and a pencil case filled with pens, erasers, white-out, pencils, a bone folder, and a hole punch/awl.

Today, I did some color tests with the gouache paint. I wanted to make sure it could produce bright, circus-like, opaque colors with a minimum of effort. I haven’t worked with gouache before, so I was worried it would be too washed out. Luckily, it was perfect!

I also decided to plan out the background for the main credits sequence by making a scale drawing in my sketch book. I wanted to make sure there was enough room for the letters and puppets to move across the beach and be legible. It was important that the puppets also be of a size that is reasonably easy to cut-out and manipulate for the animations.

After struggling through incredibly simple math, I finally managed to hit upon proportions that I think will work rather well for the project:

I think it can finally be said that production is fully in motion for our movie about Coney Island, currently titled Shoot the Freak.

After a recent brilliant decision to get in way over my head and add animated transitions and credits to the movie, I have felt newly inspired to get things moving again.

So far we have:

1. Went to Curry’s and picked up some basic supplies for paper cut out animation. Purchased: Notebook, portfolio, some sheets of heavy paper, cutting board, a set of gouache paints, paintbrushes and palette.
2. Made some preliminary sketches for the credits sequence, some basic animations, and a parachute jump transition.
3. Perused Flickr commons for public domain images of Coney Island, went through Coney Island: Lost and Found, adding post-its to every image that might be of use for transitions or flashbacks.
4. Installed Joomla on this domain to test it out for possible use as movie website.
5. Downloaded Celtx for use organizing storyboards, footage, sounds, and production materials.
6. Took notes on three DV tapes worth of footage, spanning from Summer 2007 to Fall 2008, and audio recordings from Summer 2008. Now I just need to transfer that to a searchable database before my handwriting becomes unreadable.
7. Finally finished cutting up the interview tracks, labeling them, giving them basic descriptions, and loading them to the temporary website.