Loving Vincent's diary - 2nd week (1/2)

BreakThru's producer Hugh Welchman (Oscar Winner for producing BreakThru's Peter and the Wolf) and painter/director Dorota Kobiela (director of BreakThru's Little Postman and Chopin's Drawings) are co-writing BreakThru's latest film, Loving Vincent, the world's first feature length painting animation film. The film is a mystery thriller looking into the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh, and is told through bringing over 120 of Vincent's masterpieces to animated life...

The script is on its fourth, and final, draft, and wth production scheduled for spring 2013, the pressure is mounting. This weekly diary will candidly record their process of writing the elusive final draft.

Loving Vincent's diary - 2nd week (1/2)

 

The idea was to have a trip to shake things up, get us out of our internimable renovation. Go and accept an award, and hopefully have a night celebrating past films, and then go and see a lot of Vincent paintings in the flesh to inspire us for the present film. 

A day into our trip it was clear we had fallen out of our traveller mentality. In 2010/11 I was on a trip virtually every, week, we lived out of suitcases, at one point I had meetings in India, China, Los Angeles, New York and London on consequtive days… well this time we set out from Warsaw to Liege at 9pm without checking the weather, or really comprehending the distance. We were greeted blizzards, sleet, hale and driving rain. 21 hours later (with 6 hours stop-over for sleep) we arrived in moody Liege. On the way Dorota read to me about Vincent's time in Wallonia, west of Liege in the Borinage- the 'black country', where he had the blackest of times.

Vincent from 23 to 27 was falling rapidly. Spoon fed a position when he was 16 at his childless Uncle's art dealership, and whom Vincent had been strategically named after, it was expected of Vincent that he would in time succeed his Uncle… but, by 23 he had, despite his famous name and connection, been demoted repeatedly until he found himself tucked away on the periphery of the firm, in a storehouse in London. He increasingly lost himself in evangelical religion, and decided to dedicate himself to religion. A couple of other career dead ends later, his family supported him to became a pastor like his father and grandfather, but Vincent didn't have the aptitude for the rigorous academic training it required. So again he slipped down the options of religious academia, and all that he could find was a post as an evangelical preacher in the mining district of the Borinage in Southern Belgium, an area that had the worst mines in Europe. Vincent had no talent for preaching, his sermons were convoluted and overlong, and barely comprehensible in his accented French. He was ostricised by the tightly knit mining community, which drove him to express his devotion symbolically, giving away all the church's possessions to the poor, sleeping in a barn, and eventually walking around in winter naked, having given away his clothes. Neither the miners nor his church appreciated this and he was locked out of his parish. So at 27 he suffered the indignity of having his father come and retrieve him and take him home, exactly 10 years after he set off in his dapper suit to follow in his Uncle Vincent's footsteps and become a great Art dealer.

It was here in the despondant depth's of depression that he started drawing. His mother and sisters dabbled in drawing in a purely recreational way, and they encouraged this in him, as a way to distract him from his black slumber…. and it started to work. Out of the blackness Vincent started to see a flicker of a future as a draftsman, an illustrator. Vincent was prone to herculean obsessive work. And where religion had resided, art took root… and he would draw through the night each night every night. The first drawings were …. awful, here is one of the few surviving drawings from this time, but he thought with single minded dedication he could conquer drawing, he could find through art a way to expressive this thing…

 (source: wikipaintings.org)

... to express 'it'… the truth and beauty that he had always felt he was able to feel and see in the world, and wanted to express to the world. If he couldn't do it through words as a preacher, then he would do it through images as an artist.

And with that chapter concluded we arrived in Liege, got booted and suited and headed to the Liege 3D Film Festival award ceremony.  The ceremony was much glitzier than I had expected. Set in the recently rennovated and luscious Liege Opera House,  and a whole array of awards sparkled under the lights. I knew we were picking up three awards, half way through the ceremony Little Postman won the award for Best 3D Animation. I winced when they called my name instead of Dorota's, as Dorota, having travelled around to many events with me was looking forward to having her moment at this one. We both went on stage I was handed the mic, and stated that as the director Dorota should really talk on behalf of the film. I handed her the mic, and then immediately wished I hadn't… We were at Europe's, if not the world's, premiere 3D festival, and she opened with "I wanted to make this film in 2D, as I don't really care for 3D…"

However I didn't need to be nervous, she went on to make a charming speech. She stated that it was only because her producer (me), who is also her husband (still me), told her to do it in 3D, and as she always does what her husband tells her (that was made up), that she made it that way, but she was very glad that she had, as the technology opened new artistic possibilities. She raised more laughter and applause than any other speaker of the night. She sparkled in the attention and I felt glad we had trekked across all of Europe to pick up the prize. I was told we were getting 3 prizes, but I thought there must have been some mistake as the night went on and there were only two awards left on stage. But to my surprise, the last two awards, the most prestigious, Best Stereography (Best 3D) and Best Film went to Magic Piano. Dorota came up with me, and we continued the double act speech.

Ceremony over, attention turned to partying. Things started tame in the exquisite ball-room at the Opera house, from there a whole group of the awardees were taken to a shiny club by the organisers.

(source: crowneplazaliege.be)

We were tired after the 20 hour drive, and were in two minds as whether to stay, but then someone made the one-way decision of multiple bottles of Vodka and red-bull… it'd been a while since I had ventured near this drink, as last time I had a night on it I felt wired for 3 days, but I'd been living off caffine to get across Europe anyhow, so… why not? We plunged into a night of dancing and drinking, that spilled on into a seedy club when the shiny one closed. We were hustled in through a hoarde of street drunks that hung out on the margins of a night, rather like the patrons of Vincent's night bar. In the bustle a young man got cut below his eye by the wing of one of the awards I was carrying. I bought the guy a drink and apologised for the accident. For the rest of the night he was always hanging at the margins of the group. At each place we all left our awards behind the bar for safety, but the last place turned out not to be very safe. When we left at 4am two awards were missing… both the Magic Piano awards. Dorota's was there, all the other people's prizes were there, it was just the Magic Piano awards. Our hosts got into a heated exchange with the bar owners, shirts were ripped, tempers were frayed. It was a sleezy last refuge, and I thought the young man that had been hovering in the corner of my view was probably the culprit. It was just the kind of place Vincent in his drinking insomniac phase would have ended up:

"It’s what they call a night café here (they’re quite common here), that stay open all night. This way the night prowlers can find a refuge when they don’t have the price of a lodging, or if they’re too drunk to be admitted."

I tried to get everyone to step back, but with that much red-bull and with the young bar staff as drunk or high on some drug or other, it took time to fizzle out. I reassured our hosts that this theft in no way coloured our night. It was a very special night, full of excitement and glamour, appropriately descending into the seedy backstreets of Liege, but instead of us observing the "little hooligans and night prowlers" as Vincent did in one of his truly amazing paintings, The Night Cafe, we were the ones being closely observed by the night prowlers and little hooligans. So….

...we headed to bed at 4am in possession of one instead of three exceedingly heavy golden winged statues, and with 6 hours before we had to set out for Van Gogh museum.

 by Hugh Welchman

Loving Vincent's diary - 1st week

BreakThru's producer Hugh Welchman (Oscar Winner for producing BreakThru's Peter and the Wolf) and painter/director Dorota Kobiela (director of BreakThru's Little Postman and Chopin's Drawings) are co-writing BreakThru's latest film, Loving Vincent, the world's first feature length painting animation film. The film is a mystery thriller looking into the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh, and is told through bringing over 120 of Vincent's masterpieces to animated life...

The script is on its fourth, and final, draft, and wth production scheduled for spring 2013, the pressure is mounting. This weekly diary will candidly record their process of writing the elusive final draft.

Loving Vincent's diary - 1st week

This week was the first week that we took the first concrete steps towards the new (and final) draft. The warsaw office/flat rennovation has been eating away at our time, finishing a flat that has to be an office for us and our colleagues, welcoming to clients, and a place to live shares some attributes with writing: 

- you find that a little thing that you are sure will be done in a few minutes sucks away at a day;

- you get carried away on an idea that ends with you exhausted having re-arranged everything at 8 in the morning;

- you find there is a little corner that gets you unstuck and threatens to unravel everything, and;

- the thing that you cherish just doesn't fit, and has to be thrown out.

But this week the balance shifted and Vincent re-entered our lives: on the night of our 2nd wedding Anniversary. After a day of rennovation work we went out for a late meal around 10pm and a frivilous meal turned serious at the digestif stage when we started to go through photos of our first two years of marriage: we discussed our hopes and fears for the future, and it turned out anxiety about the final draft of the script loomed large… so we decided to do something about it there and then: and started reading through Vincent's letters; and then watched a film on Caravaggio; and finally at around 5am started to brainstorm new approaches to the film, acting out a new opening sequence.

In the days after our main preoccupation was to see if there was a character in his life that could take on the investigative role in the film, provide some frame narration, and also looking at upping the mystery without jettisoning the link to our research. Basically lots of discussion and several new pages written, but no decisive breakthru. We did write a concept for our Kickstarter Video, so we will shoot a dummy run of that the next time we are in the Gdansk studio.

Still... by week end the idea of the week was the one that came at 5am on our wedding anniversary night, that seems to be the only one destined to make it into the film! So… by Friday we were drained of ideas and frustrated. The very next email that arrived gave us the news that our films Magic Piano and Little Postman had both won prizes at the Liege 3D Film Festival and would we be able to come next week and accept the awards. Dorota has never picked up in person any of the 5 first prizes that Little Postman has won, and I have never picked up any of the 5 that Magic Piano has won, and I had been looking for an excuse to go to Holland anyhow. So I looked on the map- 10 hours drive to Liege, and from there one hour on to the Borinage, the place Vincent was a preacher to the miners, and then 2 hours up to the museums in Holland. I decided this is what we needed - to get out of this flat, pick up the prizes and then go an immerse ourselves in Vincent paintings for a weekend. We were sitting at the coffee table by our new book shelf researching all the Dutch museums that have Van Goghs. We looked at the route this would take us, and decided it was too full on. So I remarked "Do you think the paintings in the Hague are worth bothering about", at which point our Vincent books, 12 out of several hundred, clattered onto the floor just behind us… all the other books were unmoved. We looked at each other bemused, and decided that obviously someone disagreed that the Hague paintings weren't worth bothering about, and put the Hague back into our itinerary. Had Vincent entered our lives in more ways than one?

Here is a picture of the books on our perfectly level shelves! What will we find in the Hague?

 by Hugh Welchman

Tim Allen - Interview with an Animator

BreakThru talks to animator extraordinaire Tim Allen about his life in animation, Tim Burton and his incredible work on Peter & The Wolf and Magic Piano.

Tim Allen on the set of Corpse Bride

- When did you first become interested in stop-motion animation? Were you interested in art as a child?

Yeah, I was always drawing, making models and reading comics. I think my earliest ambitions were to make comic strip cartoons along the lines of Garfield, and I copied this format with vampire and ghost characters. As a teenager I’d moved on to Batman and my dream had now progressed to drawing superheros (or maybe being one!). I opted out of conventional A-levels in favour of a 2 year Art Diploma, as we knew I was going down the road of an artistic career. At this stage, I honestly can say I hadn’t even considered you could animate for a living!  

Somewhat lost for what to do after my art course, I was looking at modelmaking degrees and accidently stumbled upon an animation degree. At this time Nightmare Before Christmas had recently come out in cinemas & the idea of working on something like that just blew me away. Cheesy as it sounds, it was a moment of complete certainty, a true calling. I looked around & found a very good stop motion course at Glamorgan University and my very first animated steps began...

- How did you first 'break into the industry'? Was there a particular project that helped solidify your interest into a career?

It was tough getting going and those that get a break shortly after college I think are the very lucky ones. As I graduated, the industry was just starting a quiet patch which was leaving lots of established professionals on the job hunt. I contacted & tried to visit pretty much every stop motion company in the UK. In retrospect it was good experience in that it taught me who was who in the stop motion world as I literally knocked on almost everyone’s door. I did a fair bit of work experience & trainee model making where I learned quite a bit about studio practise.

I guess I did the classic of casting my net wide and after 1 and a half years I finally made a catch! I was asked to come for an animation audition for Ealing Animation in London. I think I got the job for two reasons - I would work very hard to impress and I was cheap!

One of Tim's first jobs in animation came with the BBC's
fondly remembered stop-motion education show 'El Nombre'

It was a low budget educational programme called El Nombre and so long as we told the educational part properly we had some creative freedom within the rest of the episode. For months, my animation was mostly long drawn out shots of gerbils counting money, very slowly. Fortunately the characters were charming and I had some very interesting and challenging sequences to work on for the action parts of the story. I was one of only two animators on the show so had my fair share of variety and tricky animation. A junior animator wouldn’t normally get the difficult stuff, but they only had two of us to delegate to! After 8 months the series finished & I was looking for work again, but this time I had some half decent shots under my belt & could pretend I was a professional!

- How did your involvement with Tim Burton begin? Were you a fan of his work before you were recruited for Corpse Bride?

I’ve always had a huge appreciation for Nightmare Before Christmas as it was the project that inspired me into this business. I loved Tim’s visual style and to work on a giant set from a Nightmare or Corpse Bride movie felt like the ultimate career moment at that time. Back then the only place that made feature films was Aardman. They already had a full time animation crew in place, which left most other animators around the UK (myself included) working on children’s TV series. This meant that when Corpse Bride came along it was a big deal – a chance to work on a big Hollywood size Tim Burton movie! I’d now been animating children’s series for 6 years and this movie felt like the opportunity of a lifetime!

However my showreel was rejected, as was my second attempt and only 6 months later did my third showreel (I kept working on it and updating it) earn me an audition. I had to do a nerve-racking 3 day test, but this time around, I made the right impression. It didn’t end there of course as you need to continue earning the directors trust for him to delegate what sequences you get to animate.

- Can you describe what an average day is like for an animator? Do you specialise in one particular area of it or is there a lot of variety?

On a film you often get typecast and could spend most of your time with a handful of characters. On Corpse Bride I was mostly cast as Barkis the sinister psychopath for 6 months. On Magic Piano I developed how to animate the Flying Machine & spent a good 6 months pushing it to the limits! On children’s series & commercials you can get a lot of variety quickly which is great for learning your craft.

An average day? It always depends on the project and the company you’re working for. Each studio has slightly different working practices so I could answer differently for each production. Here’s a generalisation:

Tim worked extensively on bringing the villainous
Barkis Bittern to life in Corpse Bride

As an animator my role tends to function like that of an actor in a live action film and I must be cast for the role. This is all based on what the director needs and I will work to his/her instructions to try and find the best way to approach the shot. From here I’ll plan the shot out with the camera crew to ensure I’ll be keeping the puppet in focus and making good use of the lighting. Next the model/puppet makers and riggers will help me with any details so that I can create the shot as close to the director’s needs as possible.

A quick note about time keeping: There’s normally pressure to get things done as quickly as possible (for understandable financial reasons!). In fact the key to making beautiful stop motion fast is all in the preparation time. It’s like struggling through an obstacle course when you’d be better off removing the obstacles and just sprinting to the finish line. You’ve got to take responsible decisions to get the balance right.

Once I start animating, you’re kind of on your own – for many many hours until the work is complete. You have to embrace & love the creative freedom to ‘perform’ your shot as a live action actor would. You have specific instructions that you need to get right but at the end of the day you’ll be relying heavily on your instincts. In truth you’re normally under pressure to get it done as quickly as possible!

- Could you tell us a little about your involvement with BreakThru Films? How was it working with Suzie on Peter and the Wolf?

I came onboard Peter & the Wolf about 2 months into the shoot and it was quite an exciting time in those early stages. I was the first animator to come over from outside Poland for the project. Suzie was great and had such a clear vision of how every detail should be. The challenge for me was being able to give her the detailed performance she needed in the limited time we had.

Initially Suzie was hoping I could do lots of work establishing the wolf, but the puppet wasn’t quite ready and I started working with Peter. She liked my close up acting work and basically I think most of my time was spent doing close-ups of Peter face. It was tricky as only the eyeballs could move and Suzie needed very specific emotional reactions from a completely static face! The shot that stands out in my memory is where Peter sees Duck, his childhood pet and closest companion, eaten alive right in front of him. Suzie asked for Peter to display utter shock, then overwhelming horror, followed by a shiver creeping up his spine, climaxing into trembling realisation. All this when the only facial movement I can get is moving the head and eyeballs!

- And what are your thoughts on The Flying Machine?

Oh quite simply it’s the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on! It wasn’t just because I was animation supervisor this time round, though certainly that in itself was an interesting new challenge. It wasn’t just that it was my first time shooting in 3D or that every action had to naturally sync with Chopin’s music. No the film had so many unbelievably ambitious but potentially beautiful sequences. To try and coordinate shots with thousands of flowers blowing in the wind, or epic long shots or the entire junk yard coming to life was complexity on a grand scale - and I didn’t even animate those pieces myself!

Most of my time in the studio was taken up trying to get a 2 metre high flying machine puppet to soar through the sky convincingly. It was a fascinating yet intimidating character/machine/force of nature (we called it all these and more!). We had a lot of practical hurdles to overcome (I sense I’m making a gross understatement here!) and it was really tough getting such a big complicated model to do what I wanted. I sometimes get more satisfaction seeing the shots before post production than after, the only reason being that you can see all the rigs moving that control it. Then you get a very real sense of what a technical accomplishment it was.

But the real beauty of the film was that Director Martin Clapp had worked so hard to make these sequences flow to the music and tell some beautiful moments. Each shot was utterly complex, but you knew it was justified and would be worth it. I’m very very proud of all we did on Magic Piano and feel lucky to have been so heavily involved with it.

- You've most recently completed work on Burton's Frankenweenie, can you tell us a little about the animation approach in this new film?

The cloth will come off Tim's work on
Frankenweenie when it's released this October

Well I can’t give too much about the film away yet, but again I’m really excited to be a part of this gem of a movie. It may initially look similar visually to Corpse Bride, but the animation is much more dynamic and lively. It really tested your timing as an animator. I did a lot of work with central characters Victor and his pet dog Sparky. This meant animating a four legged character who had to behave like a loveable but realistic dog. I looked at live action videos of real dogs regularly to try and get Sparky’s running and mannerisms accurate.

- Do you think there's a bright future for stop-motion animation, and if so, what can explain it's continued appeal?

It looks like we’re starting a golden age of stop motion now. There’s going to be a lot of films coming out of America, as well as several European ones on the cards soon. After a dry spell for children’s series, there’s suddenly many happening in the UK simultaneously. Aardman continue to keep as busy as ever too. We could be looking at 6-10 years rife with stop motion productions.

As for the appeal, I guess it’s the age old tangible quality, that you feel you can touch it and you can see it’s not perfect. I think people find a model set and a puppet very immersive. You can literally walk on that set and more easily imagine being in that world. We all had toys or dolls we had a close attachment to as children & perhaps puppets tap into this primal bond with our imagination.

It’s been such a blast working with so many different talented people and I feel so Iucky I found an art form I love and can earn a living from. I even went to Ray Harryhausen’s house recently to discuss stop motion techniques with him – I mean how cool is that?! It is not an easy career and won’t suit most people but there can be a lot of highlights. I’m trying to settle down more but there’s a lot of stuff tempting me right now. I believe even BreakThru Films aren’t done with stop motion...!

Tim’s website: www.TimAllenAnimation.co.uk

Follow Tim’s adventures in the world of stop motion on Twitter: @TimAnimation