Bradford Animation Festival and Other News

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend Bradford Animation Festival where ‘Growing Space’ had been nominated for the student award category along with other Newport graduates Alex Hancocks and Luke George’s film ‘John and Betty’. Though we didn’t win it was a great event and I’ve come back feeling inspired and motivated to start making something new. There was some really incredible work there and I guess it reminded me why I enjoy being creative so much. So I’m going to start thinking of new ideas for films and am also going to begin work on a series of paintings to get me back into creative mode again.

Since graduating I have been volunteering some of my time with U.R.B.A.N. which is a community arts project in Newport taking empty retail buildings and transforming them into places to exhibit art and hold workshops. Using art within communities is something that I think is really important and working with U.R.B.A.N. has shown me what a positive impact it can have. Definitely something I would like to continue to push and work with in future. I held an animation workshop as part of Newport’s ‘Big Splash’ Festival and am currently in the process of putting together a promotional video using the work we made.

I met with the new director of Growing Space last week to discuss the film and was asked to work with a designer to incorporate the style of the film into a website for the charity and talked about ways I can continue my involvement with them in future. I was also approached by somebody who had seen ‘Growing Space’ and wanted to incorporate the film into a new website collecting and sharing stories from around Wales about people and projects that make a difference: http://iknowastory.com

That’s all for now, I am going to attempt to update this blog and make it more professional and accessible over the next few weeks so that I can start posting work here properly. Just wanted to add a quick update!

Life since University

Last Monday I attended Growing Space’s annual Open Evening. This is a chance for the charity to celebrate the achievements of the clients who go there and to be rewarded for the work that they do. I was completely terrified if I’m honest. My film was screened at the evening and I was a nervous wreck beforehand, not knowing how people would respond. But as soon as I got there everybody was rushing to thank me and congratulate me. I had some really amazing feedback and everyone from the trustees of the organisation to the clients seemed to really like what I’d made. It was great to see everybody again and catch up with how people are getting on. I hope to stay involved with the charity in the future and do all I can to help them.
Me looking a little silly with Chairman of Growing Space, Beverley Humphreys.Visitors at the Open Evening admiring the gardens.

The windowledge of gardening boots which features in my film. Now being used as plantpots!

Thanks to Tom Bond for moral support and photography!

I also screened the film in Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff a couple of weeks ago. Again it seemed to have a really good reception and I had some lovely comments from people about it.

I’ve also now got a profile/interview page on the Ffresh website. Ffresh is the student film festival where ‘We Weren’t The First Ones Here’ was awarded Best Animation last year. Here’s my page http://ffresh.com/en/talent/broadhurst

Aside from all of this I have begun the endless and slightly worrying hunt for jobs and have been working on a few other projects. I’ve also bought myself an easel because I’m hoping to get into painting again and start getting a selection of artwork together.

I’m going to update this blog and hopefully put a website together at somepoint which can house my portfolio and film work so that this can become just news/ random blabbering and I’ll have a more professional site to showcase my work. I’m hoping to start making artwork to sell once I’ve gotten back into the swing of doing paintings that don’t move again!

I think that’s all for now.

New Showreel

My new showreel.

Growing Space

I’ve now put the finished film online. It is password protected at the moment while I decide whether I’m going to send it to festivals or not. But if you want to see it let me know and I shall provide you with the password (or you could just guess because it isn’t very inventive!)

The End

Deadline is tomorrow! I’ve had a terrible week to be honest. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did! Massive technical problems have made it a real struggle. I underestimated the complexity of layering the paint onto the rest of the animation and didn’t anticipate the problems that arose. The complexity of all the sequences adds further confusion. Though the end result will probably look fairly simple in style, there is so much going on under the surface that the editing stage has been a bit of a nightmare. I felt like just giving up a few days ago, so much had gone wrong that I thought there was no way I’d get anything done by the deadline. I’ve pushed through however, and providing I can add a few finishing touches in the morning I should be finished. It isn’t as ‘polished’ or as seamless as I had hoped for. But I think that’s due to technical problems and my idiocy for trying to do something so complicated! I think it is a technique that needs a lot of time and fiddling to be perfect. I’ve tried really hard but unfortunately just don’t have that spare time to really focus on getting every detail right. I’ve learnt so much from encountering and working through these problems though! The improvement to my technical skills just during these last weeks has been huge.

Anyway, this is the last blog post for the deadline. I don’t know what to say really other than I’m exhausted and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can do everything I need to tomorrow and hand in smoothly!

Music and Audio

I spent yesterday working with my composer, Kaye Halley to finish all of the audio for the film.

Sound has been really tricky to get right and has taken up a huge amount of time. Because all of the dialogue is taken from real-life interviews that were done in a variety of locations and conditions, it has been very difficult to get them cleaned up and working as one. Background noise and variation in sound levels and general quality of recordings has caused a lot of trouble but I think the work has been worth it. There is still some background noise in parts but I don’t mind it as I think it shows that the interviews are authentic and taken from reality.

As far as the music is concerned, we’ve been through many iterations as the project has progressed. I think that the music is a really integral part of the piece and I thought from the start that the music would be essential in making the sequences come together. Because of that I didn’t want it to be a last minute thought just stuck on. We’ve worked hard to try and create a piece of music that hopefully is subtle enough not to detract from the voices but that also helps to heighten the emotional impact of the piece. We’ve also tried to make the music really work with the visuals and with the movement of the paint so that they flow into each other. I think it really helps to bring the piece together as a film so I’m feeling hopeful.

I just wrote a list of all the jobs I have left to do… Oh dear…

Post-Production and Rough Cut

Just to explain a bit more about what I’m doing post-production wise…

It is a fairly lengthy process which mostly involves me getting a headache and being confused. I am learning loads as I go along though so that’s got to be good. The stages will differ with each sequence but generally it goes something like this:

1. Use After Effects to create transitions between the line animation. Using a range of techniques depending on how complex a transition is needed. In some cases it is just adding simple fades or pans, others are quite time consuming and involve using masks, painting new lines in and the painting other lines out etc.

2. Clean-Up – Once I’m happy with the sequence and the transition I then clean up the painted sections. Again, the complexity varies. Some sections I’ll be able to just adjust levels and colour in After Effects really quickly but there are others where the movement of the paint has created shadows that need erasing so in some cases I’ve had to go through frame-by-frame in photoshop to make adjustments.

3. Then I assemble that sequence in Premiere, using the Multiply option to overlay everything. This is fairly simple but can get tricky where I’m trying to get the timings right.

It is taking a long time but I’m hoping it will be worth it. I’m working in HD which is creating very long render times but again, I hope the end product will look much better because of it.

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ROUGH CUT – Yesterday I had to present a rough cut of the film to my classmates and tutor. The feedback was surprisingly positive. It seemed like everybody liked it and there weren’t any major problems/ changes. My tutor said it was much improved from last time which has made me feel more confident about it being engaging and working as a film. So I’m just going to focus on getting it finished now! I’m going to go and finalise the sound tomorrow so things are coming together. I’m confident I’ll have a finished film for the deadline, though there may be a couple of ‘polishing’ touches that I carry on with afterwards.