I was motivated to put finger to keyboard after being shortlisted for the GFF trailer competition for which I owe a big thanks to the folks at ISO and GFF for being able to read my handwriting and for seeing some potential in my ideas. I hope once I get together with Mark and Clyde at ISO I’ll be able to push the concept in new and interesting directions.

We just had our first project meeting today where we met the lovely ladies of the GFF and the equally lovely Paul from DigiCult who talked us through the aims of the project and how things would progress over the coming few weeks. We also had the chance to share the ideas that got us shortlisted and to hear what the GFF people liked about them. I won’t reveal any of the other entrants ideas as I’m sure they’ll be posting them themselves here on cSta soon, but I will say that they’re all pretty damn good. I have to say I have my work cut out to be in with a chance of winning this!

So, what is my concept for the trailer I hear you all ask!? Well, in the spirit of this website I’ll post my entire pitch for you to read through.

Concept

Glasgow Film Festival – Film bringing colour to Glasgow / life

Pitch

The Glasgow film festival is a celebration of film. Film brings us closer to events we would otherwise never experience. Film exposes us to emotion, drama, knowledge, excitement and unforgettable experiences; film brings colour to our comparatively limited and boring lives (ie when was the last time you dropped into Charlie’s chocolate factory or boated up the Mekong to take on Colonel Kurtz!?). The trailer I am proposing aims to illustrate this simple concept by showing a series of recognisable views around Glasgow; filmed in high contrast black+white. Over the duration of the 30 second trailer, elements within each view; ie buildings, furniture, people, etc flicker in and out of colour and pattern in time with the soundtrack; increasing in frequency and intensity until the end when the once mundane black and white scenes have become a cacophony of colour and sound amongst which the GFF logo will form along with the requisite text; dates, website and title(with sponsors logos beneath).

I’ve prepared a rough example of one approach to this colour and animation which you can find in the .mov file accompanying this document. I should point out that the music I used was not representative of the style I would prefer for the final work as it’s too much of a 4×4 rhythm; the aim of this was merely to demonstrate how footage could be chopped up and animated. In terms of a stylistic approach, for this example I used the colours of the GFF logo as a starting point which led to the neon colour scheme. .

As for locations, I would propose a mixture of classic Glasgow views (Buchannan St, Central Station, the Motorway, and views of the venues that will be used for the GFF.

Sound

The soundtrack would be positive and uplifting. Beginning from a humble beginning but growing in strength and depth towards the climax. The music of Forss (eg http://soundcloud.com/forss/journeyman) is probably the closest example to the style I have in mind. Electronic, melodic and contemporary.

Technique

The trailer would be created using a mix of live action footage; shot either at normal speed or timelapse, and digital motion-graphics. The graphic elements will be added using the compositing package After Effects. Given the festival is featuring a Japan retrospective, it could be relevant for the graphics to be inspired by Japanese graphic styles/conventions.

Artist Biography

Patrick Macdonald is a CG motion-graphics artist and illustrator specialising in photo-realistic 3d imagery and animation. Patrick trained in both the Edinburgh and Glasgow schools of art as an architect before becoming a freelance artist and animator. Although largely working in the commercial sectors of construction and marketing, Patrick is currently looking for more artistic opportunities in film and broadcasting.

In the very early days of Central Station, we asked members within the community to submit their ideas for our GFF Trailer competition. The call was open for one month and we were looking for proposals along with simple sketches, storyboards and materials to support the application.

We, and our partners the Glasgow Film Festival 2010, were delighted with the quality and the number of responses from the network. The shortlist worked with representatives of GFF, GFT and ISO Design, for their commission. They were: Allistair Burt, Lucy Elliott, Patrick MacDonald and Kim Stewart.

All four worked on the development phase on their project ideas with GFF and Central Station’s supervision, at the end of which one proposal was commissioned.

Read these blogs from the shortlisted creatives, find out about their processes and see the winning trailer:
Glasgow Film Festival 2010 – development by Alburt
Glasgow Film Festival… Now Even Bigger! by Kim Stewart
Glasgow Film Festival Trailer development by Kim Stewart
And they’re off by Paddy Mac
Glasgow Film Festival – cinema sudoku by Lucy Elliot
Iso-tonic by Paddy Mac
More GFF trailer development by Lucy Elliot
Glasgow Film Festival trailer…revised script by Kim Stewart
The Barter system by GFT
GFF final submission by Kim Stewart
GFF2010 Trailer – sound and music by Alburt
Gff submission yo by Lucy Elliot
Gff submission by Paddy Mac
Disbelief by Paddy Mac
Friday ramblings by Paddy Mac
It’s a Wrap! by Paddy Mac

No project would be complete without a last minute clash of opinions and technical complications, and this one was no exception. Dispite these, I think the end reuslt holds together well. Ofcourse there are a few things I would have liked to do differently or spend more time on to improve the technical quality, but unfortunately there just wasn’t the time available.

I have to say I was blown away by the musical composition Charlie from “Eardrum Productions” put together for the trailer. I think it really enhances the visuals and will sound great when the great unwashed get to experience it in theatres around the country. I met up with Jen from GFF and Charlie (Charlie’s partner in crime) down at Savalas to produce the 5.1 Dolby stereo mix. What a treat! Over 5k of surround soundsystem and a very nice technician, Chris, pulling all sorts of nuance out of the music to achieve maximum impact in the theatre.

Well, it’s been a fun ride, but it’s finally over. Now I just can’t wait to see how the 35mm print will look on the big screen!

I’ll leave it to the cSta guys and GFF to release the full trailer, so I’m afraid this blog post is just a tease…. All I can show is a collection of frame captures.

First off; the launch weekend! By the time I’d gone to my office to pick up my camera and trudge along Argyle Street in the pouring rain, I was generally soggy all over with a fully water-logged foot curtesy of the hole in my shoe. To add to my woes the coffee machine in Mono was out of order! Not the best start to what turned out to be a fascinating, entertaining,worthwhile weekend.

I really enjoyed Saturday, with it’s mixture of arts and crafts (in the true meaning of the word); I discovered a few gems I’d not been aware of before. I was particularly moved by the photographic exhibition in the Street Level Gallery which depicted the life of the photographer’s parents before and after his mother’s stroke and subsequent death. Not sure how I feel about the fact that the artist posed his parents for alot of the images, but guess it shows the level of trust between himself and his parents that this didn’t seem an uncomfortable thing to do.

Sunday was the business end of the launch weekend with some great presentations by artists and designers from an eclectic mix of backgrounds. I saw a good number of familiar faces at the drinks after as well as meeting many new people. Great stuff.

Congratulations to the cSta team for a successful implimentation of a what could have been a logistical nightmare! Just as their logo promised, the events ran like clockwork!I look forward to future events like this and hope it can become a bi-yearly, or more frequent, event.

The trailer is taking shape; the gods looked kindly on me and gave me two days of good weather to coincide with my filming the various sites. As usual, I had to waste a fair bit of time battling the inevitable tecnhical difficulties of transferring HD footage to my workstation, but in the end all is well and the results look good. As for the music, I’ve met up with Matty to discuss the approach I am looking for and we made some good progress developing the idea. I’m quite excited to hear what he and Charlie can rustle up!

And for my links of the week….
some incredible vfx and particle work with “Fire”

http://motionographer.com/media/sehsucht/sehsucht_fire.mov

Not particularly new, but this is a sweet piece of stop-motion animation to music.
http://www.maxhattler.com/aanaatt/

This is just nice and weird :-
http://motionographer.com/2008/05/27/koichiro-tsujikawa-cornelius-omstart/

I want to make something like these ! all paint on plywood …
http://www.artbbq.nl/ron/menu-eng.htm

Enjoy yer weekends….

p.

At my last meeting with Iso, my treatment was met with much head scratching and an uncomfortable silence. I left it resigned to the fact I’d blown it, becoming bogged down in narrative and losing touch with the graphic approach that got me shortlisted in the first place. Dispite this, there were some interesting suggestions that were worth persuing. Stripping the idea back to its core and throwing out any visual complexity seemed to be the only way I could put my proposal into a workable form. Thanks are due to the guys at Iso for leading me in this direction.

In the end my trailer is all about the history of cinema in glasgow. The forgotten screens that used to shine across the city. The sad loss of so many venues that entertained thousands, and the lasting legacy of film in the minds of the city’s inhabitants. It’s alot to ask from 25 seconds of film I know!

Thanks to all the other shortlisters for their support and to those who offered to help with the audio. I will be gettings in touch with the musician I’ve chosen shortly and look forward to hopefully developing a kick-arse soundtrack to test the soundsystems of cinemas across the country!

So, I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead… I’ll be keeping you posted with how the trailer is progressing, so watch this space

Well, there’s been a bit of radio silence from me whilst I feverishly worked on my proposals….

As usual I took some prettty radical departures from my original idea before pulling myself together and distilling it all into something which I hope begins to form a concise idea! The video attached is just a little test I did to demonstrate the approach. I didn’t have enough time to produce a complete animatic of the whole trailer!

Good luck to the other guys… look forward to seeing the winners film on the big screen!

p.

ps, just testing out the image uploading, so apologies if the resolution of the storyboards is too low to read the text…

I’d not had any time to move the idea forward much, so it was good to have the two of them fire ideas in my direction even though most of them involved ever more work to cram in to the 2 weeks available to produce the final work! Clients… always the same! Still, there were some nuggets in there for me to develop further. As they say, watch this space.

One thing I need to push forward with is finding people to collaborate with on this project. So far, I think I’ve lined up another cStationer to help out with the photography (tbc) so all I need is to find someone who’s interested in developing a soundtrack….

any volounteers/suggestions?