From Script To Screen - Crit Presentation

From Script To Screen - Animatic

Life Drawing

From Script To Screen - Online Greenlight Review 2

Due to the inability to get Adobe Story working correctly without a subscription, my script is wrote on Microsoft Word and follows as a separate PDF document under the main embed OGR file.

Reference Links:

Character Design:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/character-design-personalized-equipment.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/character-design-creating-creature-for.html

Soundscape:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/soundscape-adobe-audition-nasa-sounds.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.com/2018/01/soundscape-adobe-audition-speech-tone.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/soundscape-remastering-music.html

Maya:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/maya-tutorials-bounce-pendulum-chain.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/maya-tutorial-felix-jnr-rig-walk.html

Life Drawing:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.com/2018/02/life-drawing.html

Film Review:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.com/2018/01/film-review-psycho-1960.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.com/2018/02/film-review-birds-1963.html

Animation:

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/adobe-animate-unplanned-throwing.html

http://thomassherwood.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/adobe-animate-unplanned-abstract-music.html

Life Drawing

From Script To Screen - Concept thumbnails

Various drawings to give me some idea of the layout of my world. I've toyed with the idea that the Factories are clock shaped to fit a theme of the landscape which the story takes place.

Maya Tutorial - Felix Jnr Rig - Walk Animation

From Script To Screen - Fourth Character - Fourth Character Design

Character four is based on a smartphone, but I've tried to give him a younger feel, to demonstrate a faster and more social product.

From Script To Screen - Third Character - Third Character Design

Character Three is based around the Shape of a smart phone, his personality is down-to-earth and business orientated. 

From Script To Screen - Character 2 - Second Character Design

This character is based loosely on the shape of a digital watch, he's not a particularly nice character, he is business orientated and a bully to the main character.

Adobe Animate - Unplanned, Abstract Music Animation

From Script To Screen - Frank - Main Character Design

The Final design for my main character Frank. He has been anthropomorphized to resemble an analog clock, to give the impression of age and also for his craft. 

Below is the main design for the character:

From Script To Screen - Character Designs

Film Review - The Birds (1963)

(Figure 1)

The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock is said to be his greatest film because it embodies a distilled version of all his themes which we come to expect from Hitchcock. It is possible that it could be viewed Night of the Living Dead (1968) by George A. Romero is the same story just retold. Its unavoidable to deny that if the birds where changed for zombies it would be the classic living dead horror film. Hitchcock embodied the idea of Chaos in the film, a breakdown of the barriers between Human and Animal, physically and psychologically, the destruction of property, the reclamation of the town, trapping our Heroine Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in a phone booth 'cage' like she herself does to the love birds throughout the film.   

(Figure 2)

Dirks remarks that into the sound score "Simulated bird cries and wing-flaps" (Dirks, 2018) have been added, and immerse us solely in this, bird noises were remixed to create more terrifying sounds to make the birds appear more horrific and each situation where an attack takes place would be more exacerbated and tense to experience. It is arguable that Hitchcock is trying to put the audience in an immersive environment of chaos to experience the harassment of which the actors are themselves experiencing, this could be viewed as possibly a subconscious sexual assault, or has been likened to distress us further empathetically.  

(Figure 3)

The Birds themselves have been analysed profusely since its release in 1963, they have become the 'MacGuffin' of the film because we as humans strive to place meaning on everything. There are many different theories which can be applied to this making it a treasure trove, in fact "The very act of analyzing this film’s MacGuffin is an allegorical construct" (Ashe, 2012) Brandie Ashe mentions in her concise review of the theories behind the film. It is arguable that the birds themselves as the MacGuffin can be compared to Hitchcock himself. It is widely held that he liked to make the audience think about himself as a Director, like we can see in Rope (1948) where Pamela Hutchinson backs the opinion that Hitchcock made the main characters mirror his own ideas in order to make the audience think about him and his work. It is arguable that if we could now imagine that Hitchcock has embodied himself in the birds as they harass the actors especially Melanie Daniels on screen and assault the subconscious of the audience in the sound score. It was Remarked in 2016 by Patick Shanley that published in Tippi Hedrens' memoirs she writes "On one particular occasion, Hedren claims, Hitchcock came into her dressing room on the set of Marnie and "put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.” (Shanley, 2016). It is possible this act of sexual harassment which he performed on Tippi Hedren off set has been embodied in film to Melanie Daniels in the exact same way.

It is not a long shot to extrapolate that Hitchcock in the prime of his career, a famous, powerful and untouchable man in the 60's would embody a secret such as this and immortalize it in Film.   

Bibliography:

Ashe, B. (2012). The Girl, The Birds, and a plethora of meaning.. [online] True Classics. Available at: https://trueclassics.net/2012/10/23/the-girl-the-birds-and-a-plethora-of-meaning/ [Accessed 1 Feb. 2018].

Dirks, T. (2018). The Birds (1963). [online] Filmsite.org. Available at: http://www.filmsite.org/bird.html [Accessed 1 Feb. 2018].

Shanley, P. (2016). Tippi Hedren Recounts Alleged Sexual Assault by Alfred Hitchcock in New Memoir. [online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tippi-hedren-recounts-alleged-sexual-assault-by-alfred-hitchcock-new-memoir-942371 [Accessed 1 Feb. 2018].

Illustrations:

Figure 1 - The Birds (1963) [film] - Alfred Hitchcock: Hitchcock Productions: Universal Studios

Figure 2 - The Birds (1963) [film] - Alfred Hitchcock: Hitchcock Productions: Universal Studios

Figure 3 - Alfred Hitchcock (1963) - Sunset Boulevard/Corbis 

Soundscape - Remastering Music

I was tasked with improving a song by editing it in Adobe Audition.

Character Design - Creating a creature for an environment

I had the environment of the Arctic, as a set of rules to give myself I worked under the fact the surface of it was entirely made up of cotton plants. This led to research into looking at pastures and tundras and what dwells on the, I primarily focused on sheep, goats, cows and hedgehogs to influence my first creature. 

It is a small mammal which grows to the height of the cotton plants, is prey and had sideways facing eyes for better peripheral vision, and its body is coated in spines which act like Velcro to collect the cotton for warmth, and camouflage. 

The second creature took primary influence from a snake, this is because of its ability to quietly slither close to the ground and be able to weave about obstacles. its powerful hind leg allows for pouncing at prey.