Finally, 'Mysterious' Ron Cole has decided to start a blog. Now that I'm in the last phase of shooting my short film, In The Fall Of Gravity.
This film of mine has been years in the making but, not all of those years were devoted to this short film alone. As a matter of fact, There was never supposed to be a short film at all!
It all started when I decided to write a script for an animated feature film entitled
TRUE MAGIC
I've had this dream for too many years of creating a film with a new and different look and style of puppet animation. The first order of business would be to write the script and also create and shoot at least one of these puppets. The idea was to make a miniature puppet that could articulate speech and facial expressions in a manner similar to E.T. and Yoda.
This would require many hours, days, weeks and months to dream up the best methods to use in order to make a relatively tiny puppet face do the sorts of things that (in the past) had only been done on full scale, live action puppets.
How could I possibly ask an executive producer to forward me gobs of money to make a feature film, without demonstrating that I wasn't just 'blowing smoke' with the claim that this could and should be done?
I spent over a year of my 'spare' time (as if there really were such a thing) creating a puppet of the main character from TRUE MAGIC, Trevor Verity. I won't drag you through the hair pulling I endured trying to overcome the technical problems that emerged, I'll just say that I learned the reasons why it had never been done before.
After building a version (after many) of this puppet that actually worked, I shot a one minute clip of 'him' speaking to an invisible (off screen) partner... NOW I really had something! I knew then, that I could build another puppet from scratch that would perform even better than Trevor, his co-star from TRUE MAGIC, Isomer the Wizard.
I could go on about how many times (endless) I found new and better ways to improve upon the mechanics (which always involved a major overhaul of the puppets) and perhaps in future blogs I will go deeper into their evolution, but not now.
At that point, I had two working puppets, so what's the next most logical thing to do? What I had never planned to do - a short...
This film of mine has been years in the making but, not all of those years were devoted to this short film alone. As a matter of fact, There was never supposed to be a short film at all!
It all started when I decided to write a script for an animated feature film entitled
TRUE MAGIC
I've had this dream for too many years of creating a film with a new and different look and style of puppet animation. The first order of business would be to write the script and also create and shoot at least one of these puppets. The idea was to make a miniature puppet that could articulate speech and facial expressions in a manner similar to E.T. and Yoda.
This would require many hours, days, weeks and months to dream up the best methods to use in order to make a relatively tiny puppet face do the sorts of things that (in the past) had only been done on full scale, live action puppets.
How could I possibly ask an executive producer to forward me gobs of money to make a feature film, without demonstrating that I wasn't just 'blowing smoke' with the claim that this could and should be done?
I spent over a year of my 'spare' time (as if there really were such a thing) creating a puppet of the main character from TRUE MAGIC, Trevor Verity. I won't drag you through the hair pulling I endured trying to overcome the technical problems that emerged, I'll just say that I learned the reasons why it had never been done before.
After building a version (after many) of this puppet that actually worked, I shot a one minute clip of 'him' speaking to an invisible (off screen) partner... NOW I really had something! I knew then, that I could build another puppet from scratch that would perform even better than Trevor, his co-star from TRUE MAGIC, Isomer the Wizard.
I could go on about how many times (endless) I found new and better ways to improve upon the mechanics (which always involved a major overhaul of the puppets) and perhaps in future blogs I will go deeper into their evolution, but not now.
At that point, I had two working puppets, so what's the next most logical thing to do? What I had never planned to do - a short...
9 comments:
So glad you've started a web log, Ron! Looking forward to reading up on your progress with ITFOG and True Magic!
See you on the boards!
Me too!! Me too!!!
cool man! Ill be watching for posts!
jriggity
Absolutely, stunningly beautiful work :)...
Interesting Story! I love hearing about how things come together. Keep 'em coming!
Thanks for coming to my party guys! One of the reasons why I started a blog was to sort of practice for creating a 'behind the scenes' segment for the ITFOG DVD.
I didn't photographically document any behind the scenes stuff during the actual making of the short, unfortunately. I only have one good camera so, kinda hard to document things while shooting!
You know, I've seen the Isomer clip and the trailer over 20 times and I still marvel at the power of them.
Believe me, ANYTHING A N Y T H I N G you include with it on the dvd will be lapped up like milk by a hungry tiger.
The film stands alone as a masterpiece and the extras can be whatever you can easily manage without needing them to be slick or big budget.
Every snippet of your making it, what your thought process has been, etc., will be like true and earnest treasures for all.
One of the things that makes me happy about the final release of my film is the fact that there are shots in it that I've never spoken of. The shots I am speaking of are ones that I worked on (one in particular) for over a month. Some of them are no less important but, the subtle emotion I attempted to portray in 'that' character are ones I felt myself while shooting... as it should be.
Thanks for the kind words and support Shelley, they mean more...
Good luck with your short! I hope see your short in Animadrid (Spain) when you will finish it.
Adios
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