Some visuals

Over the past 6 weeks or so I have been working on my graduate film idea. After many many unsuitable ideas and a load of drafts I have settled on a ‘story’ etc.

Here is some concept work so far:

The story is about a young woman who, since she was a small child, has had a fascination/obsession with the sea. Through her longing, she eventually creates a small ball of light which turns into a fish and guides her through said sea. The swim ends with her swimming away from the fish who has grown large and aggressive. She is then rescued by her mother(although you never actually see her mother except for the arm) and she goes back to the comfort of home. It all ends with her sitting on a beach staring at the starry night sky when another glowing ball appears, signifying another possible adventure.

The whole film is essentially about ambition(the glowing ball being ambition itself), leaving the comfort of home and change(good and bad).

I have started a decent storyboard (after a few really rough scribbly ones) and next step is complete a rough animatic; to have a look at the timing/pacing of the film. Might have a little play with sound for my scratch soundtrack in the next couple of days too.

Summer 09 continued- Work Experience

Later in the summer, after coming back from Scotland, I was lucky enough to be able to gain some ‘work experience’ at ArthurCox studio in Bristol, working on a short film by George Sander-Jackson. I had a really good time as everyone there was lovely and the work was fun (need more practice in getting people tea/coffee though).

The film (Title: Plot ) was entered into Depict!: a 90 second animation competition in Encounters Film Festival. Congratulations to George as the film was shortlisted (according to the site, only 11 got picked out of 340 films from 39 countries).

You can see the film(and rate with lots of stars if you like it :D) here:

http://www.depict.org/shortlists/259/

(the ratings and comments help towards the Shooting People’s Audience Award).

The summer 09

So… I have just started my third and final year at uni and have decided I wanted a fresh new blog showing anyone who’s interested what I’m getting up to over the next year(and possibly beyond, we’ll see).

To see my old blog(and old work from the last two years at university) see: martharhiannonford.wordpress.com

Anyway, I had a fairly productive summer although I managed to completely fail on the job-seeking front=no money for Martha:(. First of all, I entered an animation competition called The Great Animation Challenge. Brief was to create an animated music video to one of the songs provided. After a good two weeks of work, I came up with this:

(unfortunately I couldnt get the whole film uploaded to YouTube but heres the start bit that did upload).

Obviously it has it’s lovely amateurish flaws but overall I was quite pleased with the end result. I didn’t win (that pleasure went to Joe Lea and his energetic and colourful piece) but it was quite the thing to see my work on a screen bigger than my laptop’s (I also got a taste of audience-love when my film was applauded, even if they did do it after every film).