Film Review of Jack and Chuck

Trailer

http://vimeo.com/25711966

A film review of “Jack & Chuck”

by Alexandre Chaudret, Themoas Crepin and Maureen Kressmann

This past summer I had the chance to be a student volunteer at Siggraph in Los Angeles, and part of the program of the conference is the Electronic Theatre, a film exhibition where studios, schools and film makers from around the world have the opportunity to showcase their films to the Siggraph attendees. I only had the chance to watch part of the exhibition but a film caught my attention, even though I couldn’t see it entirely. I remembered the mood of the film, the characters, the music and the end of the story, which is what I saw at Siggraph, but I didn’t know the name of the film. After searching on the internet for it I found it and I found the blog of one of the film makers who was kind enough to reply to my e-mail and allow me to see the entire film. I had high expectations because of the impression it made on me the fraction of it that I saw in Los Angeles, and it definitely met those expectations.

The film is about a writer, Chuck, who has no arms and uses his mouth and a pencil to write on a typewriter, but he has a lot of struggles and every time he fails at his writing he rips the piece of paper off with his mouth and drinks from a bottle of Jack Daniels on his desk with the help of a straw. As he struggles in his writing, a second character comes to visit him. This character is a big and charismatic person called Jack, who is a salesman and comes to offer the writer a pair of metal arms and hands to help him write, but the offer is not in exchange of money, but instead Chuck has to give his tongue to keep the arms. Chuck agrees after a lot of thinking and Jack cuts his tongue off.

The film made a big impression on me, mainly because of its visual style, a very grotesque and black and white environment, with very strong lighting and organic characters. The story also seemed very original and strong to me, and the story telling of it was very solid, delivered through dialogue and strong acting from both characters. The music added a comedic and dramatic sense to it, being a country genre with vocals.

The other aspect of the film that impressed me and inspired me was the fact that students, from the Supinfocom Animation College in France, produced it. Three of them collaborated on the project for one year and they had a very successful acceptance from festivals and audiences. This inspired me because they were in a situation similar to mine at the moment, being students with responsibilities beyond the film, but they still managed to have a big and successful project by overcoming those obstacles, and made me realize that I might be able to do something similar.

The film also pushed the style of my grad film, because before watching Jack and Chuck I had rough ideas of what I wanted my film to look like, but I hadn’t found something that communicated me that feeling and this film did. The visuals are very appealing and the environment is simple but very interesting, as well as the characters.

The film, beyond being an original and interesting story, taught me the outcomes that hard work and team collaboration can achieve, and Alexandre Chaudret, the film maker that answered my e-mail, encouraged me to keep working on my ideas even though if they seem big, and he also told me that I would encounter a lot of obstacles, both technical and artistic during the production of my film, but that relying on your peer is one of the best ways to keep going on the right path.

Fernando Ortega

Why Toy Maker?

My idea changed significantly in the last two months due to time and technical constraints. Here is the new version of my Why? paper based on the new stage of the film.

Why Toy Maker?

My new film is a new version of my original idea “Dream Trader”. The reason it changed is mostly because of time, but also due to the lack of technical and artistic experience I have to be able to have the results I wanted in the previous film. This new film, which I temporarily call “Toy Maker” is shorter, visually simpler and focused on the comedic part of the story which will make it flow faster and have a clearer ending, and it will also allow me to focus the development of the film on animation, which is what I am focusing my career on at the moment.

The new story of the film carries a lot of elements from “Dream Trader”, specially the two characters, the duality between the old man and death, and the environment of the original film. It also brings back some ideas that I had since third year and inspiration from different films and works that have influenced me. One of my main influences is José Saramago’s book “Death with Interruptions” which brings the idea of death writing letters to humans as a notification of their time for departure. The book involves other ideas about the letter, but I am using the idea of having an official piece of paper representing the news from death to humans.

This book influenced me mostly because it breaks the traditional representation of death and the grim reaper, so much that in the end death becomes a woman and falls in love with one of the main characters of the book. The expansion in death’s personality, beyond just being an omnipresent being also influenced me, and that is why the most developed character in my film is death, because I wanted to emphasise that break in the stereotype of a grim reaper and also place the human-like interaction between characters from different worlds/dimensions.

This developed personality also comes from my own culture, especially from the Day of the Death, which is dedicated to honour death and the people that have passed away, although it is not intended to be a sad day, but rather a celebration full of colour and playfulness, as well as trickery. The “Catrina” is the main persona in this day, it is the representation of death, even though the original intention of the character wasn’t to portray a grim reaper, people appropriated it as part of our culture. José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican illustrator, whose work satirized news and events with skeleton characters, created this character.

The Catrina represents death as being full of life and with a richer personality, taking death with a lot of respect but at the same time appreciating the life that precedes it. A famous Mexican saying explains this better, “Let’s live... Because we are born to die!”

I have researched a lot about this topic during my time at Emily Carr, and I have learned more about my own culture because of this, and I have also understood some of the reasons why we, Mexicans, have this tradition. As I said above, the whole idea behind this celebration is about honouring death with respect, but deeper inside this belief is the commemoration of life, the fact that we are still alive to be able to celebrate, and the realization that we all will come to the last day of our lives. The message that the Day of the Death and the Catrina try to bring, according to my understanding, is that we must “play” and celebrate the time that we are given to live, because no matter what we do different from other people, we all end up in the same place. A quote that I heard from Steve Jobs explains this clearer, “If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you will most certainly be right”.

My film is a little homage to my culture and to this belief, a story about the climax in a person’s life, where death and life coincide to play one last time before the end. It also brings a human connection between death and humans, as Huesos, the main character, starts to become more and more human as the game progresses and in the end he loses his omnipresence by losing the game and failing to complete his job. We will see this progression during the film, ending with a comic situation that will make both characters likeable and will bring them together, maybe as friends.

My intended audience is very broad, since I am avoiding the need of knowing my cultural background in order to understand the story but I also wanted to have these cultural ideas involved in a way that anybody can relate to, and laugh about.

The intention of the project itself, beyond the story and my culture, is to test the knowledge that I have gained during my time at Emily Carr and also to have a finished piece of work of my own to show to potential employers, with the main focus being animation, but also showing other skills that I have. I also want to test this knowledge by being able to engage an audience with my work, since that is of one of my bigger goals and commitments as an artist. 

Fernando

Tension Charts

This is the tension chart for the film "The Lady and the Reaper" by Kandoor Moon Studios.

I noticed that the story in general is very linear, it starts soft but engaging, by showing the old lady missing her deceased husband, then things keep rising up after the death shows up and then the doctor and the reaper fight for the lady. In the end there is a little break, when death gives up on the fight and the doctor revives the lady once again, but then the story takes off again when the lady punches the doctor and kills herself to go see her husband, giving a big peak to the tension and finishing the story at the highest point. The music starts very touchy and mellow since the beginning, to start off the mood, the stops to introduce death, and then during the climax it gets very jazzy and active.

Here is the graph that I did for it:

This next one is the tension chart for my own film "Toy Maker".

The story of my film is very continuous, it keeps getting more and more tense without a lot of breaks. Until the end, when the supervisor comes in, there is a little pause to realize what is going on, and then it finishes in that little break but having the whole background to support that settle. The mood changes twice, just to clarify the lighting and the situation of the scenes, but it stays very much the same through out the whole film, because it is an indoor environment, at night, lid up by soft lights, possibly candles. 

The music also keeps rising, to keep up with the story.

This is the graph for it:

Animatic (WIP)

This is the progress that I have on my animatic. Due to time issues I skipped the drawn storyboard and did it in 3D, using Maya, like a previzualiation. It helped be see the time of each scene better.

Fernando

Why Dream Trader?

Why Dream Trader?

Ever since I was a kid I have always been interested in many different areas of different things. My earliest memories are of me taking my electric toys, opening them and taking the inside pieces to make something different. Electric cars were my favourite, since they have little motors to make the wheels move; I would take these motors and make things like a battery powered ship with a bottle of plastic using the lid of a can attached to the motor as a propeller. Another one was a blender, which worked fine, but the fact that it was made with an old plastic bottle didn’t make the food look edible.

By that time I didn’t know I was making electronics, figuring out simple circuits by myself and finding mechanical ways to make things do other things. From that I became interested in physics and math, but after I felt happy doing those things I wanted to discover something else. I moved into sports, entering a swimming class and spending the next three years doing it almost every day, until I decided I wanted to try something else, so I chose tennis. I played in a few children tournaments during those extra two years practicing tennis, I never won first places but I did get a few awards, but then, again, I wanted to try something else, and so soccer and basketball came in. In secondary school I joined the soccer team of my school, we were terrible, but it was the most fun part of the week to go out and play in the local interschool matches. I became a decent basketball and soccer player until I decided it was getting a bit repetitive for me. Then it came time to change sports for something else, and I chose music. I joined a music class in my high school, choosing bass guitar because it was the only instrument that had only another student other than me and I would get more class time from the instructor (drums and guitar had 20 people each). I liked music since the beginning and started to practice more and more, making a band with my friends to go out and play at different places around the city. I became very good at it, winning with my friends a few band battles, and I realized that I was way better at music than I ever was at sports, so I decided to stick to it and started thinking about a career in music. This was my first duality about choosing a career, because maths and physics never left me, I was good at them, I entered different national contests getting good results, and I had a better understanding of science than most of my classmates. My best friend was the top of the class, and most of my friends were engineering prospects just like I was. I had about a year to decide if I was going to go for music or electrical engineering.

When it came the time to choose I was sure (in a way) that I was going to engineering but I saw all of the options offered in my school and I started to wonder. I thought I wanted to try something new, once again, and after a while I saw potential in the animation program, a new degree at my university at the time, and since then I have been immersed in that, four years now.

At this point in my life I still have that binary way of thinking of an engineer, but I’m also capable of switching to an artist’s mind. This is still a frustration at times, since I know I’m good naturally at math but I am also learning quite well how to be an animator.

This story is the essence of my film. Dream Trader is about finding what you want, recognizing your talents and vocation and doing it because that is what you were born with. I believe in genetics, and that we are all programmed with certain abilities and interests that we carry through out life, but sometimes people, like me, doubt about whether or not those abilities are the “best” or the “right” thing to do and try to do something else, thinking that what other people explore might be better.

This whole idea means a lot to me because I am still in that process of figuring out what I really am good at, because I understand music very well, just as well as physics, and at the same time I have a big heart for storytelling. Deep inside I know I am here by my own decision, because I always had a choice, and there was always something that didn’t want me to leave this to go back to my engineering desire. Maybe this is what I really want to do, ore maybe it is a combination of art and science where I’m going to land. Whatever it is, I still feel the need to finish this part of my life.

This last idea is another big important part of the film, and it is based on two similar thoughts:

-       Dreams are born from taste, and taste is born from genetics, but it’s discovered by experience.  This is a thought I came up with after thinking about all of these different decisions that I have made during my life. What it means is that our goal and out dreams are born from out own interests, our taste, whatever we like is the base for what we want to do in the future. Those interests and taste are embedded in us, we are born with them, our brain is ready to be adapted towards a certain path... but we are not born knowing what an animator is, or what an engineer is, we might have a creator’s mind or a problem solving mind, but it is until we grow up and we discover the world when we can find the use for that “taste” and until then we can say “I want to be an astronaut”

-       The second thought is an old Spanish saying that translates “no one knows what they have until it is seen lost”. This mean that we don’t appreciate what we have, we take things for granted, until we lose that thing and we realize that we always wanted to have it.

These two thoughts relate to the story of the old man in the film, as he ignores his own vocation thinking that he might find something else and better to do, until the death comes to visit him and takes his craft away and he realizes he cannot be happy without it, and decides to give his life away for one last chance of using his talent.

I’m am doing Dream Trader as a way to explore my own decisions and to express my preoccupation of finding our purpose in life to other people, because we all have something to say and something we can be the best at, we just have to find it, recognize, love it and put passion on it. 

Huesos Update

A quick update on the death character, Huesos:

It's still now finished but I have tested a few rig possibilites, specially for the face, and probably a new design for the new idea, but in general this is close to be the final design. 

Fernando

Time for change...

One of my first animation teachers said to us in class: you have to learn how to kill your babies... 

I killed a few of mine over the last month, for good (they weren't smart enough!). The main ones are:

- Story

- The character of the old man

- Most of the environment

- Potentially the name "San José", which will affect the title of this blog too... 

Reincarnation: 

- New story

- New main character

- New and simpler environment 

- Probably a new name

What stays? And what comes back? 

- Huesos stays, but this time as a supporter for the main character

- The Mexican inspired town stays, but without the Mexican tale

- The topic of death stays, but not as a main story point

- There is an old man, but new version, new person, new everything

Since I started thinking about my gradfilm I came up with a lot of ideas, that were shaped over and over again, some of them were ignored for my last solid story, but most of them are back and make the new story stronger and more engaging for me: 

- Passion for your craft

- A given chance to build your last creation, that will be your own coffin

- The death as a mentor

- Sarcastic and tricky elegant grim reaper (Huesos) 

- Magical realism and classic scenarios

I'm still shaping this new idea, writing it down and trying to explain it to myself in words in order to explain it to other people in a simple way.  I will post it here soon...

Fernando