i think she's becoming a bit of a mascot
Monday, February 22, 2010
the shape of things
getting a clearer picture of the overall project... it will largely be a series about women's health and welfare issues... for Women, not girls as such...roughly 30 - 55 years old - maybe it should be called the "middle ages" and make it all parchment and gothic or something..
but nay, i am being silly and rambling.
watched the full animated minds series - lots of nice ideas there, with lots of nice different styles and techniques, with quite simple animation.
Am hoping i will have time and energy to do the FULL thing, and not be limited to Limited Animation as I usually am with these kinds of projects..
Trish also put me onto the SBS podcasting "PodLove"
which is a nice example of funded televised and podcasted projects..
there's something in this!!!
so the projects at the moment are
Postnatal depression
Breast Cancer
Separation and Divorce
Senile Dementia (surely this will be about me!! - not sure yet if this is the right 'fit')
Four in the series to start with - i am always over ambitious, but this seems feasible.
Looking at the Animated Minds series - they did 4 to start with and another 4 a few years later after the first ones worked out well.
The next big step is to seek-out a Producer who is a) prepared to assist with some advice, b) might want to work with me on this, c) can help get contacts in the key funding type institutions and also the actual 'target' institutions and markets for the project - even though there are four very different 'targets' - is this too hard??
So I must email some people today!
But first..
get seriously cracking with the animating (how many times have i said this already???)
is so hot and humid here, is hard to concentrate on the wacom without my hand sliding down the screen.. reminds me of Dennis Tupicoff's "The Heat, The Humidity"
so true, so true
but nay, i am being silly and rambling.
watched the full animated minds series - lots of nice ideas there, with lots of nice different styles and techniques, with quite simple animation.
Am hoping i will have time and energy to do the FULL thing, and not be limited to Limited Animation as I usually am with these kinds of projects..
Trish also put me onto the SBS podcasting "PodLove"
which is a nice example of funded televised and podcasted projects..
there's something in this!!!
so the projects at the moment are
Postnatal depression
Breast Cancer
Separation and Divorce
Senile Dementia (surely this will be about me!! - not sure yet if this is the right 'fit')
Four in the series to start with - i am always over ambitious, but this seems feasible.
Looking at the Animated Minds series - they did 4 to start with and another 4 a few years later after the first ones worked out well.
The next big step is to seek-out a Producer who is a) prepared to assist with some advice, b) might want to work with me on this, c) can help get contacts in the key funding type institutions and also the actual 'target' institutions and markets for the project - even though there are four very different 'targets' - is this too hard??
So I must email some people today!
But first..
get seriously cracking with the animating (how many times have i said this already???)
is so hot and humid here, is hard to concentrate on the wacom without my hand sliding down the screen.. reminds me of Dennis Tupicoff's "The Heat, The Humidity"
so true, so true
Friday, February 19, 2010
new toy
well, the package arrived from France upon my return from Perth so have spent the past few days drawing and painting and working out all the myriad buttons...
but I can't get it to import... so i spend hours trawling through the forums and help panels etc to find nothing so far.
is worth the trawling though...
had plenty more thoughts about the shape of the overall project..
and thankYOU to my followers so far who've given blog and email feedback...
"standard standard standard" is a lovely brutal thing ;-) and i certainly take note...
don't want to seem like i'm just piking out and making a webizine...webilogue...crappyweb project coz i can't do anything better...
HOWEVER...
the whole big deal about the way we communicate these days (especially us middle aged chicks (or am i just being too self-centric here) is through web stuff...
but where's tha munney??
maybe THAT is something of the investigation...
(did I say this once already??)
anyway... if I can work out how to post some pictures on this it will be Very useful...
endeavouring to get a small sequence roughed out by monday
this is SUCH a boring blog post - i think i only did this thing so I could talk to myself...
is a funny thing being at home alone once again (has been a LONG time) - totally love it...
and the talking to myself is FAR more productive creatively than spending my life talking to Everyone else i think.
now there's a thought... creativity and aloneness
(Dr Lou, are you listening?)
but I can't get it to import... so i spend hours trawling through the forums and help panels etc to find nothing so far.
is worth the trawling though...
had plenty more thoughts about the shape of the overall project..
and thankYOU to my followers so far who've given blog and email feedback...
"standard standard standard" is a lovely brutal thing ;-) and i certainly take note...
don't want to seem like i'm just piking out and making a webizine...webilogue...crappyweb project coz i can't do anything better...
HOWEVER...
the whole big deal about the way we communicate these days (especially us middle aged chicks (or am i just being too self-centric here) is through web stuff...
but where's tha munney??
maybe THAT is something of the investigation...
(did I say this once already??)
anyway... if I can work out how to post some pictures on this it will be Very useful...
endeavouring to get a small sequence roughed out by monday
this is SUCH a boring blog post - i think i only did this thing so I could talk to myself...
is a funny thing being at home alone once again (has been a LONG time) - totally love it...
and the talking to myself is FAR more productive creatively than spending my life talking to Everyone else i think.
now there's a thought... creativity and aloneness
(Dr Lou, are you listening?)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
playing with software..aka procrastinating
still mucking around with various softwares, and downloading trials and freewares.
a difficult decision to decide what to do... I always do this... worry myself sick making decisions when i really should be just picking up a pencil..
is part of the joy of my procrastinating nature... ;-)
was talking with my colleague yesterday (the esteemed Dr Lou) who is researching the creative process for us visual/digital/animation/artist types about this software choice stuff..
do i choose what would be Sensible..in terms of getting jiggy with the application we use at the college, or should i choose what i would MOST like and feel most comfortable with and get the look and feel that i want - meaning i won't be updating my specific tech skills in that one app we neeed to teach, but Will be updating my tech skills and evaluating a relevant production process in another app...
...sigh... - everything costs money and time also...
I think the best decision is to stop worrying about What Is Right and get on with the actual creative process...
she sent me a good quote about procrastination and perfectionism
"Most challenging of all, exposing ourselves creatively is likely to make us feel profoundly and often frighteningly vulnerable. When we pre-judge and filter our creative ideas in this way, before they have a chance to breathe and develop, they are likely by default to become bland and formulaic."
It's from 'Creative Filmmaking From the Inside Out' - a jolly good book
http://creativefilmmaking.com
anyway - i guess i'm doing a bit too much pre-judging!
so, meantime, i've been looking into the whole business of animated documentary which seems to be much more of a buzz thing these days..
certainly a lot of things have changed in terms of production possibilities (i.e., it is easier to make animation because we have such access to groovy programs unlike the old draw-xerox-cel days) and certainly there's a whole lotta creative rotoscoping going on in the 'mainstream'... starting with "Waking Life" back in 2001, and now "Waltz with Bashir" in 2008 - both of which have a documentary approach about them.
I was looking at the Leipzig film festival for documentary and animation again.. i had forgotten about this til my other esteemed colleague Mr P reminded me - gives me some confidence that I am not wayyyyy off track in this approach to the project
http://www.dok-leipzig.de
and then i found this awesome set of projects which are
"short animated documentaries which use real testimony from people who have experienced different forms of mental distress. A single aim underpins all the films: to help dispel myths and misconceptions about 'mental illness' by giving voice to those who experience these various difficulties first hand. Engaging animation is used in order to try and give some authenticity to the subjective experience of the various mental health problems."
well - I think that just about sums it all up for me... it started in 2003,produced by Mosaic films in the UK (they do everything awesome in terms of 'indie' animation there!) and gosh, i wish I knew about this way back then!!
http://animatedminds.com
so at least I have some inspiration to stop me procrastinating so much....
a difficult decision to decide what to do... I always do this... worry myself sick making decisions when i really should be just picking up a pencil..
is part of the joy of my procrastinating nature... ;-)
was talking with my colleague yesterday (the esteemed Dr Lou) who is researching the creative process for us visual/digital/animation/artist types about this software choice stuff..
do i choose what would be Sensible..in terms of getting jiggy with the application we use at the college, or should i choose what i would MOST like and feel most comfortable with and get the look and feel that i want - meaning i won't be updating my specific tech skills in that one app we neeed to teach, but Will be updating my tech skills and evaluating a relevant production process in another app...
...sigh... - everything costs money and time also...
I think the best decision is to stop worrying about What Is Right and get on with the actual creative process...
she sent me a good quote about procrastination and perfectionism
"Most challenging of all, exposing ourselves creatively is likely to make us feel profoundly and often frighteningly vulnerable. When we pre-judge and filter our creative ideas in this way, before they have a chance to breathe and develop, they are likely by default to become bland and formulaic."
It's from 'Creative Filmmaking From the Inside Out' - a jolly good book
http://creativefilmmaking.com
anyway - i guess i'm doing a bit too much pre-judging!
so, meantime, i've been looking into the whole business of animated documentary which seems to be much more of a buzz thing these days..
certainly a lot of things have changed in terms of production possibilities (i.e., it is easier to make animation because we have such access to groovy programs unlike the old draw-xerox-cel days) and certainly there's a whole lotta creative rotoscoping going on in the 'mainstream'... starting with "Waking Life" back in 2001, and now "Waltz with Bashir" in 2008 - both of which have a documentary approach about them.
I was looking at the Leipzig film festival for documentary and animation again.. i had forgotten about this til my other esteemed colleague Mr P reminded me - gives me some confidence that I am not wayyyyy off track in this approach to the project
http://www.dok-leipzig.de
and then i found this awesome set of projects which are
"short animated documentaries which use real testimony from people who have experienced different forms of mental distress. A single aim underpins all the films: to help dispel myths and misconceptions about 'mental illness' by giving voice to those who experience these various difficulties first hand. Engaging animation is used in order to try and give some authenticity to the subjective experience of the various mental health problems."
well - I think that just about sums it all up for me... it started in 2003,produced by Mosaic films in the UK (they do everything awesome in terms of 'indie' animation there!) and gosh, i wish I knew about this way back then!!
http://animatedminds.com
so at least I have some inspiration to stop me procrastinating so much....
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
in earnest
having a very unproductive day today after what seemed like a cracking good day of activity yesterday, so a good idea to update this blog and actually write something useful.
Currently I am working out all the technical software/hardware business for the project..
about which i really should write about first..
Secret Womens' Business
(now should that apostrophe be before or after the 's'...is it One woman or All women?)
The project has been developing for over 10 years (with plenty of interruptions in between) but essentially the idea is to produce a series of animated shorts that each deal with an aspect of adult women's lives.. some of the things we all talk about, experience, suffer through, rejoice in, but rarely, if ever do we see these treated in an honest, amusing and creative way - and particularly not in animation.
I have done masses of round-about research in this area...too much to list in this one post.. but plan to incorporate aspects of feminist film theories, current pop-culture theories, theories about animation and in particular, focus on female animators making female-orientated projects. All of this will mangle together in a phenomenally incisive exegesis for my doctorate.
But first,
the project in it's current state.
The overarching approach is to centre the series around a group of women friends that meet up once a fortnight for dinner together. Each 'episode' showcases one of the women's 'story' - a big picture thing that has significantly affected her life that is told from a first person perspective (childbirth, breast cancer, postnatal depression, divorce, aging parents, troublesome teenagers, etc etc) - and although each of us experience these things in different ways, there appears to be a 'universal experience' in many aspects of our lives - much of which is written about in books and blogs and live-action series and films, but less so in the mainstream animation realm.
That is not to say there isn't some amazing and pertinent short animated films out there that have covered some of this territory - and I will be writing about and referencing many of these in the process of the exegesis, as these films and filmmakers have been an enormous influence and inspiration to me for the 20 odd years I have been an animator - but by and large, adult-focused animation still has a distinctly male focus... I am hard pressed to find many mainstream or commercially distributed examples with a strong female main character (but am prepared to be enlightened otherwise).
So a lot of the preliminary research I have done is about the Business of Animation - the mainstream TV distribution models, including statistics about the numbers of lead female characters, the numbers of female writer/director/producers, and also the (slowly) changing climate in childrens' television in terms of central female characters and stories.
As mentioned, I have also been looking at a number of independant filmmakers and productions with a strong female focus and questioning the distribution and marketability of these projects.
so, largely the question relates to the production and distribution and market for female focused adult animation...
but more details about that to follow (this is a very edited off the cuff intro...)
back to the project as it stands...
the first story for this project is about post-natal depression ( a story i wrote over ten years ago while searching for some useful information about the problem and finding very little help except for some photocopied brochures and some self-help groups...okay, that's an understatement, but i realised that there was an opportunity to be able to get a whole lot of information across to women suffering through this situation in a succinct and engaging way - particularly for those that had very little time to read books (most new mothers), or had limited literacy - plus the fact that the visual language of animation can cross international boundaries.
The idea was to create a film for sufferers (and their associated partners and families and the general community) that could give them an 'ah ha' moment...in a short 10 minutes or less, the audience could experience the a) you're not alone, and b) oh my god, is This what she's going through... it's a kind of animated narrative documentary.
Most audio-visual projects I had seen relating to PND were so turgid and boring, they were certainly enough to make you even More depressed if you weren't already, so it seemed important to have some punchy impact, and plenty of black humour to carry it through.
From this, I started to think about other secret womens business...like discovering a lump in your breast and the emotional and physical and practical journey that follows.
Again - there IS material and literature about this, but there's still a hushhhhh about the whole thing that often lacks the 'universal' and engaging approach that is possible in animated form.
The other aspect I've been thinking about is in terms of the networking and distribution of this... how do women communicate these days? what and where and when do they watch stuff? what is the best length and format for this material?
I've always had a penchant for comics, graphic novels, and now web-strips and indeed webisodes.. there's some food for though there in terms of the structure of the projects...being episodic and largely told in vignettes and as part of a daily/weekly journey... more to come about that.
so, there's the concept.
Currently am developing some scenes from the PND episode as a trailer cum pilot.
It seems to be taking the 'animated documentary' form a little more... but not a sort of edutainment infomercial style (these are kinda dirty words)... It should work primarily as a stand-alone film, but my desire was to have some guts and meaning in there also..
I wonder if anyone cares?
Currently I am working out all the technical software/hardware business for the project..
about which i really should write about first..
Secret Womens' Business
(now should that apostrophe be before or after the 's'...is it One woman or All women?)
The project has been developing for over 10 years (with plenty of interruptions in between) but essentially the idea is to produce a series of animated shorts that each deal with an aspect of adult women's lives.. some of the things we all talk about, experience, suffer through, rejoice in, but rarely, if ever do we see these treated in an honest, amusing and creative way - and particularly not in animation.
I have done masses of round-about research in this area...too much to list in this one post.. but plan to incorporate aspects of feminist film theories, current pop-culture theories, theories about animation and in particular, focus on female animators making female-orientated projects. All of this will mangle together in a phenomenally incisive exegesis for my doctorate.
But first,
the project in it's current state.
The overarching approach is to centre the series around a group of women friends that meet up once a fortnight for dinner together. Each 'episode' showcases one of the women's 'story' - a big picture thing that has significantly affected her life that is told from a first person perspective (childbirth, breast cancer, postnatal depression, divorce, aging parents, troublesome teenagers, etc etc) - and although each of us experience these things in different ways, there appears to be a 'universal experience' in many aspects of our lives - much of which is written about in books and blogs and live-action series and films, but less so in the mainstream animation realm.
That is not to say there isn't some amazing and pertinent short animated films out there that have covered some of this territory - and I will be writing about and referencing many of these in the process of the exegesis, as these films and filmmakers have been an enormous influence and inspiration to me for the 20 odd years I have been an animator - but by and large, adult-focused animation still has a distinctly male focus... I am hard pressed to find many mainstream or commercially distributed examples with a strong female main character (but am prepared to be enlightened otherwise).
So a lot of the preliminary research I have done is about the Business of Animation - the mainstream TV distribution models, including statistics about the numbers of lead female characters, the numbers of female writer/director/producers, and also the (slowly) changing climate in childrens' television in terms of central female characters and stories.
As mentioned, I have also been looking at a number of independant filmmakers and productions with a strong female focus and questioning the distribution and marketability of these projects.
so, largely the question relates to the production and distribution and market for female focused adult animation...
but more details about that to follow (this is a very edited off the cuff intro...)
back to the project as it stands...
the first story for this project is about post-natal depression ( a story i wrote over ten years ago while searching for some useful information about the problem and finding very little help except for some photocopied brochures and some self-help groups...okay, that's an understatement, but i realised that there was an opportunity to be able to get a whole lot of information across to women suffering through this situation in a succinct and engaging way - particularly for those that had very little time to read books (most new mothers), or had limited literacy - plus the fact that the visual language of animation can cross international boundaries.
The idea was to create a film for sufferers (and their associated partners and families and the general community) that could give them an 'ah ha' moment...in a short 10 minutes or less, the audience could experience the a) you're not alone, and b) oh my god, is This what she's going through... it's a kind of animated narrative documentary.
Most audio-visual projects I had seen relating to PND were so turgid and boring, they were certainly enough to make you even More depressed if you weren't already, so it seemed important to have some punchy impact, and plenty of black humour to carry it through.
From this, I started to think about other secret womens business...like discovering a lump in your breast and the emotional and physical and practical journey that follows.
Again - there IS material and literature about this, but there's still a hushhhhh about the whole thing that often lacks the 'universal' and engaging approach that is possible in animated form.
The other aspect I've been thinking about is in terms of the networking and distribution of this... how do women communicate these days? what and where and when do they watch stuff? what is the best length and format for this material?
I've always had a penchant for comics, graphic novels, and now web-strips and indeed webisodes.. there's some food for though there in terms of the structure of the projects...being episodic and largely told in vignettes and as part of a daily/weekly journey... more to come about that.
so, there's the concept.
Currently am developing some scenes from the PND episode as a trailer cum pilot.
It seems to be taking the 'animated documentary' form a little more... but not a sort of edutainment infomercial style (these are kinda dirty words)... It should work primarily as a stand-alone film, but my desire was to have some guts and meaning in there also..
I wonder if anyone cares?
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