Movie screenplays are written in a special format. One page of screenplay is equal to a minute of film.
Instead of learning to format screenplays from scratch, it’s much easier to use software that automatically formats your script as you type.
Final Draft is an industry standard. It has many powerful features and can be purchased for $249 on the Final Draft website.
Several free screenwriting programs are also available.
Celtx is a downloadable program that works much like Microsoft Word. It’s a good option if you’re going to be working without internet access.
Plotbot and Zhuara are free online screenwrting services similar to Celtx and Final Draft. They allow several people to colloborate on a script, and the script can be accessed from anywhere you have internet access.
We recently completed a few video tutorials showing how to create different effects and animations with the Stop Motion Animator program (SMA). Watch and enjoy!
If you would like us to create more animation tutorials, let us know in the comments.
We like origami, we like stop-motion. Combining the two arts into an epic battle sequence is perfectly logical. Check out this great animation by YouTube user nariomaru!
Here’s another origami stop-motion clip. The animator uses a bluescreen background and suspends the paper crane in mid-air. The blue background is replaced with something different when the animation is finished. This is a great example of one method to make things fly.
I’m pleased to announce Come What May will be released on DVD March 17th. From the website:
If college student Caleb Hogan argues what he truly believes, he stands to lose the most important competition of his life—and the support of his mother. If he softens his stance, he might win the coveted title…but lose the heart of his teammate Rachel in the process.
Come What May is a vivid reminder that choosing what’s right is never easy…but it’s always worth the cost.
May I also add — making excellent movies may not be easy, but they are always worth the time and energy invested in them!
Advent Film Group has an incredible vision for using their films as hands-on learning opportunities for student filmmakers. Head over to their site and see what AFG is all about!
Sand animation is similar to paint animation. Instead of smudging paint around a square of glass, the animator manipulates sand on a glass-topped lighted table called a “lightbox”.
Caroline Leaf “The Owl who Married a Goose”
The sand blocks the light, creating light and dark shadows on the glass. A camera positioned directly above the animating surface grabs frames of the images created.
Sand animation can be used to achieve some surreal effects. See how heat and the dry desert are captured in this short clip. It’s like a mirage!
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Hey! Since we’re looking at United Airlines commercials, let’s watch another utilizing a very artsy stopmotion technique.
United Airlines “Rose”
Alexander Petrov is a Russian animator who works with paint and glass. Pretrov literally “fingerpaints” every frame of his animations, using slow-drying oil paint which he smudges into dreamy landscapes of color and motion. His most famous work is a production of “The Old Man and the Sea”, by Earnest Hemingway, which took two years to make and 29,000+individual frames. That’s twenty-nine thousand individual paintings.
Alexander Petrov, Making of:
We’re sorry this is completely in Russian, but you can watch Petrov’s fingerpainting style and see his animating setup in this clip.
The Score of “Rose”
This is a little “making of” the score for “Rose”. Seems we’re not the only ones to have Gershwin on our minds…
Petrov currently works closely with Pascal Blais Studios. Watch the Newfundland “Pitcher Plant” clip. It’s really neat. Warning: Flash-based web design and gratuitous sound effects ahead. Make sure your speakers are properly adjusted.
United Airlines. “Rhapsody in Blue”. All who have waited hours for a “friendly skies” representative to pick up the phone are familiar with this piece by Gershwin.
Gershwin’s performance is better used as the score for two unique commercials directed by Jamie Caliri. Dozens of 2-dimensional puppets were made by drawing, scanning, coloring, printing and assembling many tiny pieces of paper. The animated results are beautiful.
We think the little computer setup featured in some of these pictures is both functional and artsy. It looks like the bottom of a rolling chair attached to a plywood platform which holds a Mac Mini, keyboard and monitor. Dig the pen holder.
“Heart” was shot with both Nikon and Canon DSLRs. It looks like “Dragon” was shot with a Leica DIGILUX 3.
Jamie Caliri and his brother created Dragon Stop Motion, the animation software used for both of these films. It is now available to the public. The price is fairly steep, but hey! This is animation software for professionals.
As a special treat, you can download a couple of high-resolution stills from “Dragon” here. Makes a great desktop background!
Hear the power of music. Write a few catchy tunes for your movie and it will stay on broadcast TV for decades. We’ll save analyzing the dysfunctional Donner family for another day, and look instead at the interesting history of this show.
Rudolph was produced for sponsor General Electric by the Rankin/Bass company. First broadcast in 1964, production costs were around $500,000.
The movie was shot using the revolutionary “Animagic” technique, an impressive label for simple stop motion. Early animation companies named their unique methods with retro flair, my current favorite is “Supermarionation”.
If you’ve ever noticed artistic similarities between Rudolph and other pieces of TV nostalgia such as: “The Little Drummer Boy”, “Jack Frost”, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”, “The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus” and others, pat yourself on the back for being extra observant. All of these films were produced by Rankin/Bass.
Rudolph is quite small, about 4″ high. His nose is (predictably) lit with a small red lightbulb and wire running through his nose and body to an external power source.
Recently a copy of the Santa and Rudolf puppets appeared and were restored by the folks at Screen Novelty. It’s a fascinating look at the construction of these small figures. The original owner has also put up a page detailing the process. Santa’s head was hand carved out of wood, proving you can construct a stop motion puppet out of any material.
Producer Aurthur Ranklin on the Bumble:
I always added a King-Kong like creature in the early days.
Still no connection between Rudolph and Komaneko, but I’ll keep looking.
Komachan, a stopmotion cat, makes movies about stopmotion cats. Talk about a cute kitty. She even draws tiny storyboards.
In Japanese, komo means “frame”, and neko means “cat”. You can visit the Komaneko website, but it’s currently Japanese only. Visit the site and tell me… has someone rediscovered the Abominable Snowman from Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Maybe that’s his cousin.
Interestingly, Rudolf was animated in Japan. I think I’ll do a post about this later.
