millsworks

Here’s a brief clip from our production of Ruffus The Dog’s Christmas Carol . I’m posting this to show what I’ve been up to these past few weeks as I continue to work on the edit for the show. The audio isn’t properly mixed yet but I’m liking how this whole thing is looking.

When we first produced Ruffus for television broadcast we had a very low budget and managed to get creative in pursuit of our solutions to make the show and tell the stories we wanted to share with our young viewers. Our puppet characters were shot in a studio against blue/green screen – we would shoot one show each day and then spend another week shooting all our backgrounds. These backgrounds were cut-out water colour paintings – mounted on cardboard and set up on a rotating turntable. We took that idea from the Fleischer Brothers who did similar things for their animations with Popeye and other characters.

Our similar approach was a simple solution to the very big problem of how to craft multiple sets and locations that looked different from just a flat painted background. And it was fun moving the individual miniature set pieces around to make a new scene – very much like playing with a toy theatre. I liked it.

But that gave the show a very particular look. It worked but it was decidedly low-end. For this production of Dickens’ classic tale we wanted to achieve a richer look – and, of course, with an even smaller budget. Insane! The shoot was 4 days and has resulted in a 37 minute final cut. We couldn’t afford a studio so we shot in my living room with a very minimal lighting kit. The original shows were shot on digi-beta and cut on an Avid. My respect for our editor, Frank Moressa, grows with each day I work on this and bang my head on the keyboard.

This was shot on a Sony XDCam – generously donated for the shoot and operated by Kit Pasold and is being posted on a Hackintosh using Final Cut Pro. My dear friend, Mark Achtenberg, (a very talented editor, writer, director) donated the hackintosh because my plan to cut it all on my laptop just wasn’t feasible with the file sizes of the HD footage.

High definition is awesome!

I’m used to working fast and loose on my productions. I honestly expected to be able to complete the post work on the show in just 3 weeks. I did the final timed cut in a single week in order to get the footage to JP Houston to work on the music score – and he has delivered an outstanding set of tracks. But when I saw how good our footage was I fell in love with it all and wanted to be sure our backgrounds could live up to the same visual standards.

This time the backgrounds are all being created in Cinema 4D. We didn’t have that kind of tech at our disposal back when we did the original shows. The ability to build the sets in three dimensions and light them and choose our camera angles to match our shot footage is an incredible treat. The clip above is just a wee taste of what’s going on inside that big black hackintosh box I’ve been working on. I’m trying not to get too fussy with the work – there’s flaws throughout but I’m happy with what we’re getting and intent on making this production worthy of everyone’s dedication in getting it made and to ensure it has an audience and a life long after it’s been completed and released.

The work goes on. I’ll be posting some more clips and photos next week. Onward!

Cheers.

P.S.

Here’s one of the Fleischer cartoons that used the table top model system I described. They called it the Steroptical Process and it was created in response to Disney’s innovation of the multi-plane animation camera – which provided true depth of field to cel animation.

Although the look of what the Fleischer’s came up with was outstanding they used it sparingly in their productions because it was craft-heavy and labour intensive to make these juicy miniature backgrounds.

This cartoon short, featuring Grampy in Christmas Comes But Once A Year is a great example of the process. If you want to see more like this go to archive.org where you can find Popeye in Ali Baa Baa and Sinbad.