This blog is going to be a space for me to share my pre-production process and production progress as I inch closer to completing my graduate thesis at NYU in December 2012. Here's hoping it will be a good ride!
A little about the development of "Apres Ski":
Because of my screenwriting background, I was really committed from the outset to doing a short film for my thesis. Having been part time throughout my studies at CADA, I also witnessed the evolution of a lot of ambitious thesis ideas, so I knew I needed to establish a few basic criteria for myself. Namely, a simple story featuring one character, in a setting that was relatively easy to create, with a good punchline at the end. I made a basic list of sparse environments that would not involve too many simulations (i.e. water): desert, ice, etc. Ice was interesting because it led me to the idea of a ski slope, which is an environment I'm very familiar with being both a skier and snowboarder. Its also an environment that I haven't seen explored in mainstream animation films. "Happy Feet" and "Ice Age" have done ice environments, and "Polar Express" and other holiday films have done the North Pole. But nothing with a ski resort. As someone who main strength is modeling, I also liked this idea because it is a setting that features mechanical and organic elements in equal parts.
My original concept, then, was to model a character (Murphy, seen above) and put him in this environment as someone who is trying to learn to ski. It seemed lots of fun from an animation perspective, and I envisioned a sort of Chuck Jones "Wile E. Coyote" style animation for him as he crashed into trees, snowballed down the hill, etc. In thinking of the punchline, I thought a lot about the diverse styles of ski lodges I had visited. Deer Valley, Utah leaped out in particular, because all of its properties are very opulent compared to smaller adirondack resorts, and they incorporated a lot of antlers into their decor. So while it celebrates deer in a way, from the deer's perspective it would be an absolute nightmare. So for Murphy, "Mont Moose" resort would sound like a paradise, but the punchline after his distasterous run would be discovering the inside of the lodge to be more like a personal torture chamber, culminating in a stuffed mounted moose head on the wall.
My biggest concern with all of this was (and to some extent, it still is) how to design the story to showcase my modeling skills as opposed to animation. Its easier to tell a linear story with animation than it is with just modeling, but I didn't want to animate a camera and just move it through an environment. (I considered just building the lodge interior and maybe having some taxidermy that would talk, like the bass fish gag, but I didn't want to give up Murphy.) I talked some of this out with advisors who pointed out that in my pitch, most of the action took place on the mountain and not in the lodge, where most of the modeling needs to be done. So I started hashing out ways to spend more time with the lodge. My current solution is to have lots of close up shots of Murphy donning some of his equipment, and when he enters the lodge, to have lots of close ups from Murphy's POV of all the terrifying antler and moose paraphenalia - ending of course with the head mounted on the wall.
If I have time, I would like to show Murphy getting on the chair lift first, starting down the hill and making a wrong turn onto an expert only -- "Double Diamond" -- trail. The next shot after he goes over the edge will have him entering the lodge in a leg cast and bandages, so I've edited out all the elaborate ski animation. I feel this plan affords me a little bit of flexibility depending on how well I can get all of my components modeled in my schedule.
