Kicking off 2013: San Francisco and Short Film Pre Production

It still feels kind of unreal: We're actually moving to San Francisco!

There, I said it.

2013 is going to be a roller coaster! Right now I'm spending my days on the beaches of Koh Lanta in Thailand, trying to get rid of a cold that stuck with me for weeks.. I'll visit Australia and Hawaii in the coming month and in late march me and wife will land in San Francisco. I've never been a big traveller or took long holidays, so the coming two months are a welcome and fresh breeze and help me recharge before we hit the US.
Phew, and once we're there we'll see what'll happen. If my best case scenario plays out (as they always do, don't they?) I'll be able to get to work on a few freelancing gigs and tackle some ideas of my own. I've got lots of projects lined up, but they might have to wait in line until our new life is set up here. And that might as well take up the whole year.. And there was something about a healthier lifestyle... well, let's look into that later. Let's talk about short films first!

After playing around with a few ideas for animated shorts, I settled for one that I thought was worth pursuing. It's about three minutes long, stars one character, three simple locations and all in all sounds pretty doable.
I aim to finish the storyboards and animatics during my holidays and I'm halfway through at this point.
Got an iPad? Get an iPad!
For the longest time I thought of it as just another toy, but eventually I decided to get a mini for my travels to check e-mails and whatnot. Meanwhile I've got a neat workflow going with Paper 53 and iMovie to work on storyboards. Paper lets me quickly scribble down some thumbnails (get a pen though, like the Bamboo Stylus) and the interface let's me see them in quick succession. This way I can quickly check if my camera layouts work and look for mistakes and fix them quickly.

flip left or right and see if your camera work, errmm... works!

Once I'm happy with my drafts I'll import the drawings into iMovie, where I can already rough in the timing of the shots. It even allows you to import music from iTunes, which might help to set the tone.

Import the drawings to iMovie and rough in the timing of the shots. Add some music and  your animatic is finished.

So, once I'm done I already have a precise idea of what I'm going for, right down to the last shot. I might even make a shot and asset list with numbers, so I can dive right in once I've got my computer set up in San Francisco.

Come to think of it, I love pre-production, you can play around with ideas, cut or add things, and once you're done, it gives you the (deceiving) feeling of being in control. The voyage to the completion of your film is clearly laid out in front of you and everything's in order.
And along comes production, things get flipped upside down, new ideas need to make it in the film, things don't work out as expected, and so on..
Which is just as exciting!

Well that's it for now, now back to enjoying the sunny weather..

take care
c