Last week, the shrewmole film (tentatively titled “The Duvetyne Shrewmole”) was awarded a production grant through the LEF Moving Images Fund for New England artists. I’m very excited and looking forward to taking some time out specifically for work on this film. I will continue to post updates and share what I learn along the way.
In December I did several test shots using the completed shrew puppet, mostly to play around with light and color, and to see how well the puppet could animate. The tests were done at Handcranked Productions in Waltham, MA. It was such a valuable opportunity - being able to use their shooting space complete with a variety of lights, stands, camera, etc, and it was great to get out of my own workspace/bedroom for a while.
After shooting some real animated footage (!!!), which was very exciting, I felt much more confident about the project and its possibilities. I’m now in the process of applying for a grant through the LEF Foundation’s Moving Image Fund. It’s been an educational experience just writing the proposal letter and figuring out the specifics of the budget. I had a terrible time at first, trying to look online for budget samples for independent short animated films, specifically stop-motion (impossible to find), worrying about formatting and terms like “in-kind,” but when someone told me to start off just listing everything I could ever need to make this film the way I envision it, I stopped worrying about the formalities and was able to get into what the budget basically needs to be: a well researched and well organized list of expenses.
I’m hoping to keep this blog up-to-date with information about the progress of the project and whatever problems or revelations arise along the way, especially for the benefit of any other independent filmmakers/animators who might be considering or going through similar experiences.
So, here are a few small test movies (more to come):
An important note… I’ve realized that my past embedded movies have not been viewable in Internet Explorer, and possibly other browsers, so please let me know if you are having problems viewing. These next movies should hopefully fix the problem, but I’ll have to do some tests to find out!
