Spangler Studios Blog

Today is Tuesday… Last Friday the commercial spot job at Handcranked finished. We ended up splitting the last shot into two days, which worked out very well. One of the main characters had to fall over in the middle of the shot, so we stopped shooting right before the big moves of the fall started and resumed the next morning. Also in this shot, after the character falls, several surrounding background objects needed to bounce in response to the impact after a short delay, depending on how far away they were. I was using a cut-out animated animatic for timing cues, and got into some difficulties when I tried to follow it too closely. One reason was that I couldn’t match it exactly if I wanted to, because the animatic was made at something like 30 frames per second, and we were shooting at 24 on twos, and I ended up increasing the already too-long delay present in the animatic. Later I was told the animatic was just for suggestion purposes, which I should have been more aware of. I think in the back of my head I knew I was doing something wrong by focusing on the movement of an animatic for detailed timing, and not trusting my own timing. Next time I need to ask specifically what timing cues I need to copy from the animatic and what cues are there that can be ignored or understood as vague suggestion. I’m perturbed by my mistake with this, and the lousy outcome of the timing of part of the most important moment of the spot, so now I’m determined to execute the same bounce-response movement in a test here at home, maybe by having one of my test-puppets with a beak pecking at bits of things on the floor, and the surround bits an react to the impact of the pecking by bouncing.

Another tricky thing about this final shot was that the main character who falls has to fall very quickly, so I had to make a decision about whether or not it was necessary to change over to ones during the fall, even though the look of this animation is supposed to be choppy. But like I said before, the look is choppy, but not plain bad, so I did end up switching to ones, and was glad for it, the fall looked nice. However, when trying to switch back to twos, I did it too early during the part where the characters bounce in response, which was part of the reason for the overly delayed movement. It would have been better to finish off the fast movement with ones, and then switch to twos afterward.

Just got back home at about 1am after finishing today’s shot. We knew it would probably go long, but it turned into a monster for various reasons, and even with Justin helping on the background characters, we were needing over 10 minutes in between moves towards the end of it. The shot seems to have turned out well though, so it was worth it. Going in later tomorrow to get my rest for what seems to be the most difficult shot of the spots, and the last one. I think it might actually go faster than today’s though because the movement is faster and more defined than today’s slow and vague movements.

Today was a golden day… I’m not quite sure what the right descriptive word is. “Happy” isn’t good enough, and neither is “satisfying” or “productive” or “positive.” Maybe “appreciative” would be more true to the feeling of it. I felt very appreciative of the place I’m in at this short moment, these last few days of a job that has been satisfying and productive and positive in the ways that it has challenged me and opened me up to fresh ideas and connections with like-minded creative people.

I rode into Waltham on the train at 10am and got started on the next shot, a fairly simple and short one, compared to the most recent shots and the complicated ones coming up tomorrow and Thursday. It was a nice quiet day at the studio, only myself and Jeff, who was directing. I was especially diligent this time about preplanning the movements and expressions in the 2 and a half second shot, down to every last blink, and found that this allowed me to get most of the hard math work done before the shot even started. The rest of the way was smooth creative sailing because I could TRUST the notations I had so carefully made, and could depend on them to be accurate. After that I was free to make small adjustments as necessary as I went along and observed how the shot was developing.

Another key factor was that instead of my usual playlist of sappy sad and dreary melodies (the kind of music that makes you sigh), I tried out some new mixed CDs with real “beats” compiled by my master DJ roommate, Amelia, who has lately been the main source of my musical education and enlightenment. Anyhow, feeling the beats and accompanying them with a lovely cup of jasmine green tea, brought me to that perfectly centered point of focus, where I was totally into the work, enjoying it, engrossed in it, not feeling the least bit tired or in need of physical things, my stomach was not digesting, my mind was not preoccupied, my heart was not caught up in emotional troubles, I wasn’t in any pain - not even my animator’s back was bothering me. Later, when I did get hungry, I treated myself again to Thai, went for a walk in the perfect fall afternoon weather, sunny and refreshing, perfect new fall leaves on the sidewalk, and I felt so lucky to be experiencing such a rare state of worry-free balance and to be aware of it in the moment. I also felt lucky that in addition to this, no catastrophes are currently occurring in my personal or family circle, no extreme dramas, no one is particularly unwell. Everything seemed to be at an apex of balance…. if you were animating the feeling frame by frame as a leap through the air, it would be the frame where the object has reached the top and hangs for a milli-moment before descending again, but stretched out into the space of several hours.

The shot went smoothly, with only a small hang up at the very beginning requiring a restart (a spot of dust on the camera sensor showing up on a main character’s face). The time lapse still camera was capturing again, as well as a video camera pointed from the back of the set into the characters and towards my face, which was a little distracting at first, but I got used to its ever present eye after a while, and even got comfortable enough to eat my fig newton snacks in front of it without shame. Next time I’m going to make a face at it during a capture and see if anyone notices.

At 5:30 I finished early and later went out to a movie at the Embassy Cinema in Waltham - “The Science of Sleep,” which I loved…. again I’m at a lack for proper descriptive words. It was a sort of crazy romantic story mixing live action with jerky stop-motion assisted dream sequences, simple and childlike and colorful. The main characters were older and plainer and more flawed than your average movie heroes, with their complexities exposed, and that’s what the film seemed to be about, was these characters and their imperfections and complexities and sad human-ness, and yet also their beauty and ability to find love and acceptance for others and themselves despite these things, even in celebration of these things. The main characters were shown living their lives, trying to make things work in normal ways, even though the film’s style is very abnormal. They weren’t sarcastic, didn’t use catchy witty phrases, weren’t very made-up physically and weren’t lit in a glorified way. I felt I could really relate to them both and was touched by the human qualities revealed in them. the childish stop-motion was inspiring, because it again reminded me that animation does not have to be slick and smooth to be effective and emotive, and overall the film made me feel more tolerant and celebratory of my own complexities and abnormalities and perceived weaknesses. The analogy that I thought of later was, that I really don’t need to worry about making myself into a solved Rubik’s Cube, with all my qualities neatly balanced out and aligned, which is how I’ve often viewed the future “complete” form of myself to be.

Before the film started, I set my cell phone alarm to buzz at 9:15 since the train would be arriving at 9:25, but discovered at the end, that it had already turned to 9:17, so I exited the theatre with unusual speed, still blurry minded with movie-disorientation, with a strong need to pee, and started running down the dark street towards the train platform, feeling somewhat like I was in the movie, trapped in a strange half-dream like the main character. Since the platform is on the opposite side of the tracks, I am often paranoid that I’ll reach the tracks just as the train is arriving, but on the wrong side, so the bells will ring, and the bar will descend across the road and I’ll be forced to stand there and watch as my last possible ride picks up its passengers and descends into the night. So I ran like a madperson just until I reached the right side of the tracks, and then walked normally again. The final pleasant surprise of the night was when the train conductor allowed me to get off at my stop without paying the fare! Now I am completely tired out from writing, time to get to sleep in preparation for a complicated shot tomorrow.

Okay, this post might gross out male readers, so I’m warning you ahead of time. I omitted this from my last post, but decided to include it now because it’s kind of sickly funny…

Today at work I needed to get some personal “that time of the month” things at a drugstore, so asked someone at work where I could find one, and he offered to go get me whatever I needed, but of course I would never want to ask a guy to pick up something like that, so I declined. Later, I ran several blocks away to find a CVS at lunchtime after picking up my lunch of quiche (it was gross) and beet salad (also gross), and when I was in line at CVS with my basket full of feminine goodies I noticed my plastic bag with the lunch takeout was filled with red juice, from the leaking beet salad, and it looked like blood, and i kept poking at it, trying to figure out how it was leaking, and this guy behind me started giving me weird looks and I was freaking out and exited quickly after my purchase.

Missed the 6:47pm bus that has until tonight always arrived after 7:00 even though I was there by 6:55. A round girl with dark eye-liner came up and asked me for a dollar for the bus and continued to explain her whole situation, what happened to her debit card, even though then she wasn’t sure exactly where it was, and so forth. I gave her the dollar because she was nice, even though she had obviously asked for a dollar for the bus several times before using this story. Just now I’m thinking about the well-dressed in jeans older man who I’ve encountered twice coming down the stairs to the red-line in South Station, him sitting on the railing wall at the bottom of the stairs, swinging his feet, looking up and patiently asking me for 50 cents. I gave him one of my dollar coins last time, and he said thank you in the most friendly way. The second time I realized that he must do this every day, and said “not today”, partly because I needed my dollars, but it’s pretty likely that I’ll give him his 50 cents next time just because he’s so polite about it and not making any excuses for himself. He’s just a guy making some cash, keeping himself cleaner and acting friendlier than most of the people you bump into on the subway, so good for him.

So I missed the bus. Went for a walk up Moody St. It was a nice warm night. Found the local independent movie theatre to see if there was a film that could fill the time in between 7:30 and 9:20 before the train would come through. The Science of Sleep had started at 7:20, maybe I’ll go see it later this week…. Asked the bored ticket guy about a French animated film and asked when it ended. I explained I had some time to kill and left. Wandered up the street, stopped in a used bookstore, browsed titles. A shelf of memoirs and autobiographies. I remembered that I’ve wanted to read more autobiographical books, or journals. Tried to locate something written by a person that I could relate to. Saw a collection of autobiographical stories by Roald Dahl about his time in the RAF, but thought it was a bit pricey for a used book, then saw a more extensive autobiography, again by Roald Dahl, that looked very interesting in addition to being cheaply priced, but it was the sequel to a book that wasn’t there, so I didn’t get either one. Ended up buying The Places In between, about the travels of a man from Scotland who made his way across Afghanistan on foot in the winter, meeting all kinds of strange and interesting people. Bought this one for twice as much as the first book I rejected, but it seemed worthwhile somehow. I had an hour left, went in search of a place to eat, which was easy considering that Moody street here is lined with restaurants, though I’m picky when it comes to finding a good place to eat alone. Went into a quiet Indian place with little booths, ordered soup and naan and a mango lassi, to which the waitress raised her eyebrows, “oh, a very light dinner!” I read my new book and ate the very tasty soup, and once in a while looked up to observe the back of the head of the guy who was sitting in the booth in front of me, also alone. I became engrossed in the book for a while, then looked up and thought, “hmmm that looks like a different head somehow, but it’s in the same place… did someone new come in and sit down and I didn’t even notice?” Apparently this person even fooled the waitress, who came up a second later saying, ” Oh! It’s a different person here! I thought you were the man who was here before, and I wondered, why is he still here, but maybe he’s just reading something…” Later after I left and went to wait at the train platform, I saw the same guy sitting on a bench a ways off. I almost went up and said, “Hey, did you just have dinner at that Indian place on Moody street?” but decided to sit and read my book in the station lamp light instead. On the train, stared at pictures and swear words scratched into the plastic window, observing how they didn’t have any effect on me, paid for my ticket, and noticed that the skin of the dark complexioned man in front of me was a strange orange brown color that stood out underneath his mostly silver hair. The ticket lady gave me 50 cents in change from a handy coin dispenser belt. On the walk back home, I said goodnight to the same inflated tower of grinning pumpkins, electric fan whirring, that I’d passed by that morning. Passed by the same house window where people had been watching television with the shades open the night before, but tonight the blinds were down.

Today I animated with Justin as my helper, which was a new experience. I was less focused than usual, but it was a mental relief to have someone there to talk to in between frames, so I emerged less exhausted and without the tension headache I had after animating yesterday. Jeff set up a still camera to take time lapse pictures of us and the set. It took me 45 minutes to set up the shot, so the first pictures will only see my hand with a brush poking at the puppets (to clean off the extra snow dust) and sticking fresh pupils onto their eyes with vaseline. I’m looking forward to seeing the assembled time lapse sequence tomorrow.