How did you come up with the concept for your short film?
Emanuele Pavarotti:
First of all, I searched for the necessary ingredients, the first one was a child. I had been wanting to create a child character for quite some time, and this seemed to be the the right time. I like how kids react and how they experience everything in a dramatic but light-hearted way. They may be desperate for a toy but if something else draws their attention, they instantly forget about it. This makes for interesting animation!
The second ingredient was a tree. The tree also helped to define the child’s personality because he decides to climb up it. This is quite autobiographical - it's something I used to like doing.
So the two main ingredients were there for some time, amongst other possibilities, in the form of small thumbnails on my sketchbook. Then came the ball, which triggered the series of actions and events that build the story. When I located this third ingredient, I could quickly move on to drafting the events.
People are right when they suggest that you should always have your sketchbook in your pocket to jot ideas down. I sketched the whole story in half an hour on the bus on the way to work between my hometown Melegnano, and Milan.
After that, I worked through different variations and adjustments, the design of all the background details, and the subdivision of scenes. But the main concept remained the same.
Some people think that the first idea should be discarded; others think that it's the freshest. Adhering to the first way of thinking, I tried to progress to a better idea, more complex, but in the end, I came round to the other way of thinking!
The end product is a little story that is not based around a final gag. There are lots of great shorts that end with a gag but that’s not what I was interested in. My short is not even comical, even if the character is funny. It’s about a little adventure that gets bigger because the protagonist is so small. And what transforms the reality into “cartoon” form is not a magic, fairy-tale setting, but the imagination of Marco, playing in a park, in an Italian city.
Animation Mentor:
What important lessons did you learn from making your short film?
Emanuele Pavarotti:
One of the best things about this project has been the team work. Some years ago, I was interested in 3D because it granted me the possibility of doing everything by myself... then I realized that the opposite is more interesting! Even a one minute short film is made up of many different elements that require specific skills. Everyone adds their value to the project.
There are many different ways to animate the same action, to dramatize a scene or to phrase a line of dialogue. I had clear ideas about my goal- and I was, I think, even quite demanding, but everyone exceeded my expectations! This film is a zero-budget one and everyone volunteered to work simply because they believed in our project. This amazed me! Some tasks, like modeling, rigging or rendering really required a lot of nights and week-ends of work!
It's very nice to see how your idea can be enriched and developed thanks to the contribution of others, and it's nice to see how people with a different background approach the same question from very different angles. Once we were discussing depth in the scenes, I wanted the most distant buildings to become bluer and bluer, merging into the sky. I had in my mind an aesthetic and pictorial effect, based on the paintings that I had studied. When I was explaining my idea with that reference in mind, Nicola Zanardi joined the discussion with a more scientific line of argument. “Close to the horizon, the sky is a softer blue because the light has more air to get through, and becomes more diffuse so a fainter shade of blue light reaches us.”
Simone Giambruno's music is much more than a simple accompaniment: it shapes the personality of the ball, revealing itself through the deep guitar notes that speak to Marco, who answers at a higher pitch. This is not conveyed in an obvious, didactic way, but is inferred by reading between the lines.
Animation Mentor:
How long did it take to complete your film?
Emanuele Pavarotti:
The project developed over nine months. I dedicated the first three months entirely to the pre-production, attending the AM program: storyboards, character design, animatic and layout. After character design, Alessandro Chizzolini modeled Marco. Even in this phase we had to do some research, because some things didn't work as well in 3D as they did in drawings. In the first model, sketches Marco had a very big head that in 3d looked “too” big, so we decided to change his proportions a little, making them slightly less stylized. Then there was a lot of work on the face to maintain the necessary level of stylization to really work in 3D: overly realistic details kept showing up, or points of view to re-think for the three-dimensionsal aspect.
The rig was also carried out in this phase by Nicola Zanardi. We developed an interesting system to achieve differing degrees of realism in his arms. In the calmer shots, Marco's little muscles and anatomic details are evident, but these disappear when his arms bend, in a more stylized way and at more dramatic points, for example when he falls from the tree. But the most complex part was the face. As it contains numerous controls to enact movement on various parts of the lips, the eyelids etc; this invited me to sculpt the poses and incorporate the sense of smoothness of the skin and some nice squash and stretch. The deadline for the first three months required all of this material to be ready for the start of the animation process.
The animation developed over the following three summer months. In this phase, it was important to work through vast swathes of the whole film, without stopping too much on a particular shot, so as to avoid ending up with one stunning shot and another barely even begun. After finishing the animation, we moved onto shading, lighting and rendering with the skillful Giulia Lamacchia, and then on to the compositing with Jacopo Ardit. All of this needed a lot of work, three more months, and power of computer processing to obtain the illustrative, smooth and stylized look, a little watercoloury, that we were hoping to achieve. In this phase Nicola Danese worked on the particles for the dust and the chips of wood.
We recorded a rough take of the music in preproduction as a guide, and a final version at the end. This was also the case for sounds by Andrea Pavarotti. The voice was added in the end by Silvia Perindani.
Animation Mentor:
How much planning was put into your short film? Did planning help make the process easier?
Emanuele Pavarotti:
Planning is a fundamental element in the success of the film. Without good planning, I don't know if we would have been able to finish the project. When we started working on production, the usual, inevitable technical problems on pipeline and rig came up. In addition to this, I had weekly deadlines- it is very important to carry on animation with a good pace. All this was more than enough to take up all my time and that of the other team members. If we still had time to think about camera angles, shot length, editing and changing the weaker parts, we would probably still be at it.
I'm happy that I resisted the temptation of adding shots in the middle of the work or modifying scenes etc... my mentor Chris Derochie wisely told us that sometimes you feel the need to change an animation or a camera angle because of someone's suggestion, or because you think that this could improve your film, but a different solution is not necessarily the best one- it’s just different!
So I tried to separate criticism that promised improvements or clarifications from those that suggested alternatives, the latter are helpful in preproduction, but could slow down the later stages.
In the animation, when I was not sure of a pose or an expression, I often went to look at the first sketches that had a freshness that could be lost in the slow process of 3D animation.
Animation Mentor:
Do you mind sharing some of the pre-production work with us with a little explanation of what we’re looking at.
Emanuele Pavarotti:
The small storyboard drawings proved very useful not just to study the single shots, but also to develop Marco, the background, and the design. While I was drawing, the final aspect of Marco showed up and so did the park. The light setting was kept light and smooth, like the watercolor, until the end. Translating it into 3D wasn't simple though: Giulia tried a lot of things out in order to obtain the desired results.
Camera angles play a very important role in the film: the beginning is calm, Marco gets bored, so the camera is very horizontal and does not move much. It's a very simple and stylized type of shot. When Marco starts to climb the tree the camera becomes more dynamic: it's based on vertical and diagonal lines; perspective lines accentuate and contribute to convey the dizziness that Marco feels when he realizes the height he has reached. The part when he slides down is the most dynamic and dramatic. The camera gets closer and closer, moves quickly and shots become very rapid. The fact that you can't see around clearly suggests panic.
In the end, when Marco comes back down and order is restored, shots become longer again and the camera returns to a horizontal angle, but remains close to Marco, because he has now established himself as our hero.
Animation Mentor:
What obstacles, if any, did you experience during the creation of your short film? How did you work your way around them?
Emanuele Pavarotti:
From a technical point of view, there were the usual Maya references that are very delicate, and I think they are cause of a headache or two for many of us! The rig didn't give us big problems except for eyebrows that we underestimated at the beginning, leaving them aside initially. They later required a lot of work and different attempts to obtain shapes with plenty of mobility, that could create good lines of action, curling up or down, whilst remaining realistically attached to his face.
In the course of the animation, I had doubts as opposed to real problems; on the style, in terms of striking the right balance between stylized synthesis and believable detail, being careful not to limit myself to just representing reality in a detached way, like motion capture would do, but trying to interpret it.
The render phase brought up a lot of technical problems; in the end, we used two different render softwares: Renderman for Maya and Mental Ray, because one could do what the other could not. For example the subsurface scattering on the tree and on Marco in back light is from Mental Ray, global illumination is from Renderman and motion blur too, which is smooth and fast. Having the possibility of using a render farm, lent to us by Ubik Vfx, was crucial. One or two PCs wouldn't have been enough.
Then there were challenges set by the size of the task that involved spending long weekends and vacations working on the short... at those times, when I had an inspiration crisis, I would watch a good short or animated movie that gave me new momentum, or if I was consumed by laziness, I would tell myself: “Ok, you're spending your holidays in front of your computer instead of some nice place just to work on your short: if you waste your time instead of working on it then you're doubly stupid... make the most of this time!” Another thought that forced me to fully commit myself was the work and the passion showed by the other members of the team.
Animation Mentor:
Tell how your Animation Mentor experience helped you in creating your short film.
Emanuele Pavarotti:
In many different ways. First, since having a good idea is not enough to make a film, AM provided me with all the necessary knowledge, ranging from the techniques of animation, to the parts relative to story, film structure and then storyboarding, layout, character design, camera angles. Later AM made me put this knowledge into practice through exercises, and then in the making of the short itself, never allowed me to neglect theory.
Then there is the provision of production schedules and weekly deadlines, fundamental for staying on course and getting your work finished! The role of the mentor, supervising all the way through, is crucial for discussing and developing the different possibilities, to dispel doubts and perplexities and to raise the bar, to make you aware of where you're making a mistake and of how to improve it.
And then there are all the students and the school itself that create the constructive energy that is so special and unique. It's really a defining characteristic of Animation Mentor. You feel it from the very first day of school, and then you discover how real it is!