little face catch up

I am currently deep in to production on a new short film entitled Little Face. It is being produced by Calling the Shots for Southwest Screen and the British Film Council as part of the Digital Shorts scheme. It is about a man who has a chance encounter with his imaginary friend from his childhood and they spend an afternoon becoming re-acquainted.

It is my first live action film, although I haven't strayed too far from my comfort zone as Little Face is being achieved with the magic of animation. The shoot was completed in June and since then I have been mostly busy animating Little Face and struggling with the complicated nature of believably compositing a yellow blob in to a live action environment. Fortunately I have some good help with the compositing, unfortunately I do not have any help with the animation so time is running out and there is still quite a lot to do.

I was intending to post some Little Face stuff on a blog but never quite got round to it so I am now going to post some Little Face stuff on this blog in a retrospective manner. I figure a good place to start is near the beginning so here are the original images that I created for the pitch to Southwest Screen. I used my flatmate and co-worker Felix Massie as a stand in for the character of Nathan (eventually to be played by Adam Buxton who is a better actor then Felix Massie and is on the radio and TV and I have never heard Felix Massie on the radio or seen him on TV but I look forward to when I do).




As part of the pitch I also made the following storyboard for a scene that didn't make it in to the final film...

That was the pitch. It all seemed so simple back then. 'How hard can a film about a yellow blob on legs be?' I thought. Turns out it's quite hard.