wk03_Revised Boards

2 areas need to be worked on at this point: The quick-cut action montage after cube man copy pastes another army of villains, and the martial arts final showdown in the cube control tower.

Batman - Mask of the Phantasm Intro

Daniel found this title seq of the animated film, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. I thought the cartoon show was mindblowing. This is just stunning.

green screen tests

wk03_storyboard

Here's our first stab at the story. The beginning is slightly hard to follow because it cuts back and forth between two scenes: one is a slow zoom out of a wall of tv screens, displaying promotional material for the corporate company, whose logo is a square with a circle in it. The other shots are close up shots of the hero running and planting bombs onto the main servers underground at the main facility. The stories intersect when the hero runs in front of the tv's which is along a corridor. He kills a guard, pulling him behind the shadows, but not before the guard trips the alert button.

The drone designers grab their guns and prepare for his entry into the main room. However, the hero character distracts them by sending one of them a youtube link to the evil chipmunk video. They gather around and laugh (easily distracted, short attentionspans), and soon after the hero explodes into the church-like room, flying in mid air with guns firing. He kills the first wave of goons with a variety of weapons. The villain, who sits in a cube room high out of reach, copy-pastes more drones to attack. A series of close up maneuvers, too fast and close to understand what's happening in the space, implying a lot of ass kicking. We then zoom out to a pile of bodies so high that he begins to use it as a method to reach the main villain.

He climbs the pile of dead bodies and jumps into the main room. It is dark, and the villain appears to be sitting in his chair. But it turns out to be just his cube headrest. The real villain was hiding amongst his life sized posters of himself along the dark shadowy walls. A martial arts battle ensues, and in the process, the hero is fatally wounded, but not before he slings a portable flash drive (containing a lethal virus) into the villain's hard drive. The villain is still alive, but his reign of fascism is obliterated by the virus. The hero lies on the ground, about to die, but dials a keypad on his robotic arm (predator reference) and starts laughing. The entire place explodes, and everyone dies. The end.

Hero Glasses.

Some references for our hero's eye wear.

wk02_Style Frames and Sketches

Our first approach considered the project in terms of feasability, combining special effects and live action together. The high contrast, comicbook Sin City/Renaissance look seemed very doable in terms of production and mood, however, it's been done before, very well.


Our other approach involved the art deco style, like in the batman animated intro, where the colors are flat and non-realistic. Backgrounds would be much easier to create, however the stylistic combination of the flat graphic geometry seems problematic with photorealistic characters. Lighting will have to be carefully considered during the shoot.







Here are rough sketches of still frames we have in our minds, in no particular order, just based on our inspiration from action movies, compositions from posters, and art deco.

week01_Introduction

This is a collaborative motion project involving Andrew Tan, Daniel Chang, Kris Wong(myself), and Michael Relth. We have decided to embark on a 14 week project inspired by the ridiculousness of action movies. The amazing evolution of action films, from chinese martial arts films from the 70s, to low budget cg of the 80s, to high budget but still low-budget-looking films of the 90s, to crisp superrealistic graphics of this decade, the absurdity of the storyline still remains the most crucial and consistent element throughout the expanse of time.

The premise of our short film centers around a young designer who has been provoked by the evil design corporation villain and his army of soulless slavedesigners who care only about money and visual communication. Communication is not a bad thing, but to communicate without the passion or the love of creating borders on treason against enjoying life. This lone designer had his arm and leg cut off a few years ago after being tortured by the main villain because he purposely justified columns of type without setting the tracking and hypenation. However, he was so self-driven that he constructed a mechanical arm that can transform into a variety of design weapons, such as exacto blade ninja star shooters, and a t-square axe. His leg has a built-in Robocop gun holster that also renders bombs which he constructs from his cerebral sunglasses interface software. His only mission in life is to destroy the man who disfigured him, as well as the slick, clean corporate entity which blackens the hearts of so many young designers.


1-Inspirational Movie Posters


2-Movie Stills 01


3-Movie Stills 02


4-Art Deco Inspiration


5-Russian/Chinese Propaganda Posters


6-Batman Animated Series Intro - Scrumptiously Art Deco, and works well with the polished, corporate slick fascist regime. Art deco is very advantageous with dynamic shots because of its extreme 1 point perspective. The only trick would be to make it work well with live action footage of the hero flying through the air at 1000fps shooting an arm cannon.




7-Amazing Korean Animation - Apparently the premise of this movie is that in the future, when the world has run out of energy resources, we have to use our own feces as a way to generate electricity, but theres not enough to do it so they invent these blue popsicles that serves as a laxitive to make people shit more. However, these popsicles are addictive, so over time these shit-addicts turn into the blue smurf people whose only goal in life is to eat more popsicles. The cyborg hero tries to stop them, and the fast cutting action scenes are what we strive for in our project, only live action.