Edinburgh Project

Right......where do I start with this one?......The outcome of this project was not the best. Not really a good start to the course.....let me take you through it.
Before I get into the actual project let me just say that I actually really enjoyed myself during it, I had a great laugh and couldn't fault the people I was working with if I tried but I guess some people just don't work well together as a team, regardless of whether you all get on really well or not.

The aim of the project was to create a film about a street in edinburgh. Our team went out for a wee walk and decided to use the grass market. We went away and researched the street and at first we thought it would be a good idea to make a film of a sort of timeline of the history of the grassmarket.

I did a wee bit of market research and found some nice shadow puppet animations that I thought might work well. My team seemed to like this idea but I don't know if they were just being polite (one of the main issues was that no one really voiced their opinion if they didnt like an idea)

baku (shadow puppets) from John Atterbury on Vimeo.

We kind of had a bit of a reality check when we heard everyone elses ideas and realised ours wasnt really the best or that exciting. after going away to rethink our idea we decided to play on the name of the street and have the Grassmarket engulfed by grass. A person would walk through the grass and find different things throughout. we still wanted to include the history of the grassmarket so the person would find different historical landmarks. Also there were a few interesting pubs and cafes that we thought would be nice to animate the windows of.

Wee bit of inspiration

Giangrande - Paper Plane (Official Video) from gianluca maruotti on Vimeo.

we decided to split the animation work between us and everyone had to do a different scene and we would all animate a section of the grass

(proffesional reference video for the hands parting the grass)

I animated a falling waitor in one of the windows

I also had to animate a homeless beggars hand

But that never made it into the final film (because it looked bloody awful)

After all that animating we wanted to key it over a live action video walking through the Grassmarket. So we tried to edit in the dreaded After effects........

(This music sums up our experience with after effects)

We had alot of technical trouble and our video just refused to render. This didn't give us a chance to review what we had made so far and so we ended up showing a 6 minute film that could have been done in about 30 seconds. 

So after going to the pub and drowning our sorrows we came back and completely chopped up the film and fitted it into about 30 seconds. And to be honest with you it turned out not too bad. 

So here it is in all its failury (is that a word?) glory

Group 1 The Grassmarket from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

So! as I said not the best start to the course but I think my team gets extra bonus points for getting on so well and having a smashin good laugh in a pretty dire situation. To quote Mike Wazouski "Hey! at least we had some laughs"