mm_intro

[Klaus Hoefs]

Here comes the intro/wip:
http://www.inf.fh-flensburg.de/hoefs/+mm/mm_intro.htm
(mp4; H264; 17 MB; maybe you have to download free QuickTime-Player first...)
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edit: download to your disk : http://www.inf.fh-flensburg.de/hoefs/+m ... 9_H264.mp4
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screenshots:http://www.khoefs.de/mm_preview/index.htm

fishermen

Klaus Hoefs 11.jpg (35.2 KiB) Viewed 27054 times

[Elodie]

wah ! how impressive it is !

Very good work =D

[Paul Fierlinger]

This looks like something so promising but I can't get beyond about 3 or 4 seconds of the video, no matter how long I leave it opened. Elodie, did you see the entire clip?

[Paul Fierlinger]

As soon as I wrote that it started playing (maybe it needs to be complained about). I love quirky stuff and this is so quirky. For instance the combination of 3D objects and 2D at the beginning, where something like the moving grains of sand one would expect to be 3D but it isn't ... such subtleties of irony. But in that case I expected to see more of these combos throughout. The drawings are well animated so that sketchy lines don't become annoying when they are put into motion. You must have spent a lot of time experimenting with the style before you decided to forge ahead. I think you should be careful about some of the edits. One questionable one that I remember the most where the two people on the dock start as a MCU scene and are followed by the same composition only the camera has now been setback to a EWS. You might have placed a slight dissolve between them, but it still feels like a jump cut. I think it could use a cutaway shot between the two.

I presume you wrote the piece and the music and play the guitar and do the V.O. yourself -- do you plan on keeping it this way, or do you consider this a scratch track?

[Klaus Hoefs]

For all who can't get a proper viewing: download-link : http://www.inf.fh-flensburg.de/hoefs/+m ... 9_H264.mp4

elodie and Paul, thank you both very much for your comments.

elodie - sorry, I'm just curious and also it would help me a lot - can you please be so kind to specify what you liked and what was less well-done ?

Paul, the combination of sketching and the hyper-realism of 3D is going on in the next scene I am now working on. The reason for it was to break my own system and to have that way a counterpart. But I think it must come as as a surprise not as an expected system.
Thanks for the tip on editing. You're right I could still improve it. I'll try the cutaway.
Yes I did all by myself which I decided after the last festival I was in. Although a music editor (he is also a fine modern jazz pianist) agreed to take part for the ambient sounds (which are missing by now) and the final audio mastering I want to have my own voice and feelings present here. On one hand this maybe called introspective and narcissistic but there also many chances (authentic)...and I have time. So the answer is that these tracks are final (mostly).

[Paul Fierlinger]

This new link works much better; both better picture and sound. I agree with you about using the 3D element only as a surprise -- I forgot that this is to be a longer film. After seeing it again, I noticed how nicely the water is done in the scene with the two boys playing in their boats. Not only do the wavelets move about, but the whole sea heaves up and down -- really nice touch (which I will .. ehm ... try out myself. ) There's another thing I find interesting, which is that you shuffle the scenes about as if all were stills, which makes the ones with motion seem like a treat ... I just wonder how long you can keep this up without one wishing for a new idea. Speaking of stills; the scene of the boats on low tide is pretty and makes me wish that it lingered a wee bit longer before the camera zoom up, which by the way looks jerky. Is this just the viewer's deficiency or is it your intention?

[Klaus Hoefs]

and makes me wish that it lingered a wee bit longer before the camera zoom up, which by the way looks jerky. Is this just the viewer's deficiency or is it your intention?

To be honest, you made a point. I made a zoom because of the hammering-on of the guitar note (reverse to a pull-off of the guitar string) but now I just imagined the frames without the zoom and it seems a better solution.

Not only do the wavelets move about, but the whole sea heaves up and down -- really nice touch (which I will .. ehm ... try out myself. )

which is ..ehm...sg I learned from you.

[Paul Fierlinger]

which is ..ehm...sg I learned from you.

Did you really?! My memory loss is getting to be unwieldy.

[BenEcosse]

they are like moving etchings.

[Klaus Hoefs]

There's another thing I find interesting, which is that you shuffle the scenes about as if all were stills, which makes the ones with motion seem like a treat ... I just wonder how long you can keep this up without one wishing for a new idea.

This is called the Intro and the jumps have different functionality beside its style concerning the content:, introducing parts of the seaside town and the man's room, introducing the man with his blue coat and some fishermen and the main theme: the man waiting for his lost woman and the townspeople waiting for the fishes. There has always been a connection and a long tradition between erotic, life and fishes - at least in European Art and culture (Bosch, Beckmann...)
I hope the Intro works as an appetizer.

The next scenes have to deal much more with the continuing story and so I have to change the style of telling which now should be different and more understandable.
-blue man is recording sounds of mussels in his room
- he has lost his wallet at the pier (also seen in the intro) and it comes out that he is not so much an audio engineer (which he claims) but was a former pilot in the army who has taken now his permanent injuries into mussels
- the townspeople are staying apart from him in many unfriendly ways but not the one night when they are all together dead drunk in their one sleazy tavern
- until the early morning hours when the wicked messenger arrives shouting "Fishes are back!"
- everyone is running down to the pier, it is low tide and really - in a hollow filled with water remained only one but big fish - a Coelancanth.
- And as it is with this kind of prehistoric fish in the moment of lifting the fish powders.

(all in all should be 12 minutes ( this clip was 3 minutes) )

[slowtiger]

Like it!

"title, title" is a good title, btw. (I would just write "film" instead of "shortfilm", though.)

How much colour do you plan to add? In the last shot, I'd additionally colour just the two captains ( a bit), but not more, and I'd use that amount of colour for all scenes. The captain's pulling little boats is such a great idea!

Voice and guitar are good (I don't like guitars much... ), I think if they could sound a bit mor "broken" it would benefit the film.

(Klaus, ich bin im Juni wieder in HH, mein Film hat Premiere auf dem Shortfilmfestival.)

[Klaus Hoefs]

@ Ben

Thank you very much!

they are like moving etchings

I was fiddling with this style a long time having many frustrations and at least two projects ("travel", "LL") cancelled and I am still experimenting with it.
Maybe there is a sort of interest for others around here: The parts in motions have less crosshatchings but the frames with stopped motion have more and are drawn more carefully. It is all about making a compromise this way and as a second I try to avoid the look of being blinkered (which can happen with forcing crosshatchings) with accepting loose and sketchy style in many parts.

[Klaus Hoefs]

How much colour do you plan to add? In the last shot, I'd additionally colour just the two captains ( a bit), but not more, and I'd use that amount of colour for all scenes. The captain's pulling little boats is such a great idea!

Thanks Markus! ( 1st of May in Berlin and you are at home ? Not parting at some demonstration?? )

I don't know why it is this way ( studied art having Baselitz as a teacher!) but for this film I decided to have only minimized colors - as always.
But I will think about coloring the captains a little.
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Glückwunsch! Melde dich doch einfach mit email im Juni und wir sollten uns treffen !!!

[slowtiger]

Minimized colours: of course I can't judge from just this example, but it feels a bit "unfinished" to me, especially in the parts where you have transparent characters moving over a background. This always looks like a pencil test to me. OTOH, filling such a transparent character with just one colour, or the background colour, again changes the feeling. I think it would be a good idea to "erase" the background drawing a bit under the character, but with not very exact borders. Maybe a bit like in sand or oil animation. Just an idea.

I always like it when in a pencil drawing there's just one single stroke of colour, nearly accidentially, like the stain of a coffee mug.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The stain of a coffee mug is a good parable and I like to use that kind of coloring with drawings in which I want to keep the line the most salient aspect -- but a coffee stain is made of several layers of colors; it's not as simple as it sounds -- which is perhaps why this style can be so effective. If you want to experiment with it, I would suggest applying several (perhaps just three) layers and not to attempt to create the effect by painting on a single layer. When you create all the bottom layer strokes and then go back to start and paint the smaller and darker middle layer stroke etc., you can achieve more unity and avoid the "shakes" in the overall effect.