Star Wars uncut

[Mads Juul]

Made this little clip for the Star Wars uncut Poject
http://madsjuul.blogspot.com/2010/04/st ... t-189.html
see rest of the project here
http://starwarsuncut.com/

-mads

[Elodie]

I read an article about this, this morning in the train. I direcly thought about you when I read the event was in Copenhagen

(sh** I would had to keep the article, because it was illustrated with your art ! The article from l'Essentiel)

[Paul Fierlinger]

Every clip is a jump cut within the same scene; did you do this with some specific intention?

[Mads Juul]

Hey Paul
I did it for fun to be part of the
Star Wars Uncut Project
http://starwarsuncut.com/
Unfortunately I didn't figured out that the project was finished when I finished my clip some weeks ago so mu clip didn't get into the finished film.
By coincidence the film had World Premiere In Copenhagen Yesterday.
but anyways I also did it just to make some animation. and to practice myself in the different states of making animation. for instance I have never really mafe backgrounds before so that was fun/diffficult to think about colors.

Regarding the editing. I actually don't have the big problem with Jump cuts.(I'm a fan of the editing style of South Park). I like to make small camera movement between shots. and also too move the parts of the background a little bit to soften up the Jump Cut. for instance the Lamp on the table and the background move to soften the Jump cut and I like it that way.

I havn't been animating so much for my own sake in my life so this is also I way to find out how do I like to animate. what is my style? when I'm not getting any money for it. I don't think this is my style. a little maybe. But I made it just for fun And I would like to do that lot more in the future. Instead of just make animation when somebody pays me.

And finally I really like the crazy crerative energi there is in the Star Wars uncut Project. A lot of people doing stuff. it's not art but it is Creativity. And i really like that
-Mads

[Paul Fierlinger]

Which all brings out an interesting topic of discussion because animation versus live action has more latitude in breaking such rules of required camera angles than photography will ever have. But all these rules, broken or not, are designed in the name of fluid story telling. South Park is a unique graphics style all in its own world so they can break rules of convention in their own ways.

I'm not sure that their tricks can be successfully transfered back into the more classical type of cartooning, such as the one you have chosen -- which really comes close to live action, considering the out of focus backgrounds, the standard, round table setup of the characters, lighting directions etc.

[Mads Juul]

That's a good point.
If you carefully plan you style you can prepare the audience to expect Jump cuts or Breaking the camera line. So they will accept you style as liquid story telling and not get annoyed or confused by the editing style.

But thats NOT what I have done in my litlle clip.
You kind of expect classical emotional cinematography. and suddenly. I make this strange Jump cuts. and it confuses
I think it would have been better if The Long shot had been more from the side maybe and the closu ups of Luke and obi-wan more directly en face. (and the move ment had been better from one shot to the next. And I was a little lazy so I copied and retraced the end pose from one shot to the next)

It makes me think about comedy vs Emotions.
It is funny with straight jump cuts but not so emotional. The small scene I made should emotional. and in that sense the Jump cuts don't work and actually confuses because you as a viewer expect another way of cinematography.

[Paul Fierlinger]

This is exactly how I felt when viewing your clip; everything along the lines of what you describe here (and good for you to be able to take your own work apart like that!) But I won't let you off the hook yet The same thoughts about Comedy versus Emotions apply when it comes to following the soundtrack, which I presume you had upfront to animate to. I missed an emotional reaction of one player to another, in one case the guy who crashes below the screen. Now, to have one actor deadpan such a crash would be funny but it would require more time to prepare the scene to make it work. This way it looks as if you simply missed an opportunity to milk the gag. The still sitting actor could have laughed, or rolled his eyes, or banged his head against the table... all sorts of funny counter-reactions to complete the gag.

[Peter Wassink]

Apart from the problems you are discussing here i must say i thoroughly enjoyed the animation, lovely loose drawings, a pitty it didn't make the film.

[Mads Juul]

But I won't let you off the hook yet

Thank you. It's good brain exercise. And you did. there would be no discussion. and improvement

but it would require more time to prepare the scene to make it work.

You are right. but the fox falling down under the table it's actually not the joke. The Joke is the bad acting of the Fox . So You got the Joke in a way
The Joke(Or should I say the point of this clip because it's not relly a joke more a decleration of love).
Well Mark Hamill who played Luke Skywalker in the first 3 Star Wars has always been mocked as a bad actor. In star wars.Opposite to Alec Guiness (Obi Wan the green guy in my clip)
and Harrison Ford(Han solo the hedgehog in my little clip). So I wanted to make some ok nice controlled acting from Han Solo and Obi Wan and some over the top, bad, inappropriate acting from luke(the fox) Where he kind of tries to steal the scene from the two others. I think if knew the premise for the movie(Fans recreating the film). you would hopefully see this homage to the bad acting of Mark Hamill. Which I actually like.

A badly timed clip or a crammed clip is also a part of the project. because the idear is you recreate 15 seconds of the original starwars. you keep the time 15 seconds. But you also want to put some extra in. so if it was well timed in the original. most of the clips made will become(should become) crammed. or to fast timed. no pausing.
hmm I would have pasted a link the a 5 min clip from the finished film. I will do this later.
-Mads

[Paul Fierlinger]

This is all interesting what you describe here; it says that Script Writing by Democracy Fails. Over the past two or three years I have watched a new venue for animation rise on the online pages of the New York Times. It's the Jeff Scher Animated Life series Animated Life, which I have brought up on these forums before. http://www.cartoonbrew.com/animators/je ... ofile.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Not all his mini films thrill me as much as a few and I don't consider him an animator per se, but I do like his entire package and I do consider him a top notch writer.

Scher balances out his animations with good music by Shay Lynch, who would at times be even better if he were to be left entirely to his own devices; to improvise on his own. You might see where I'm going with this... collaborations work best if the participants are left pure freedom to improvise and each participant is a master of a separate art form.

I see this as the future domain of hand painted animation on the pages of all the emerging iPads, Kindles, Vooks and iPods that have already hatched. Reading a brief, sparkling essay; the kind Jeff Scher is so good at, (which used to be known in its newspaper heydays as the feuilleton) and which is coming back to its regular favored spot at the bottom of the front page, is the treat of the morning read, especially when illustrated by cheerful, independent artists such as James Thurber or Saul Steinberg used to be, and now the current Maira Kalman http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and Jeff Scher have become (The Principles of Uncertainty; also NY Times online).

If Mads were to write two paragraphs of what he sees in his animated clip (including his self-recognized missteps) and the iPad reader would have the joy of playing the clip over and over to follow Mads' thoughts, and if the little piece would be wrapped up with a "thought of the day" contemplation, we would start to see a growing audience for this contemporary form of the old queen of the morning, the feuilleton.

This is what I intend to teach in my forthcoming classes at Penn... find your own voices, take writing classes as well as drawing classes and music lessons, start practicing on the pages of your own blog or face book until you get noticed by others and grow your own venue by bringing to the page an entire growing audience or write and animate your own vook. There is so much room for travelogues, teenage angst tribulations, love letters and just all kinds of observations of the world surrounding us -- part written, part animated and part sound and it shouldn't cost a penny to produce.