It's been a long time coming but tomorrow at 12pm I'll be launching the latest film by Roseline Lau and myself Porcelain
It will all go down here:
http://porcelainfilm.blogspot.com/
This blog will home Porcelain and Existence which you can watch at high quality. If you wonder why only these films are on this blog, well that's because Porcelain is a sequal of sorts to Existence.
The idea for Porcelain came from when I was just about to finish Existence. I thought what if these fighters were never able to fight and they had to be less than they were able to be. Existence was a film about being all that you can be, throwing everyone and anything aside living and pushing life to its limits to prove existence.
I'll let you watch Porcelain first before I tell you what this films underlining theme is. One thing I'll tell you however was I wanted this film to have another voice, another point of view and sensibility to it. Originally this film was written with another filmmaker in mind to collaborate with and at that stage it was going to be liveaction with a mix of animation. It failed a funding round and then I went back and reworked the script editted out some characters and restructured what I was going to do with it and decided to build on the style I created with Existence.
On Existence, Roseline came in on the end of production (after finsihing her own high stressed stopmotion film) and she really helped me get over the line taking on some of the hardest shots (the shot where the camera spins around the main character as he walks over and picks up his sword) and not only did she do it well you could also see a strong personality in her work. Rose's gift is in her characters. She really gets inside of them and pulls out their personalities. Over the production of this movie we bounced around working on various childrens animated tv series and that side of her has really grown and really taught me what it is to be a character animator. No other animator I've worked with has ever come close to what she can do. Anyway I digress, back to what I was trying to say and that is I saw something special in her work on Existence and that was a voice I wanted to add to Porcelain. So I gave her complete control of one character, 'The Doll'.
In the original script the story was retold twice, once from the point of view of the guy (LB) and once from the point of view of the Doll. I storyboarded LB's story and Rose storyboarded the Dolls. About this time last year we had to scrap this idea. It was really heartbreaking as a lot of Roseline's stuff never got done. There are some beautiful character sequences that got lost in this cut but Porcelain was a really long project stretching over 5 years, and the (very patient and supporting) people we received funding from needed the film done and we needed to move on with life. I dont feel that it was ever a 5 year film more a 6 month film just that 6months+life=5years. So we had to combine both stories and it became a different film and I felt a new type of story turned up.
Actually once the animation/editting was all done Adrian Tolman (who's done sound on nearly all my films) and I found another story again when we started laying done the sounds. I have always felt if I did have a really clear idea of what I wanted to do when making a movie I probably wouldnt want to do it as I already know what that movie is going to be. So I am really happy with how Porcelain turned out. So even though some shots were cut, there's still some great scenes by Roseline, I know I did some of my best stuff with the design and some standout pieces of animation that I'm suprised I even did oh and I lovvvvvve the soundmix. Working with Adrian is always awesome and we had so much fun doing the sound. There's a lot of creativity behind Porcelain and I really think that comes through, we didnt hold back on our ideas and throughout the film you can see new ideas popping up all over the place. This is the type of film I like and after all the suffering I'm really happy with what we have made.
Also hosting this film on a website rather than doing a festival screening gives me a few more options. Maybe those scenes cut will come back, be animated a completely different way. I now have a world where it can exist and grow, currently Rose and I are producing a comic that prequels the film. There's only 2 pages up at the moment (there will be 6 in total) but they give you a good idea of where we are going with the story. We did some little kid drawings for the comic. We did this by switching to our opposite drawing hands.
So thanks to everyone who helped us make this film and supported us. I hope you're able to check the film out and enjoy what we have created.
Tomorrow Porcelain will screen for the world and tomorrow I turn 30 years old. I really enjoyed my 20s. I produced some films and comics that I'm proud of, I met heaps of great people, learnt a whole bunch of things, had some great experiences and despite losing my job only a month ago (and they deciding not to pay me for the work I did and being jerks about it) I'm happy with with where I am. I go into my 30s optimististic because if I knew what my life was going to be it wouldn't be worth living, something new and awesome will definately turn up.
Tim
*update* Porcelain is viewable now!
