Comic Books!

After our first production meeting with the crew, DOP Azul Serra brought up the idea of perhaps showing the characters previous history through comic books that we could show as part of our campaign. This was as the film has a certain comic book elements, both in the narrative and how these surreal characters exist in a very real world.

So after that meeting, I started touting around for an illustrator who would be willing to collaborate with us. After posting on a few forums and sending to a few colleges and universities, I got a very positive response from a comic book artist from Cleveland College of Art and Design (http://www.ccad.ac.uk/) who is known online as Phoenix Ryte. He sent me a link to some of his material (http://phenixryte23.deviantart.com/) and from there we started thinking of ideas and styles that would fit the film and comic book.

The back story idea we came up with was that Bonzo appeared at Mr. Fernelli's school, and the young magician was not too taken with the obvious and as he saw, dated humour of the clown and attempts to embarrass him. The after leaving school and setting on his own path as a magician, can't find any work so if forced to form a duo with Bonzo, the straight man to the clown. We then see a third scenario in which the ambitious Fernelli starts to plot Bonzos downfall.

It was interesting putting this together, as I hadn't given much thought to their back stories as I liked the ambiguity of it, but what doing this has done has given us a firm rooting of the characters, knowing a bit more about their motivations and where they have come from and to, and will be interesting to flesh this out not only with the unique comic books we are creating for our IndieGoGo backers but also in the audition process with the actors.

As you can see from the designs, we have used the colour pallette and designs based on our stills shoot, but the characters are not exactly the same. Bonzo's hair is more red than orange (to show thats where Fernelli gets his idea from) and Fernelli is also more the traditional magician, before he takes on the aspect of clownishness into his act and starts to take Bonzo's audience.

Having finalised the character designs we are now working on having the comics finished in the next few weeks.

Decisions, decisions...

Taking on a project this size (in that we are doing the campaign as well as the film) is starting to test my decision making skills to the maximum. I have always been a fan of exhausting a few avenues (unless I have an instinctive feel for something) and being open to being proved wrong, so I and others can provide options and not feel stifled creatively, especially in short film where they are usually working to experiment, rather than for the pay check.

However, being across so many different areas, not taking firm decisions is not going to be helping anyone. We have been discussing the costume for the photo shoot for the past few weeks and so many ideas have been put forward, to be honest I have gotten a bit lost and there came a point talking to Katerina this evening that I couldn't see the wood through the trees and was confusing her and myself! The ideas became muddled and unclear as we were trying to incorporate so much of what we had discussed that we were now using so many styles and colours that the overall affect was becoming messy.

However, one thing I am getting rather good at is not panicking and taking a moment to pause and think "right, how do we solve this" without becoming frustrated. In this case, I took a moment to go back to the very basic idea and I drew, rather slowly, how I saw the two main clowns appearing and tried to disregard anything else (see above). I wrote down in bullet point form the main things and directions I liked and the colours I instinctively saw, and that seemed to help both me and Katerina to see just the things we needed to accomplish and focus on that. I tend to overcomplicate things and so have to remind myself...if in doubt, keep things simple!

After today, I think our costume designs are now in the advanced stage and we are ready to start sourcing material from the textiles place Leilani found. I will be confirming our studio shoot date with Tower Bridge Studios (http://www.towerbridgestudios.com/) who have kindly lent us their studio space and then arranging meetings with costume and makeup so we can start trying stuff on our actors! Also in the mix is setting up a bank account for the film, meeting a clown who will act as consultant for the film and getting the website further down the line.

I have to admit I am feeling a little swamped at the moment, but am reminding myself to keep myself and my responses to things simple, succinct and to the point in order to get things done :-)