The way I've planned the Concrete Babylon project differs from how I've worked previously. I used to plan my film projects very linear where I started with the story, decided on a theme and then wrote a synopsis before moving on to the outline to the treatment and to the screenplay, then I did the character and set designs, storyboard and the animatic before moving on to do the animation and, after a huge amount of time, when I was done I moved on to the editing and sound design. On paper this always looked good. One element building on top of the other, constructing the film one step after the other. But the problem was that nothing in the world works perfectly linear.
Following the steps rigidly actually slowed me down. I found that each step always gave some new information about the characters and the story forcing me to either move back and redo what I've already done or, if I've come so far in the production that I couldn't move back and redo much of what I've done, I had to struggle to find a solution that could somewhat hide the problem but couldn't fully solve it.
An example is the film "Winter Night" that I made as my graduation project from the animation course I took at Diagonalakademin (the trailer of Winter Night is available in Animations section). After I finished animating the film, that had huge problems in the screenplay although I'm not going to get in to that now, and I began making a rough sound mix I found that the images in the first third of the film where too silent. When adding sound effects to the actions they, the sound effects had to be so silent that they barely were heard or they "popped out" and didn't go well with the images. I did consider trying to contact a professional sound designer or somebody studying sound design, but since the film was 27,5 minutes long and I only had 2,5-3 weeks untill my deadline, so I instead opted for trying to let the sound design be fully musical, working from compositions from classical composers. Did it work? Not that well. Could I have done it differently to decrease the risk of the problem happening? Yes, by incorporating rough sound design earlier.
My experience on "Winter Night" may have been slightly extreme with a problem that seldom shows up, but trying to work too linear is something I've found makes more problems appear and actually slows down the process of tying to solve the problems by locking the creator in a narrow and closed mindset. Trying to find the essence of the story by deciding on the theme/message and then writing a synopsis isn't as easy as it looks on paper. Although it is true that it is pretty much impossible to write a story without knowing the essence of it, its theme, it oftentimes it is better to, temporarily, get in to more detail to find the essence of the characters and the story. Its like the difference of looking at the story from an airplane or from a microscope.
To find the essence of the story it sometimes it is better to have a overview of the entire story but at times it is better to get in to the details and at other times it may be better to illustrate parts of the story or work on the sound design/soundtrack or thinking about the editing style. Looking at a subject from different angles gives a better three dimensional picture of what it is than just studying it from one side, and this is something that should be worked in to the project planning. This may seem like common sence, and to my understanding, the larger studios like Pixar work this way, having the different parts of the studios working on their part as soon as they can, knowing that a lot of the work being done in the beginning will be thrown out but still is essential for telling the story in the best way. But for me, working alone, the concept of wearing several hats at once, working on several things at the same time without loosing my focus or things getting chaotic just seemed impossible.The solution to this was actually was very simple. Instead of focusing on strictly planning the actions int to a schedule and execute them in order I started to focus on the goals and on what, at that specific time, was needed to move me forward.
I now have milestones that are pretty strict in what I need to get done, but how I achieve those goals is flexible. Each week I look at where I am on the path to reach the milestone and what I did last week - what I achieved, what problems I encountered and what lessons I've learned - I then decide on three most important things I need to achieve to move me closer to the mile stone. Each day I do the same, look at where I'm at on achieving my weekly goals, what I did the day before, and then decide on what the best actions are to do to move me closer to the weekly goals.
If I fail to achieve what I wanted in a day or in a week I try to not look at it as the end of the world, instead I try to look at why it happened, if I took the wrong actions or if the goals I set where unrealistic, and I think about what I in can do to solve the problem and, most importantly, I try to learn from it. We learn as long as we live, and we live only as long as we continue to learn. We learn the most by pushing ourselfs and when we push ourselfs and work outside of our boundaries we will make mistakes but it is through our mistakes and failures that we can learn our lessons and get better. In sports psychology it is said that "If you are afraid to lose, you are afraid to win" and the same applies to filmmaking, if you are to afraid to fail you are not going to push yourself and have a chance to do something out of the ordinary and successful. The important thing is that we learn from our failures and that we fail fast so that we have the time to fix the problems. Working efficiently isn't only about saving money, it feeds our creativity by giving us the time to fail.
In the future I will get in to the milestones I have set for Concrete Babylon, what their goals are and how they work. Some of them are just common sence things that (almost) everybody does, other are somewhat different and may at first seem weird.
Thank you for reading, hope you've enjoyed it,
Peter Hertzberg
Following the steps rigidly actually slowed me down. I found that each step always gave some new information about the characters and the story forcing me to either move back and redo what I've already done or, if I've come so far in the production that I couldn't move back and redo much of what I've done, I had to struggle to find a solution that could somewhat hide the problem but couldn't fully solve it.
An example is the film "Winter Night" that I made as my graduation project from the animation course I took at Diagonalakademin (the trailer of Winter Night is available in Animations section). After I finished animating the film, that had huge problems in the screenplay although I'm not going to get in to that now, and I began making a rough sound mix I found that the images in the first third of the film where too silent. When adding sound effects to the actions they, the sound effects had to be so silent that they barely were heard or they "popped out" and didn't go well with the images. I did consider trying to contact a professional sound designer or somebody studying sound design, but since the film was 27,5 minutes long and I only had 2,5-3 weeks untill my deadline, so I instead opted for trying to let the sound design be fully musical, working from compositions from classical composers. Did it work? Not that well. Could I have done it differently to decrease the risk of the problem happening? Yes, by incorporating rough sound design earlier.
My experience on "Winter Night" may have been slightly extreme with a problem that seldom shows up, but trying to work too linear is something I've found makes more problems appear and actually slows down the process of tying to solve the problems by locking the creator in a narrow and closed mindset. Trying to find the essence of the story by deciding on the theme/message and then writing a synopsis isn't as easy as it looks on paper. Although it is true that it is pretty much impossible to write a story without knowing the essence of it, its theme, it oftentimes it is better to, temporarily, get in to more detail to find the essence of the characters and the story. Its like the difference of looking at the story from an airplane or from a microscope.
To find the essence of the story it sometimes it is better to have a overview of the entire story but at times it is better to get in to the details and at other times it may be better to illustrate parts of the story or work on the sound design/soundtrack or thinking about the editing style. Looking at a subject from different angles gives a better three dimensional picture of what it is than just studying it from one side, and this is something that should be worked in to the project planning. This may seem like common sence, and to my understanding, the larger studios like Pixar work this way, having the different parts of the studios working on their part as soon as they can, knowing that a lot of the work being done in the beginning will be thrown out but still is essential for telling the story in the best way. But for me, working alone, the concept of wearing several hats at once, working on several things at the same time without loosing my focus or things getting chaotic just seemed impossible.The solution to this was actually was very simple. Instead of focusing on strictly planning the actions int to a schedule and execute them in order I started to focus on the goals and on what, at that specific time, was needed to move me forward.
I now have milestones that are pretty strict in what I need to get done, but how I achieve those goals is flexible. Each week I look at where I am on the path to reach the milestone and what I did last week - what I achieved, what problems I encountered and what lessons I've learned - I then decide on three most important things I need to achieve to move me closer to the mile stone. Each day I do the same, look at where I'm at on achieving my weekly goals, what I did the day before, and then decide on what the best actions are to do to move me closer to the weekly goals.
If I fail to achieve what I wanted in a day or in a week I try to not look at it as the end of the world, instead I try to look at why it happened, if I took the wrong actions or if the goals I set where unrealistic, and I think about what I in can do to solve the problem and, most importantly, I try to learn from it. We learn as long as we live, and we live only as long as we continue to learn. We learn the most by pushing ourselfs and when we push ourselfs and work outside of our boundaries we will make mistakes but it is through our mistakes and failures that we can learn our lessons and get better. In sports psychology it is said that "If you are afraid to lose, you are afraid to win" and the same applies to filmmaking, if you are to afraid to fail you are not going to push yourself and have a chance to do something out of the ordinary and successful. The important thing is that we learn from our failures and that we fail fast so that we have the time to fix the problems. Working efficiently isn't only about saving money, it feeds our creativity by giving us the time to fail.
In the future I will get in to the milestones I have set for Concrete Babylon, what their goals are and how they work. Some of them are just common sence things that (almost) everybody does, other are somewhat different and may at first seem weird.
Thank you for reading, hope you've enjoyed it,
Peter Hertzberg
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