The Animated Sequence

Really early in the process of prep for the film James and I decided that the sequence in the film that describes the Judge's trip should be animated.  There were a number of reasons behind this decision - some pragmatic (we wouldn't have time to do this justice in principle photography) and others creative (stylistically how would we shoot this to show it's a dream/ trip?)

Because we had such a short amount of preproduction time, we didn't even look for animators or discuss styles of animation until after principle photography.  But once we started asking around we came to our decision quite quickly.  Our animator for the Judge's Trip is Ashleigh Hutchinson who I met a few years ago when she did some work experience with us.  We're going for a hand drawn 2D cut out stop motion style and Ashleigh has come up with some great drawings for the Judge character.

Judge Character Design by Ashleigh Hutchinson

Here is one of the images showing what he will look like!  A proper little pocket rocket!  I just hope Bill Fellows (who plays the The Judge) is as enamoured with his cartoon self as I am!  It must be quite odd to see an artist's impression of you/ your character in a film.  

I think I might ask Bill to write a little blog about it!  Anyway I've put a gallery together that  you can watch from this page by clicking below.  I'm really enjoying seeing this segment come together and I can't wait to see the finished sequence and then actually put it in the edit timeline!

The edit itself is coming together really well and we are just about to start the compositing, there are no visual effects as such - but there were a few sequences that we shot in front of a green screen and that's what we're about to start working on.  As for filming, we have another scene that we have decided to reshoot basically because of where we set it up last time.  

It's the scene in the Cock's Inn when Pob is booking the stag do; due to time constraints and key crew being off set, the scene was set up in front of a wall.  So instead of seeing the scope of the location and getting a real feel for what the Cock's Inn is like inside, you just see a wall!  Haha - hardly ideal.  We will then have only two scenes left to shoot - the opening flashback scene, which again like the Judge's trip was always going to happen outside principle photography as it involves two kids and we wanted to take our time casting them.  And finally we have a new scene that we have devised that will go right at the end of the film and will hopefully provide a really nice bookended coda.

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