Production notes
2007: Whoops!
For a year and a half I worked on the film part-time, with good help proving hard to find. Progress was slow, but about half way through 2007, animation had finally begun. At last, the fun part! Having never done any significant character animation before, I thought I'd stretch my legs with an action-based scene. Things started out reasonably well, but it wasn't long before I ran into trouble.
The story development in 2004 seemed good, so I didn't go back and rework it at the beginning of 2006. I thought it worked then, so why wouldn't it work now? I left it alone. But I was having difficulty finding my characters motivation when it came to animating them, so I started to worry. Incidentally, I was about to attend a seminar by a man who would be able to steer me in the right direction, a man who knows what he's talking about when it comes to story telling; Ed Hooks.
After having essentially a test screening of the animatic at Ed Hooks' seminar, it was clear I was heading down the wrong track. I had a classic case of filmmakers' "tunnel vision". It wasn't what Ed Hooks (and a room full of fellow animators) said, but what he (and they) DIDN'T say. It was an important lesson learned, and just in the nick of time!
I put the production on hold while I reworked the story. Choosing the familiar screenplay format, I rewrote the story over a dozen times, with the guidance of my mentors and peers. The changes were working well, and it wasn't long before a new animatic was made. With ongoing feedback from Ed Hooks, the animatic soon became a rough draft of the new film. It was an exciting new development, and I was now on the right track!
Much of the work that had been done was scrapped, but not all was lost! Luckily, what was needed to make this "new film" still existed! It was surprisingly easy to let go of all that work. I had essentially spent a couple of months reworking the script and animatic to end up in the same point in the production but with a much stronger film. Well worth it.