Joy - Second Edit

We’ve had a little break from Joy while we have been travelling around South East Asia and Hong Kong, it was an amazing trip and a brilliant chance to experience different cultures which are extremely lively and vibrant and we are sure this trip will have some sort of influence on our future work. We also got a chance to visit the 25 Years of Pixar exhibition, which was residing at the Hong Kong National Heritage Museum; an amazing exhibition which shows the vast amount of preparation work that goes into digital animating and is never seen.

After a few days rest to recover from our jet lag we began work on Joy again this weekend, completing a second edit to correct some timing issues and also to experiment with our chroma keying. The soundtrack by John Hamilton is sounding fantastic, it’s extremely emotive and really drives the action and emotion of the film. A behind the scenes short is also now well underway and will provide an insight into the making of stop motion.

Joy - First Cut

This weekend we edited a first cut of Joy. It was amazing to see all the shoots come together in sequence and to watch the film develop in front of our eyes. The edit wasn't too complicated as the nature of shooting in stop motion means we did a lot of initial editing as we were filming. However cutting in closeups of the scrapbook and newspaper proved the most difficult aspect as we had to really focus on timing and synchronising the shots.

We have now sent this edit to John Hamilton, who is going to compose an original soundtrack for Joy. We can't wait to hear what he comes up with as his previous work is outstanding. We also need to record and edit sound effects into the sequence and fine tune the edit.

We are also beginning to work on editing a behind the scenes documentary. We filmed the whole shooting process and are now using this footage to give a brief insight to the process of making an animation.

Joy - Scrapbook and Newspaper Shoot

During this week we made a newspaper and large scale version of Harold's scrapbook. This weekend we also shot close-ups of these; both as the pages are turning, and focusing in on particular articles, photographs, letters etc. These shots will be edited into the scenes where Harold is reading the paper or looking through his scrapbook, so that we get a sense of seeing things through his eyes, and to utilise a different style of shot.

After this shoot was completed we began to cut a rough edit of the film. We have all of Harold's shots edited into sequence, and now we need to cut in these shots of the newspaper and scrapbook, and also some still scenic shots we have taken throughout the process to highlight some of the details in the models and to set the scene.

Our blogs from now on will keep you up to date on the editing process until Joy is completed!

Joy - House Sequence Shoot (Week 2)

This weekend we shot the final scenes with Harold, he has been great to work with and we are very proud of him as our first attempt at creating a functional armature, however he has also highlighted issues we need to address next time.

This shoot involved all the scenes with Harold in his pyjamas, so we were shooting in his bedroom for the first time, as well as filming the night time sequences. The lighting and camera angles were again much easier to control. We particularly like the lighting in the morning sequences when Harold wakes up; the morning sun shines through his window creating a lovely warm glow. The night time shots were equally as simple to light as we just gave each room a direct over-head light source.

Some of these scenes were the most emotional and distressing for Harold in the storyline, therefore we had to effectively portray this in our animation of him. The shots we took this weekend are some of our favourite in the whole film, so it was a brilliant shoot to end on.

We are going to miss Harold!