The poster!

The trailer of Beach Flags

End of Post Production

I still have 2 days of mixing the sounds, and it will be done! Lionel at Vega Prod is the sound engineer and he is doing a great job, I am also very happy with the music. I will just have to work on subtitles during the Christmas holidays. Camille from Sacrebleu is assisting me on the subtitles and the whole post-production. She has done a brilliant job, same as Aubane. Thank you  Sacrebleu team, you are the best!
It is unbelievable, after 2 years of working on this project,  I will finally finish  making Beach Flags by the end of this weak...

Le Ciné-Concert

Our musique residency ended with the Ciné-Concert on friday night which went magnificently well, followed by a delicious persian buffet. We all had such a great time in La Chaise Dieu. Thanks to La communauté de la commune de La Chaise Dieu and Claire Monteillard who made this possible.

La Chaise Dieu

After two days of Bruitage and Sound editing in Paris, now we are in in a small town in Auvergne, “La Chaise Dieu” for a music residency. Yan Volsy the composer and his group of musicians have travelled from Paris to here and another group of musicians from the conservatoir de puy en velay are also now here. My sister Mariam sings a song that she has written herself. These past two days repeating in the auditorium has been so exciting that I haven’t felt the time go by. Tomorrow we are going to have a Ciné-Concert! here are some pictures of the recordings and preparations before the concert.

http://www.clermont-filmfest.com/index.php?m=103&c=76#467

As I must have mentioned before, my short film « Beach Flags » is produced by Sacrebleu productions in Paris. But we have a little co production with Folimage as well. And thanks to many regional bourses, I have had the chance to work in many places for my film. I have had a long journey around France for about one whole year. From Abbaye de Fontevraud in the north for script writing in October last year,  Chateau Renault for animation, Valence for post production, to Chaise dieu in Auvergne for a music residency with a ciné-concert for the film’s music this month. It has been a very rich experience but at times a bit challenging.

When you have to change your living conditions according to your work, the project becomes your life somehow, and then you can't even stop from going to work even at night in your dreams.

Last night I had a very strange and scary one, especially for a claustrophobic like me. I walked into a huge building and I wanted to go towards the room where I usually worked, but I couldn't find it. People were at their desks working or passing by in the hallways, some people around the coffee machine were laughing. It reminded me of Minjun's paintings. I kept saying “Bonjour” or “Salut’, but if they ever looked my way, it would be as if they were looking through me and then I realized that I was invisible. As I was passing through labyrinths and feeling lost, the ceilings started to become very low, so I had to bend and finally I could not move. This feeling scared me to an extent that you can only feel in dreams, I mean much exaggerated.

Certainly that nightmare must be the effect of work stress; otherwise where I work is a very welcoming and friendly place with very high ceilings!

Well, I have finished composting and montage in Folimage. I am off to Paris for editing the sound :)

Compositing starts!

Last week we finished exporting the shadows and Jean did all the added backgrounds. This weekend I am trying to export all scenes for compositing that will start tuesday (in two days). finally we'll be able to see all animation, coulor, textures and shadows together! we're going to have 3 weeks for compositing.
I have spent six weeks now in Folimage for the post production. It has been extremely tough, in every which way you could imagine. but I am still alive and well! what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

sunday rainy evening in folimage

have a great one everyone :)

Coloring finished!

Unbelievable but true! we managed to color 12 minutes of animation in 4 weeks. The coloring was done in TV Paint (like the animation) and we used the wonderful plugin "lazy brush" for the flat colors and then did the contours by hand.This second part was a lot of work. though it seemed impossible, it is finally over thanks to Marjorie, Lizete and Benoit, who worked with me and wonderfull freinds Andrew, Emilie, Louise and Armelle who volunteered to help me on weekends and late evenings.
yesterday I discovered that the latest TV Paint has an automatic option to colour lines according to the color of the shape. don't know what to think because that would've saved me a great deal of time and sleepless nights! but it's too late now. I try not to think about it...
oh well, I gotta get back to the last retouches.
have a great weekend everyone!

19 days left!

shadows are added to the animation

The return of the lightbox!

Each image is printed out for drawing the shadows on the other side

Armelle working hard

Jumi's last scene!

The Beach Flags team!

La piscine

Almost finished animation

We have untill the end of september to finish the animation in Ciclic and our residency in Chateau Renault will end. The animators will be free after 6 months of working on Beach Flags! they have done a great job.
Here you can see a fight scene of the two main characters of the film.
In the beginning of October I go to Valence to do the post production in Folimage.

Sareh

Le marché!

For those who know the story of Beach Flags, right now we are animating the market scene! pretty exciting! lots of characters. Armelle is working on the shadows which is done on paper and is scaned afterwards. lately I have been doing some of the lipsyncs as well as all other stuff. It is hard to be organised when you do many things at the same time, but I guess that is what directing is all about! ok so back to work!

Animating

It is the end of June. 3 months of our time in Ciclic is over and we enter the second half. We have now 6 minutes of the animation which is great news! The weather is finally getting warm, less rain, more sun so we can each lunch outside in the garden with wonderful friends who are also making a short film here in Ciclic, they are Sarolta Szabo and Tibor Banoczki (directors of "Les Conquérants http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVSjdSPfTpM).
Here you can see a very short scene of a race between Vida and Sareh :)

Presentation at the Annecy Festival

This year Annecy Animation Festival and Abbaye de Fontevraud are organising a presentation of our film "Beach Flags". I have to present the project and talk mostly about writing, scénario and the changes it went through. The producers from Sacrebleu, Folimage, Arte, Ciclic, the storyboarder: Chen Chen and the background and colours artist: Jean Bouthors will be there to talk about their work also. I wish everyone could be there. The meeting will be on the 12th of June at 14:30. see you there!
here is a link to the website for more info:  http://www.annecy.org/edition-2013/agenda/rendez-vous:100000301263

Bonjour Armelle!

This is Armelle Mercat! She is working on the water right now since beginning of may. She is adding the waves to the scenes of the swimming pool and I must say she is pretty good at it.
you can see some of her work here:
http://vimeo.com/user14194380

Magnolia tree

JUMELO the lovely couple animators

Jumi and Eloic are animating on my film. It is fun being together, this time for work. We've been given a large space to work in with lots of light. It is perfect. Armelle will be joining us begining of May. The animation is going very well and I am very happy with what we've got so far.
Yesterday The weather got really warm here, it was lovely to take a walk around. here in Ciclic, in front of my desk there is a window to the garden and there is a magnificent magnolia tree FULL of light pink flowers. I will put up a picture of it soon. It distracts me a lot as it is so surreal to see a tree with absolutely no leaves and full with flowers.
I have to finish the Posing and start animating soon! OK back to work!

Animating, day 4

Jumi and Eloic are animating the first sequence and we've 22 seconds by far. I am doing the posing and hopefuly will soon join them! we've got 11.40 minutes to animate and only until end of september here in Ciclic. It rains a lot here in Chateau Renault which is not so bad when you have to work and can't go out!