The first time I watched these titles my sound wasn’t working, but I thought, “What the heck.”
I liked it. The visual style, the transitions, editing, rhythm and pace. It was all good, but I couldn’t get my head around the concept, the storyline. I didn’t get it.
The images seemed random but still related to each other, meaningful but incomprehensible. I decided to give it another go when I got home. This time with sound.
This is what I was missing. They narrated it. A clever story to illustrate the workings of a creative mind. The images I couldn’t decipher were brain flashes, internal images so to speak. I liked it without the audio, but I love it with. It’s interesting, draws you in and makes you think it’s a shame this is a festival title and not a short movie.
A nice thing I also noticed is that no studios are mentioned in the video, only the individual speakers. Which, for me, reflexes the festival.
Enjoy the story of Sam . . .
One of the directors, Menno Fokma, talked about the project:
The concept:
We started with the theme of personality in social media at first. After narrowing it down and let it match with FITC we took it into the direction of the creation process. We wanted the viewer to be sucked into the mind of a creative, show his roller coaster of emotions in his process. We contacted creative writer Tifene Huchet to write the story. She shaped Sam, a man that dreamed about discovering the universe since he was a little boy and is driven by it till this day.
In production:
After creating a moving storyboard and treatment a lot of people became enthusiastic and joined us to fight the deadline (two and a half weeks from there on). With guys working from Sweden and Los Angeles, Skype was a real invention! We divided scenes, so everybody could do his own bit. With rendering and compositing done at our studio we could match the final look and created it as a whole. We aimed on creating a film noir look with its typical lighting and to be very subtle with adding color.
Name titles:
At first we aimed to categorize the speakers into the different phases of the creation process. Like mad scientist, expressionist, stylist and applied. We wanted it to match with our story and make sense. In the end we concluded that it was really hard doing so and that you won’t really make a connection between the two.
Gathering the team:
We started with the two of us (Floris and Menno) and ended with extra animators to join the team. After creating quite an ambitious moving storyboard (three minutes long and only two and a half weeks left till the deadline), we knew we couldn’t do it on our own, so we tried to enthuse people to help us out. We posted on Facebook, mailed a few people (that are already freelancing for us) and our studio fellas were also reaching out. We think it really helped that we got the moving storyboard and treatment done to give people more insight in our plans.
Audio:
Studio Takt did an amazing job (again!). He finished it in only four days. We’re surprised how he achieved to glue all scenes together smoothly.
We think it was a labor of love!
Credits:
Direction & Design: Floris Vos (Soulbase) & Menno Fokma
Creative Writer: Tifene Huchet
Animators/Designers: Fredrik Ekholm / Heerko Groefsema / Kevin Megens / Sander Van Dijk /
Ton Mikkers / Wouter Kroese / Marius Denisse / Johannes Matsson
Music & Sound Design: Joris Van Grunsven (Studio Takt)
Narrator: Terry Mann
Boy: Mick Lefevre