sweet nothings- the book of
all books
tj's little production book
be you not impressed? that's how the quote goes i believe
1 - tom gets an idea and thinks about it for many months and does many a drawing (april-august 2023)
08.17.23
yippie, lots of stuff was scrapped and lots of new stuff has been made; but this little runt of a project lives on! it'll end up being the first thing i've made with 5.1 (possibly atmos?) surround.. so i'm looking forward to that. lots of experimental camera things too (at least, at the moment). this is a weird project. it has been many a month of thought and putting random shit together but i think we're at a point where this story is tellable... regardless of how this thing comes out, i consider it more of a learning experience than anything. im new to this. i've done a lot of animation over the years but this is my first film project... we'll see what happens!
i've learned how to do a few more techniques over the past few months, lots of them having to do with backlighting... hopefully this movie could be a bit of an optical show, too. here's a picture of a film guy
07.03.23
dreamt last night about the end of the world. had that apocalyptic red sky as you'd probably except. i can't exactly remember what launched us into this situation but i don't think it was nukes. pretty sure it was some natural disaster. anyways for most of the dream i was sitting in a messy studio apartment listening to REM until the dream abruptly ends with world not actually ending
i read a few things about fluoxetine and how it is apparently able to cause more intense and vivid dreams. i guess that would explain being able to remember every single damn dream lately. if that's the case, i see the SSRI aspect as an added bonus -> the dreams are where it's at
07.02.23
the printer is screaming as it prints out ink-slathered effects sheets. i dreamt last night of palm trees growing inside of my room. my first thought was "well that shouldn't be there" as opposed to "what the fuck"
06.02.23
me do worky things. i've been spending a lot of time playing with practical effects under the camera and it's been rewarding. this stuff alone has been blowing my mind and giving me more and more ideas. there now exists footage of a man peering out of a window. thiS WAS the basis for a scene, but i'm beginning to reconsider it. we'll see
05.09.23
drawing more things and thinking more thoughts... scrapped the bulk of the first act as it was lame and didn't really tie everything together. i've been thinking; is the appendix there just to burst? as far as i know, you don't need it, so... what the hell is it doing there? why hasn't evolution disposed of it yet?
04.29.23
there's not been many updates lately because there's not been much to talk about! work continues, however, on the final act and beginning to bang out the animatic for the first few scenes. i think animation could begin as soon as today considering a lot of the photography has also been completed as well. will update when stuff gets mildly intriguing. yesterday i dreamt the price of coffee went up to $30 per cup at my local convenience store. it was more of a nightmare because their coffee is really good
04.19.23
the studio is essentially finished now...we've got a copy stand for final shooting (complete w lights!), the light table is completely assembled and stationed and the computer is set up for project work. looks like shit gets done soon. now all i need is time
04.11.23
got a roll of fx composited yesterday last night... i could feel my eyes melting as the piercing light of the full-brightness monitor displayed light shot #132. thankfully, they look exactly how i wanted to come out, so i don't have to worry about them anymore... yet, that is. the new light table comes today but im still waiting on the 3-hole pegbar so animation has not begun yet but i think we'll be able to get the ball rolling soon. i think the inevitable blinding headaches ahead are going to be worth it. didn't have a cool dream last night, though.
04.10.23
burnt coffee is annoyingly pungent. it is gorgeous out today which means its time for another round of photos for "sum". i'll be at work the next three days so won't have as much time to work on it, but will hopefully nail a little more of the story down. the cheap little tripod i have to overhead the camera is annoyingly finicky. i might have to look into buying a proper rostrum because it's getting irritating to film with. other than that i dreamt last night that i was in an airplane that continuously circled around the entire world. it was me and 5 other people that i didn't really recognize but looked vaguely similar to people i've known. it was weirdly serene
04.09.23
work continues on pre-production. it's like 9 am and i've barely had any coffee yet but i think i've been able to nail down how i want the first few sequences to go, which will be fairly easy to pump out because they're digital. i spent a lot of yesterday working on the studio -- including adding 2 minutes worth of paper to the stock -- and honestly once the pegbar comes in later this week it'll be mostly ready for preliminary shooting. lighting is a bit of an issue right now but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. the real killer is going to be the effects, but that's actually the part i'm looking forward to the most. this is my first time working with trick photography and i think it will be a very fun and experimental experience. anyways it's very sunny out today, which is good because i need some stills in sunny weather so i may get some photos shot today. the weather is fluctuating in temperature lately but i guess that's just how jersey is towards summer. there was a tornado the other day and i didn't get any pictures and i'm angry. it wasn't particularly destructive around here at all but it did look pretty cool.
i am probably not going to ink this project. that might change but i'd rather thousands of pages of pencil doodles than thousands of pages of shitty sharpie lines. camera should pick up the darker pencils okay; that's not something i'm really worried about. shooting this thing with a crappy t2i i got off ebay. good enough for now but i'd like to use something better, considering asking my school's tv studio if i could borrow one lol. we'll see.
i had a dream last night that i was in a supermarket, walking around buying produce as the walls of the store were peeling apart. not even just the paint i'm talking the entire fucking wall. nobody seemed to notice so i just kept on adding stuff to the cart until i woke up and that was that. what is my brain trying to tell me
04.08.23
so this is of what eight-ish years of learning and two years of pondering has culminated into; stupid optical films. truth be told i'd been wanting to dig into the whole short film scene for a while now, but i'd been too preoccupied with handling that thing that makes your brain not want to do anything except lie down (which even then seems to suck) but thankfully i've been able to start making pictures move again and enjoying what comes out of it, so here we are. the first project on the drawing board, "sum of our parts", has been in and out of pre-production for a little bit now. more often than not the story is composed of spur of the moment ideas at school, in the car, walking to work, working, really any time i'm not expecting to be thinking about ideas because it seems to be impossible to sit down and actually designate a time for that. i've been working mosty on capturing stills and videos for use in the project but it's been very overcast lately. acme hole punched paper seems to be ridiculously expensive and i was only able to get 300 sheets for 30 dollars (which, even then, isn't even a third of a minute of 24fps animation) so i'm probably just going to stick with shitty printer paper and just buy a hole punch. i'm not exactly running off the best budget here.
sweet nothings