Thursday, December 23, 2010

Beast (re)animates dead animals

To end 2010 with a bang, Beast Animation is working on a new TV commercial, we’re shooting a new Bazas game and are preparing the production of the Bazas series! About al this there will be more news very soon.


In the second week of December, Beast Animation has been animating on Bertrand Mandico’s new short: “La resurrection des natures mortes”. The film is a mix of live action and stopmotion. 
Our job was to animate dead animals. We had already worked with Bertrand and were familiar with his strange but strong universe. So there we were, giving life to animal corpses. Quit an extraordinary experience ;-)


The first mission was to animate a horse. Please note that no animals where killed for the sake of the film. The horse for example was very old and became blind recently, so his owner decided to end its misery. And gave permission to Bertrand and his crew to use the body for the film.






On the first day we shot 20seconds in 10 hours. The horse was cooperating quit well. He even let us animate his mouth...


Second, was a running dog with flowers growing out of his belly. This dog had been working in several films before dying of age.


Problem was that the dog seemed to be dead way longer than the horse. So the air, although extremely cold, was not that fresh. After 11 hours of shoot the dog is running again. And he can continue infinitely.


After" the dog experience" there was a women waiting to animated. Luckily she was not dead, but she could play for dead quit well ;-)  Little bird heads are holding and pulling up her hair.


During an hour and a half the actress hardly moved, while the bird heads were animated around her. And I can assure you, it was almost freezing inside the “studio”.


And last but not least: the hare. This is the first animal to appear animated in the film. He is laying on a black surface, and every image there are white chalk, handwritten numbers counting the frames.


After a 4 hour shoot the hare is running again!
We are not allowed to show you the animation at this point, but will try to do so when the film comes out. Expected before the summer of 2011.

Director Bertrand Mandico and main actress Elina Lowensohn keeping the freezing animator company, giving some instructions, telling stories AND opening a fresh beer every now and then.
Cheers!



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