Supernatural Fantasy

DIPLOMA PROJECT

SUPERNATURAL FANTASY

Sponsor : Self

guide : SEKHAR MUKHERJEE

Student : KSHITIJ VERMA

COMMUNICATION DESIGN FACULTY (ANIMATION FILM DESIGN)

National Institute of DesignAhmedabad

2014

Volume : 1

programme : Post-Graduate Diploma Programme

the evaluation Jury recommends KSHitiJ Verma for the

diploma of the national institute of design

CommuniCation deSign (animation FiLm deSign)

herewith, for the project titled "SupernaturaL FantaSY"

on fulfilling the further requirements by *

Chairman

members :

*Subsequent remarks regarding fulfilling the requirements :

registrar(academics)

3NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGNKSHITIJ VERMA | SUPERNATURAL FANTASY | ANIMATION FILM DESIGN | 2014

Copyright © 2014Student document publication, meant for private circulation only.All rights reservedPGDPD, Animation Film Design, 2011 - 2014,National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, IndiaNo part of this document will be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, xerography and videography recording without written permission from the publisher,Kshitij Verma and National Institiute of DesignAll illustrations and photographs in this document are copyright © 2014by respective people / organizations.Edited and designed by Kshitij Vermae-mail: [email protected] Institute of Design (NID)Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380007Gujarat, Indiahttp://nid.eduPrinted digitally in Ahmedabad, IndiaDecember 2014


CONTENTS AKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................... 5

INTRODUCTION .......................................................... 6

PROCESS ............................................................................ 10

The Thougt Express ............................................................. 11Scrolls ...................................................................................... 14Trying to feel ......................................................................... 19A New Perspective - exploration in sound ................... 25Visual Trip .............................................................................. 27Final Sound ............................................................................ 35Final Storyboard and Animatic ........................................ 37Inspirations ............................................................................ 56

Production ............................................................................. 61

CONCLUSION ................................................................. 70

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................. 71


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAnna is one of the most important names in the list for she gifted me her recorder to explore sound, my close friends Kiran Dalal and Jaimeen Desai for being great sources of realizations and patient listeners, Mayur Kakreli for helping me in Pixelation and Deval Vala and Pushpendra for helping me figure out production techniques. A special thanks to Sheefalika Misra for trusting me with her camera.

I would like to thank Sri Pradyumna Vyas (Director, NID), Dr. Vijaya Deshmukh (Registrar, NID) and Vijay Singh Katiyar, (Education Chairperson, NID) and the Animation Film Department for giving me an opportunity to be a part of it and give my thoughts a form of a film.

My parents have always supported my interest in art since I was a child. It is because of their encouragement that I am what I am. My grandmother, who intoduced me to the art of storytelling. I would like to mention my sister Prachi because I think she’s the only one from my family who truely understands what I’ve been doing. Also I would like to mention Mr. Atul Bhat, a brilliant artist who took my love for drawing to a level near perfection. He was my mentor during the most precious phase of my life - childhood.

I would like to thank Mr. Sekhar Mukherjee who guided me throughout the project and supported the idea of an alternate approach to making a film.Also I thank Atul bhai, Nitish Bhai and Sanjeev bhai from the Animation staff for technical assistance.


INTRODUCTIONMost of the stories that were written for this project had a fantasical approach. Those fantasies were not bright and sunny, they were obscure, like ghost stories. But this did not make ghosts the center of the film as I took time to realize and accept that I wanted the Supernatural fantasy to be the focal point of the project.

Childhood memories and past experiences of horror fantasies were taken into consderation as they were the main source of ideas. Remembering and reliving those moments became a part of the process to create a horror film, but I still didn’t know why is horror so fascinating to me and why am I obsessed with ghost stories. I started writing with this question in my mind and ended up writing an introspection in the form of a monologue.


The MonologueI like horror stories. They scare me, but I enjoy them. Why? Why am I obsessed with the supernatural? Maybe I need it to excite myself. Reality and its expectations are boring. All of us want the same thing - success. And we are so desperate to achieve it.

I want to run away, where me and my thoughts are alone. Where I can live my life according to myself, peacefully. But how can I? I’m afraid. There are people around me whom I love. How am I going to live my entire life without them? But with them, am I really free? That’s why I need ghosts, to get the thrill. I hope to see a ghost someday. Maybe, I’ll fly with it.

“Did you hear that?”“What?”“I think there is someone in the house”“Yeah, sure.”“A ghost. It is standing there, in the corner, reading a newspaper.”

I just kept doodling, searching for something. What if there is really a ghost standing in the corner, waiting for me to look at it. All my fantasies can come true and maybe I will be able to fly with it in the sky. But I didn’t look up. I couldn’t, didn’t have the courage. It could be standing there but what if it’s not. It’ll be dissapointing. And if it is there, it wouldn’t be a fantasy anymore. It’ll become reality.

Sitting there, confused between reality and fantasy, I kept on doodling, searching for something. The scratching sound of the pencil goes quicker and quicker, lounder and louder and louder and stops. And I looked up.


Away From RealityAt that time, when I was still collecting ideas, I used to read Kafka’s short stories that would leave me wondering about the relationship of reality and fantasy. I had also discovered writing through my Stream of consciousness. Both Kafka and the stream of consciousness proved to be a great influence on the process of writing. The monologue is majorly an introspection about why horror is a great source of thrill and how it takes one on a fantasy trip away from reality.

We live in an age where we follow science as religion. Our lives are based on scientific logic, not mythology anymore and do not believe in ghost stories and urban legends. We, inspite of being rational people, always have a little corner for doubts. Doubts about the supernatural being real or fantasy often come accross when we are told a srange, dark tale or just ghostly rumors. We, most of the time are so certain about our existence but questions like who we really are and what is the universe are still unanswered. There certainly are multiple theories but the “absolute truth” is still a mystery and mysteries ignite imagination.


“The Unknown” exists since the birth of mankind as H.P. Lovecraft, the pioneer of supernatural horror in english literature, says, “The strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest fear is the unknown.”Which is why we are still scared of dark places and feel restless and vulnerable in the presence of silence, loneliness and menacing shadows. It is something that doesn’t exist but still has a very strongand distinct presence around us and inside us.

Fantasy, through the medium of Art and Literature, takes us to unknown places away from reality and puts us back in the real world, reminding us time to time that there is more to our mundane reality. In a nutshell, with fantasy as a part of our art and culture, reality is less mundane.

Now, how does one enter a fantasyland. How does a painter, a filmmaker, a musician would convince the audience that they are experiencing fantasy. One possible answer that I found is by making them feel. This is when recreating a feeling, specifically of horror became important to me and became the main idea of this film.


PROCESSThe Thougt Express ............................................................. 11Scrolls ...................................................................................... 14Trying to feel ......................................................................... 19A New Perspective - exploration in sound ................... 25Visual Trip .............................................................................. 27Final Sound ............................................................................ 35Final Storyboard and Animatic ........................................ 37Inspirations ............................................................................ 56

Production ............................................................................. 61


The Thought ExpressA train with infinite number of bogeys keeps on running continuously. Here, questions like where did it start, where does it go, do not matter. What matters is that the Thought Express never stops. Though its origin and destination is unknown, it is fun to explore the places it passes by. It often goes silently, without being noticed, but if documented as text or drawings, it is a great source of fantastical imageries and philosophical realizations. The Thought Express, more commonly known as ‘The stream of consciousness’ had been only a mode of generating ideas for this project, but later it would become the narrative style of the film. This is why it becomes important to first understand the stream of consciousness as a creative process before going any further.

Stream of consciousnessThe term ‘Stream of consciousness’ was coined by a 19th century philosopher and psychologist William James in his book ‘Principles of Psychology’.


Stream of conscousness in Literature is a style of writing developed by a group of writers at the beginning of the 20th century. It aimed at expressing in words the flow of a character’s thoughts and feelings in their minds. The technique aspires to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of the character. Therefore, the internal view of the minds of the characters sheds light on plot and motivation in the novel. James Joyce successfully employs the narrative mode in his novel “Ulysses” which describes the day in life of a middle-aged Jew, Mr. Leopold Broom, living in Dublin, Ireland. Read the following excerpt:

“He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil to the high school, his book satchel on him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought.”

These lines reveal the thoughts of Bloom. He thinks of the younger Bloom. The self-reflection is achieved by the flow of thoughts that takes him back to his past.


Automatism

Most surrialists like Andre’ Breton, Max Ernst,Joan Miro, began this exploratopn by freeingtheir minds of conscious control and allowed thoughts to bubble to the surface without imposing conscious order. The process was called ‘Automatism’ and in painting it gave rise to abstract shapes that represented images from the subconscious.

Automatism is the same as free association, the method used by the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud to explore the unconscious mind of his patients. Freud’s ideas strongly influenced French poet André Breton who launched the surrealist movement in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism. In the manifesto, Breton actually defined surrealism as ‘Pure psychic automatism the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns’. The earliest examples of automatism are the automatic writings of Breton and others, produced by simply writing down as rapidly as possible whatever springs to mind.Surrealist collage, invented by Max Ernst, was the first form of visual automatism, in which he put together images clipped from magazines, product catalogues, book illustrations, advertisements and other sources to create a strange new reality. In painting, various forms of automatism were then developed by artists such as Joan Miro, Andre Masson as well as Ernst.

Forest and Dove by Max Ernst, 1927


ScrollsThe monologue (pg.7) written for the film was instantly selected and it was decided that the film should be based on that. But there was still no idea about visuals and sound. As monologue was the base of the film, using it as a narration in the background with visuals running frame by frame was the initial idea. Sound of T.V. and some notes played on the guitar were the ideas for music.


Large sheets of paper

In order to produce visuals, I would draw whatever came to my mind while reading the monologue. I used full sized chart papers joined together to create a canvas with a long width like a scroll. The artworks weren’t imprisoned inside frame like storyboards because I didn’t want to constrain my drawings in a rectangular frame and liked the ideas to flow in form of scribbles. No matter how random and ridiculous the drawings seemed to be, it became very important that I remained honest with my visual imagery for the process. Because if contaminated by thoughts other than the monologue, it wouldn’t flow. Even the concern that the drawings are not coming according to the monologue would disturb the flow. It was like meditating. Greater focus would produce better results. They lacked rectangular frames but were like keyframes. Shapes and forms morphing into other shapes and forms. I ended up producing four or five scrolls each based on the complete narration(monologue).

For sound I had recorded some pieces that I played on guitar, random T.V. channels and some follies like paper crushing, lighting a matchstick, scratching sound of pencil etc. After getting satisfactory results, it was time to go ahead with giving all that a form of a film. The only problem was choosing appropriate visuals. As mentioned earlier, the process of drawing had required being honest with visual ideas. Each scroll was a continuous visual narration with keyframes. Choosing any one of them wasn’t easy and merging them together meant breaking the bieng honest rule which was broken eventually. It required some time before realizing that making a film is different from making scrolls. A film has sound, a rectangular frame, thousands of mad frames running frantically one after another second by second and most imporatantly, time, which has to be stretched and tampered by a film maker. Still confused, I made a small piece (based on one of the scrolls) made frame by frame by charcoal on a single sheet of paper - a technique inspired by a very influential animator William Kentridge. I liked the result and decided to figure out a rough animatic.




Kentucky Route Zero

All was set untill I played this game.Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folks who travel it.

Gameplay is inspired by point-and-click adventure games (like the classic Monkey Island or King’s Quest series, or more recently Telltale’s Walking Dead series), but focused on characterization, atmosphere and storytelling rather than clever puzzles or challenges of skill.

The game is developed by Cardboard Computer (Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy). The game’s soundtrack features an original electronic score by Ben Babbitt along with a suite of old hymns & bluegrass standards recorded by The Bedquilt Ramblers.

I instantly connected with the lyrical imagery of the game. It was creepy in a very subtle manner and just absorbed me inside its dark atmosphere. It made me feel, which reminded me how important it was to make the audience feel in order to connect with the film. Since this point I started pursuing feelings and tried to develop the monologue accordingly.

That was a very crucial point as I broke away from my previous concepts there. I destroyed the honest insight of the monologue by trying to develop it to fulfil my new agenda and eventually chucked it and started working on new stories.A still from the game


During this process I started spending time in solitude and darkness, followed the shadows that were made by lights of vehicles passing by. I must admit that all this made me rather peaceful than paranoid. But there were moments when loneliness, silence and darkness took over and I

started imagining wierd shapes around myself. Listening to scary stories has been thrilling in its own way but this was different. In the dark I always felt an uncanny presence around me that would be always ignored in the light. When I think about it now I feel that it was my own darker side that scared me. Here is one story, I had just woken up from my afternoon nap that was stretched to the

late evening. It was dark and I realized that there was no one in the house. I looked at the situation and took it as an oppurtunity to explore creepiness. It was unusually silent and I wandered in the house like a ghost. I came back in the bedroom, as soon as I entered the room a black sillhouette startled me. It was a fraction of a second when my body froze and I realized it was my own reflection in the mirror.

While surfing on the web, I came accross an article that might have a connection to my eperiences:

The theme of the ‘double’ has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank (1914). He has gone into the connections which the ‘double’ has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also lets in a flood of light on the surprising evolution of the idea. For the ‘double’ was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’, as Rank says; and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the first ‘double’ of the body.... Such ideas...have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death...The ‘double’ has become a thing of terror, just as, after the collapse of their religion the gods turned into demons.

Otto Rank (April 22, 1884 – October 31, 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer and teacher and one of Sigmond Freud’s closest colleagues.

Trying to feel


Through those experiences, I realized the importance of silence and darkness, how they were capable to highten, or may I say alter one’s senses of sight and hearing. The ambience created provides one with vulnerabilty and restlessness, thus a strong imagination. It is not a very positive setting, I must say but is thrilling in its own way.

Rustling sound of trees, sound of crickets, the play of light and shadows, getting startled by one’s own reflection, enjoying the feeling of vulnerability, a silver man sitting in front of me when I close my eyes.when I open them, I come back in reality with goosebumps all over my arms.


Texts written during this period

Desperate to create an effective script, I wrote alot during this period. This was a phase where this project was transformed into a self exploratory journey. Here are some texts that provided me with deeper understanding of both this project and myself.

The fear of not acheiving successIt haunts me. As an animator, I often question my efficiency of being imaginative. My skills are good, but is it enough to survive?I like getting scared by the paranormal because I don’t believe, or should I say doubt in its existence. I know the fearful moment will pass, that it is only temporary. But the fear of being inefficient, being unimaginative is real. It doesn’t excite, it only creates paranoia. But is it necessary to be extraordinarily imaginative. If not then who am I? My very existence falls in trouble. Everything then flows towards the enormous ocean of success. One has to fall into it or one’s identity will be questioned. One has no choice except falling into it which is frustrating. But how is supernatural fantasy a relief from real fears, why not comedy? It is a wonderful relief from tension. Maybe because I replace my real paranoia with the paranormal one. The presence of someone being there, something that is not human is always answered with scientific logic. I used to feel the presence of ghosts as a kid. But now, with a more logical brain, I do not.


A tribute to space odyssey and relief roadThe black monolith: I probably am going to take this into a completely alien direction. Even a small leaf emotes in its own way. Something so perfect in its geometry and dimension; the absolutely perfect black monolith eventually emotes nothing, its empty. Nothingness is haunting. The scary thing about something so perfect is that it is so perfect, that makes it unnatural and inhuman. The fear in this case is not of death but numbness.

The monolith serves as an ideal. Imagine everything around us as perfect as this peice of cuboid. Maybe that is the reason why assymetrical buildings of relief road (An area in old Ahmedabad) and their organic arrangement emotes more than buildings of the new city.

CostumeA tree wears a costume made up of people’s fear of the supernatural. The very existence of the supernatural depends on our fear that there is something that we don’t understand, which also could be a threat. Fear of what is going to happen in future, the very next second. Negative assumptions create fear, so the costume, fabric or skin with grotesque texture becomes a metaphor of our fear on which the paranormal imagery depends.


A deeper understanding of art and its meaning.It began by me trying to define something undefined, as art. Like craft is an art, film making is an art. One of my very dear friends says even rolling a joint is an art. So after him introducing another specialization into arts, I realized that I’ve never really thought that why an art is an art? I’ve only read definitions - “Art is expressing thyself.” I think art is a process that liberates one. Whatever produced as a result is an example of art. An example, an inspiration to the rest of the world on how to liberate oneself. A state devoid of not only profit, but all the materialistic concerns.

4th May 2013Another insight into artA thought that arises conflict, which doesn’t have a formula to be solved. The conflict that is beyond solving leads to creating something which isn’t a solution but simply a creative representation or awareness of the conflict itself, which perhaps, is an Art.

Yet another viewArt also could be a product of a moment. A moment so inspiring that it creates an urge for an artist to capture it. And that recreation, if succeeds in taking the artist to the state of mind that he was while experiencing that moment, becomes an Art.

For example, I once went to Thol lake. It is a beautiful place, a lake and a bird sanctuary, about 30 km away from the city. There are mangrooves peeping out of the shallow lake and several small green mounds that look like tiny islands. And there are birds, several of them with countless exotic varieties. In a nutshell it is an enchanting place that makes us forget about our hectic citylives. I clearly remember it, but can not feel it anymore. It is lost forever. Of course I can go visit it anytime but that experience can not be felt again, revisiting it would only remind of my past visit, or it might give me another level of sublimity to experience. But the first experience is lost forever. for example, A perfect sunrise - a perfect moment that ends after the sun rises. Watching another sunrise in future would remind us of that perfect sunrise, but it won’t make us feel completely as we had felt then. The same thing happens with listening to a beautiful music piece for the first time. The fact that that experience is going to be lost makes it even more important to capture. The colour, form, composition, sound, smell, all flowing in perfect rhythm and harmony - the sublime beauty of nature and us being a part of it can never be described completely as it is felt. The beauty of Art is that it is a tool to describe an experience and that description makes us feel something, according to our own past experiences which would be different from the artist’s experience that inspired him to create the piece.


Impressionist painters like Claude Monet believed in capturing the colour and effect of a moment and spent their entire lives doing the same.

A kiteI met a kite today. It was neither red, nor blue. It was black with some patches of brown on it. The cruel sun must have stolen its colour. It was lying on the hot red floor. I was standing over it, watching and simultaneously protecting it from the harsh rays coming from the yellow bellybutton of the sky. I slowly bent down, approaching towards the black dry brush strokes… and I saw something. I saw an eye.

‘Come let’s go.’ My father called. ‘It’s dead… and we’re getting late.’

The eye was shut. I went closer, I couldn’t resist. It felt like it pulled me towards itself. Strangely, it looked peaceful in a ferocious sunny but silent afternoon. I sat down and looked at it.

‘Could you please…’ a cracked voice broke the silence. ‘Could you please carry me to some place cooler before you leave?’ the black kite with a closed eye said.My hands felt its light, fragile skull dangling gently from its body as I carried the lifeless figure. I gently put him down under a dwarf tree. With its eye still closed, the black kite rested satisfactorily.

One rarely sees anything filled with so much peace. Absolute peace, I truly witnessed. But how, I wondered as I watched it with a bit of sympathy and a bit of jealousy. It was dead.

Sunrise by Claude Monet, 1873


A New PerspectiveI had already decided since the beginning of this project that I would do the sound myself. When I composed the very first piece, it proved to be a unique experience and a unique product in itself. Sound later became so important that it replaced the text and became the base for the visual. I made the music and later made my explorations perform on it. That is my film, more like a music video.

Anna’s recorderAnna came to India for her Art project that she had to do with the women living in Ahmedabad, who run their household by their hardwork and thier beautifull skill in crafts. She stayed with us for around three months and we became good friends. She had a recorder that she used for interviewing those women. After completing her project she left her recorder so that I could record sound for my project. It has been a very precious gift and I would have never realized my interest in composing sound if it wasn’t for the very generous Anna.

Departure of TextI recorded badly written scripts in a bad english accent on the recorder. I also thought of taking help from friends in rewriting and recording the script but I’d come far away from whatever I’d written. New scripts weren’t satisfying and I just couldn’t write anymore.

My first sound composition

I, as usual was wandering alone in the house with lights off. It rained heavily that night and I recorded it with my new recorder, just like that. The sound became the beginning of the composition that was further constructed with other experiences. Opposite my house, there’s a railway track which often reminds of stories of death, suffering and spirits. Around two o’ clock in the midnight, it gets pretty lonely when I used to set off for my recording. I recorded crickets, passing vehicles and my own footsteps.

It was midnight and I heard a whistle that echoed eerily in the darkness. I went to the window and looked outside to find no one. At that moment the whistle that came from an unknown source at an unlikely hour, became a mystery and I used it in the composition. I chucked it in the final film but this composition is a complete piece in itself.

I also rewrote the dialogues from the monologue and recorded it. A female voice says the following lines: “Did you hear that?”“I feel there is someone else in the house.”“A ghost. It’s standing there, waiting. Waiting for you to look at it. You don’t. But it’ll wait, It’ll wait forever.”


With all that material I sat to write. What I ended up with wasn’t a proper script but an imformal write-up on which the sound composition was based.

After raining heavily, the night felt lonely and silent only with a faint smell of soil and chirping of crickets. The endless railway track tells stories of the past, stories of the wandering spirits. The sound of footsteps is heard walking alongside the railway track. They are often interrupted by vehicles that pass by. The light from the vehicles starts spreading with the sound of the motor and the footsteps stop. The motor fades away and the light is swallowed by the darkness. The monstrous power station hums a low generator sound. Another entity now introduces itself as a whistle that comes from a distance from an unknown source. “Did you hear that?” (slow pan to and fro)It whistles again. (panning as if looking for the source)“I think there is someone else in the house”Slow footsteps. (cut to railway tracks panning upwards with slow footsteps)“A ghost. (slow zoom in to the electric pole taken over with creepers with the sound of crickets and bats increasing gradually)It’s standing there, waiting, waiting for you to look at him. You don’t. But it’ll still wait. It’ll wait, forever.”A long whistle (fast pan from the tracks towards straight view, then camera looks left and right.

The write up helped me in sequencing the scenes. Sounds like that of whistle were downloaded from the generous and free websites. I cleaned all the sounds in Adobe Soundbooth, that I was using for the first time, gave all the desired effects and composed and edited the track in the same.

While listening to the complete piece, I realized that it needed no visual. It was complete which was a huge problem because I had to make an animated film in the end. The piece had a beginning, a middle and the end, it felt satisfactory and it, to some extent, generated the feel that I wanted it to be without the visuals. I came up with some visuals after listening to it several times but they ended up distracting the impact of sound and diluted the effect. The feeling of experiencing the unknown only came with eyes closed and listening to the sound.

Once again I found myself stuck, but I continued recording randomly and also experimented a bit with animation. Experiments done at that time with both the sound and visuals proved to be very important as a lot of them became part of the final film.


Visual TripLots of stories were written before the final visual script was made. Rough sketches, past memories and illusions were origin of these stories that gave shapes to different characters. I ended up with so many characters because I couldn’t make a proper plot and all of this was before I made the final sound. I wanted to make something that would be a series of different animated scenes based on my explorations but I didn’t yet know how to. Everytime when I tried figuring out a visual narrative, I would end up having a plot which was exciting at the point of its creation, but the very next day, it fizzled out. So I never made a proper plot or a story. People often asked me the story I was working on and I’d have to tell them that there is no story. Atleast not a single one. The problem was that I had so many storis that I couln’t put a finger on any one and decide it to be my film because selecting one story just wasn’t enough. Hence I came up with all the visual material that I woud later use in the final film.

I am hesitating to call this chapter Character Design because I feel that all these characters evolved on thier own without me being consciously aware of it. I only realized when I made the final animatic after completing the sound. The sound track became the thread that would connect all of them together.


The Dead Trees

5:30 a.m.The only source of light were vehicles that passed in the distance with faint sound of thier engines. Trucks, auto rikshaws, bikes and some people occasionaly passed by the dark road where stood a huge tree by the side. It had endless dry branches that covered the dark sky. It formed a huge silhouette against the light coming from the vehicles in the back. I was sketching that wonderful wonder when I lost myself in its branches. They hypnotised me. There was so much movement in them yet they stood still. The morning light and chirping of birds brought me back.

After sometime, it felt like I’d woken up from a dream in a snap and I looked around. There wasn’t a single soul on the road and it was dead silent. I think I was transferred in a parallel world for a moment.


Tree Folks

The subtle movement in thier twisted branches felt like human hands moving, trapped and trying to get out. This led to the creation of tree folks inspired by stories in which trees have ghosts as residents. Gradually they evolved into different forms and textures.


The Witch Tree

This tree in particular is very interesting as its a fusion of a tree that exists in reality and a chudail (witch) that was described by a man whom I met at a paan shop.

A tree, a short one, stands near the sabarmati river near the army cant in Shahibaug, Ahmedabad. There are traces of black magic practices on the river bed. The tree has a small temple at its foot. An old, worn out statue of a headless camel stood by its side which sat a female figure, only the lower area, rest was broken and missing. On one of its branches, dangled a bunch of human hair which reminded me of a witch. The witch, as described by that man made her appearance in the night and wandered in the fields. She has a hollow space in her back where she would keep a lit diya (lamp).

The witch tree, which acts as the narrator of the film has a hollow space in its trunk that has a lamp that lights up with nightfall and begins a series of mysterious happenings. With the arrival of the dawn, the stories end and the lamp extinguishes.


The White Face

It was 2 o’clock in the morning and I sat alone in the drawing room. I opened the door to my room slightly and through the narrow slit saw someone sitting on the bed. Who was it? I don’t know. It was only a face, a white face. I didn’t know what to do and who to call at such late hour. Even if I called, who would have believed me? It was the Iktara track that created this white face lit from below. It is a head that rotates on its own axis and is seperated from its body. I denied it to be my double since its creation but later accepted it and gave it that role in the film.

Mirror and Me


Vultures from the childhood

On the terrace opposite mine, I remember a tree at dusk. It formed a bulky sillhoutte against the orange sky with its thick prop roots touching the ground.

And there were vultures, hundreds of them circling the huge tree until nightfall as if performing a ritual.


Characters form Dadi’s Stories


Railway Signage

A dark figure stands still beside the railway track. Late in the night, it startles people passing by. It doesn’t do anything, it just stands still.


The Final SoundThis is the point where things started to become organised and the film became more focused. Creation of this ten minutes long track gave me confidence that the film would work even without a story. The sound track was the story. It was an equivalent of a narration that would run throughout the film, it didn’t have words but had sounds and music, sounds that people would recognize and music that had an eerie feel about it. By the end of the film, chances are rare that one would put a question like I didn’t get the story, which was my greatest fear. The feeling of subtle horror that the audio-visual would generate would be enough to make the audience remind of thier own supernatural fears.

StructureThere was a basic structure that was kept in mind while composing the track. Firstly, an introduction that would tell what the film is about. Also the title of the film would make its appearance here. Then the middle part that would take the audience inside the film and finally the conclusion that would take the audience out of the fantastic world and put them back in reality again. The film would be an escape route to a temporary fantastic world from the permanent real world.

The new sound is an assortment of previously composed tracks and raw recordings that would form an abstract idea of what’s going on.

Content

Introduction The introduction was designed to create a dry and dead atmosphere, the origin place of obscurity. The sound of wind blowing gives an intuition that it is not coming from this world, but from some other deadly hollow space which is devoid of life. The wind was accompanied with sound created by hitting a spoon on a steel vessel filled with water which was later given an echoing effect in Adobe Soundbooth.

SilenceIntroduction fades into silence. Silence that is heard by low chirping of crickets. Here the part from the first soundtrack where footsteps wander and vehicles pass by was used. Something walking on gravel suddenly come in a house with wooden steps and a switch turns on (or off). It walks further for four or five steps and stops.

T.V.A T.V. switches on which plays a collage of songs, T.V. shop advertisements and news. The sound coming from the telivision set is distorted to give it a vivid effect. Also it is accompanied by electronic disturbance sounds to convey that the source (T.V.) is from playing in the real world but where we currently are is somewhere else, a parallel world. A thin invisble fabric between our world and the real world causes all the echo and disturbances.


There is a T.V. ad that goes on when suddenly someone laughs and it shuts down.

IktaraEverything falls silent for some time. In a distance a music starts playing. It becomes louder gradually and slowly the notes turn chaotic. The music was produced from an Iktara, a small single string instrument. Once I randomly thought of recording while I played it. The music gave visuals of my double, my dark side, a face painted white and lit from below. This track also acts as a crescendo to the film. This piece as well was cleaned and tampered a bit in Adobe Soundbooth by adding a little bit of resonance that made it echo. Also I wanted to give it left and right panning which wasn’t very effective in Soundbooth, hence I used Adobe Audition to create the desired effect.

MorningAfter the crescendo takes place, there is again silence. The track that comes next is a bit difficult to describe. It has guitar and an unknown female voice humming. It was created for a story that my grandmother had told me when I was a kid. An enraged king kills his pet parrot, but after realizing that the poor bird was only trying to save his master’s life, the king grows into regret and dies. Cancelation of this story had also cancelled this track, but a friend, unaware of the backstory when listened to it said that it reminded her of a cold lonely morning. The track anyways fitted for the conclusion where I had to bring the supernatural fantasy to an end. For me, the end of all the creepy happening was morning. As a kid, there were some horrifying nights when I felt really terrified of ghosts. In that situation I would wait desperately for the morning to arrive and when it did, I started feeling comfortable and slept. Working on this film required to feel the presence of supernatural around me which was only possible during night. When morning came, it diluted the entire effect and end my sessions of exploring into the supernatural. Hence the film ends with the crickets fading into birds chirping that signified the arrival of morning, a symbol of a fresh start.

Left-right panning in Adobe Audition


Final Storyboard and AnimaticThe final sound also, like my first sound composition was very effective alone without any visuals. While storyboarding I had to be careful that the visual must compliment the sound and not destroy its effect. I needed to sew the sound and the visuals together which seemed to be impossible at first but as I progressed, it happened.

Putting visuals also meant giving a more specific direction to the abstract sound narrative, like giving a title to a painting or a music piece. By introducing visuals, I was snatching audience’s own visual imagination and feeding them with mine. So the visual imagery had to be worth it. I did as I had thought. Without setting a plot, I followed the rhythm of sound and filled in visuals that I saw when I listened to it.

I made some goals that I personally wanted to achieve by making this film:A strong sound narrative with complementary visualsRecreation of the feelingPersonal satisfaction from the filmAmbitious 2D animationAn impactful film connecting with the audience

Storyboard

I collected previous sketches and stories and made very rough drawing in rectangular frames. I avoided going into details, which is a trap I always tend to fall in, and concentrated only on the overall composition inside the frames and the flow of their series. A rough idea of camera travelling, zoom in and out, cuts and other mode of visual transitions were made during storyboarding.









Animatic

One important thing that I learned during making the animatic is timing and synchronisation of sound and visual. It had to be very precise because the final animation would depend on it.The amount of screentime, more or less, given to each frame was decided according to their importance in the film.

Starts from here

panning towards the left, sfx: wind and resonance

enters the frame from right, sfx: crickets, wind fades out

cut, sfx:crickets continue

title appears

Fades into next frame, sfx: wind+crickets


cut, sfx: crickets

sfx: crickets, A vehicle approaching from a distance

cut, sfx: crickets

slow zoom in

cut, sfx: crickets

sfx: crickets, vehicle

cut, sfx: crickets


sfx: vehicle sound fades away as the doppler effect

sfx: crickets, footsteps on gravel

sfx: vehicle sound increases

figure appraching towards us, sfx:crickets and footsteps continue

sfx: crickets


sfx: bike sound at its highest pitch

sfx: crickets and footsteps on gravel

sfx: footsteps, faint sound of a bike

sfx: footsteps continue and stop before the next frame, crickets, faint vehicle sound

sfx: bike sound fades away, doppler effect

sfx: A truck appraching

sfx: crickets, footsteps stop


sfx: truck passes by, doppler effect

zoom inzoom in

cut, sfx: footstep on a wooden floor, crickets

zoom in

sfx: footsteps on gravel, crickets

zoom in


sfx: switch

cut

sfx: footsteps stop

something passes by, sfx: footsteps, crickets

cut, sfx: ads on tv

sfx: footsteps stop

light flickers, sfx: switch, ads on tv

cut, sfx: ads


fades into the next frame

cut, sfx: crickets, iktara

sfx: someone laughs, ads

sfx: iktara + crickets

cut, sfx:crickets, iktara

switch off, sfx: crickets

title appears


cutflashes

cut

cut

cut

sfx: iktara chaotic notes


cut, sfx: chaotic notes

cut to estabishing shot

cut, zoom out

cut

sfx: crickets + song

cut

Sfx: iktara stops

cut

cut, face rises from behind the tree

cut


action cut cut

sfx: crickets and song


cut, fades slowly into the next frame, sfx: low crickets, chirping birds rise

sfx: songs fades out, crickets continue sfx: chirping birds

title appears

sfx: crickets fade out into birds chirping


InspirationsThese brilliant artists helped me when everything about this film seemed pointless. They helped me fight a lot of issues and inspired and motivated me to pick up my pencil and start working. They did all this through their amazing films. Though I haven’t met any of them, I learnt a lot from thier groundbreaking films.

Fear(s) Of The DarkFear(s) of the Dark (French: Peur(s) du noir) is a 2007 French black-and-white animated horror anthology film on the subject of fear written and directed by several notable comic book creators and graphic designers.

It was directed by: BlutchCharles BurnsMarie CaillouPierre di SciulloLorenzo MattottiRichard McGuire

When I talked to different people about my project, many said how was it possible to show horror through cartoons. This film is very important because it is a brilliant example of animated horror. A compilation of short stories about twenty to thirty minutes each, Peur(s) du noir has explored fear through various animation techniques. Each short was different from each other, both in its aesthetics and plot.

The Tell Tale Heart (1953)The Tell-Tale Heart is a 1953 American animated short film directed by Ted Parmelee and narrated by James Mason. The screenplay by Bill Scott and Fred Grable is based on the 1843 short story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe.

The plot focuses on a murderer whose increasing guilt leads him to believe he can hear his victim’s heart still beating beneath the floorboards where he buried him. Seen through the eyes of the nameless narrator, the surrealistic images in the film help convey his descent into madness.


Paul Julian served as both designer and color artist for film, and Pat Matthews was the principal animator.

This film takes drama to another level through its colour and play of light and shadows. Edgar Allan Poe is not an inspiration only to me but a lot of film makers all over the world.

The Mysterious StrangerThe Adventures of Mark Twain, released in the UK as Comet Quest, is a 1985 American stop motion animated fantasy film directed by Will Vinton.

The mysterious stranger is one of the short films included in The Adventures of Mark Twain. This stop motion film accompanied by effectively creepy music is one the most terrifying films ever made. Creation of human beings followed by jealousy and hatred eventually ends in a horrible chaos. I personally think that children would have taken it well but the film was banned because of its horrifying imagery and violence.


A Country Doctor (2007)The film is a direct interpretation of Franz Kafka’s short story “A Country Doctor,” voiced by kyōgen actors of the Shigeyama house. It was directed by Koji Yamamura and the music was composed by Hitomi Shimizu.

The most striking feature of this film was its cold visual imagery, characters that would morph inhumanly and the creepy chorus that narrates the story.

Caroline LeafA brilliant animator who’ve made several films under The National Film Board Of Canada, mostly uses sand and glass painting for her films. Her films The Street and Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (written by Franz Kafka) has been very inspiring. Her dynamic camera and forms morphing into one another continously keeps the audience engaged and draws them inside the film. Inspired from her glass painting technique, I decided to use a similar technique for my final film.

A still from The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa


When The Day BreaksThis film, crafted by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis under The National Film Board Of Canada made an instant connection with me. Brilliantly edited and fused perfectly with the sound, the film made me realize about invisible connections among all the human beings co-existing on this planet. It very successfully creates a strange feeling about death interfering suddenly in our daily mundane routine.

The concluding music in my film is somewhat inspired by the music that plays towards the end of this film. This film made me wonder about all the unfortunate deaths happening all over the world and its minute and temporary effect on us. But watching someone die or dead in front of our own eyes is a different experience altogether. It affects more if we’d known the dead when he or she was once alive.

Sateimania (1978)This film helped greatly in structuring my film. The structure of this film is based on six music tracks composed by Eric Satie, a nineteenth century music composer. The visual imagery is a series of sketches in motion synced with the music. Directed by Zdenko Gasparovic, the film has an enchanting feel to it and sends accross a message of greed and consumption that never comes to an end. It also talks about the depressing lives led by prostitutes. The starting of the film talks satirically about various kinds of people with different shapes, sizes and walks, very similar to Ryan Larkin’s Walking

A still from The Street


A part (the one with rain and water) of the film looks like impressionist paintings set in motion that are meticulously rendered frame by frame and beautifully fused with music. It is so perfect and bold in itslef that it seems that Eric Satie had composed these tracks for these visuals only.

It showed me a path when I was confused about compiling a huge amount of data together and make a film out of it.


ProductionThe initial idea of a medium for the final film was charcoal animation technique similar to that of William Kentridge. I also did some experiments with it but later decided to explore the oil on glass technique. I had also played around with cut outs and a little bit of pixelation. Some of the animation was done frame by frame digitally on a software called Pencil.

Oil on Glass technique Inspired by my childhood dream of becoming a painter, I did oil paintings for final animation. With fingers as my major and favourite tool, I also used brush, cotton buds, match sticks, pin, paper cutter and a piece of cloth for textures and painted the film.

Set UpThe first requirement to set set up an apparatus for Oil on Glass Animation is a dark room where there is no interference of light other than the light from the light box, that has to be larger than atleast DV Pal (10”X 8”) which was my frame size. To shoot the paintings I used a Canon 60 D camera and a camera stand.


SoftwareI used Dragon Frame software which is very helpful in keeping track of what I was animating. The camera is connected to a computer in which Dragon Frame is installed so that one could controll the camera with the computer. It is always suggestd to leave the camera alone when a frame is set. Now, after connecting the camera to the computer, we can shoot through Dragon Frame which also imports the shot on the timeline. It can also run a sequence on a specific FPS (frames per second) to simultaneously check the animation. Also we can go back and forth to check if the drawings are working or not, just like a flip book.

MaterialOil Paint is a brilliant medium for animation as it doesn’t dry quickly. To further enhance this quality, the paint is mixed with linseed oil. The consistency of the colour has to be balanced as it is applied on the glass which is above the light source. So if the consistency is opaque, the colour becomes dark. There has to be some amount of transparency in the consistency to let the light below it pass through it. White is not added to make the colors lighter, instead, the desired shade is achieved by adding linseed oil in paint.


For applying paints and shifting them, I mostly used my fingers, but for minute details I used cotton buds which proved to be excellent for this kind of style.

Oil paints are slippery in nature and hence they can be shifted easily for animation. But this nature of oil paints doesn’t allow it to fill the frame with black. A huge chunk of the film has a black background for which I used waterproof ink. After applying the ink on the glass, it dries in no time and we have a nice black screen ready to be sctratched with a pointy object like a pin or a paper cutter. I had never planned this, it just came simultaneoulsy which is the beauty of the process which includes discovering and inventing.


I shot every frame at twos which means there will be twelve frames for every second instead of 24. DV Pal has a time rate of 25 fps for which animating at 24 fps is just fine.

Sequence breakdown in framesThe visuals were synchronised with the sound during the Animatic stage that gave me sequences that ran according to the sound. In order to achieve perfect timing for a specific sequence I had to count frames at the rate of 24 fps for which I made a very casual X - Sheet.


Cut out technique Animation for the Introduction part was

done using simple motion animation with multiple layers on Adobe Pemiere.

Moving different layers allowed me to bring a parallax effect and

a sense of depth in the scene. Original artworks were made by black ink and ballpen on paper and then photographed and transferred in the computer. The wind was animated frame by frame digitally.


Face painting and Pixelation

This experiment was prettey much fun as I got to paint a face, for which I used acrylic colours. I used a torch to light the character and pixelation technique for animation.


Digital frame by frame animation

Pencil is a very simple 2D traditional animation software available free on the net. The interface is extremely simple and it is very convenient as it provides the facility of performingpencil tests using a single device.Whatever animation done in Pencil were only experiments that later became a part of the film.




This project has proved to be a self exploratory journey where I explored myself through both sound and visual. In the process I realized the importance of fantasy in stories and how they represent wonder and imagination. I realized how important it is for films to not only entertain, but also make a connection with people.

One very important thing that I realized during this project is that creating stories is a human tendency, it is a habbit. We create several stories everyday without even us being aware of it. Our brain travels extensively within this world and beyond to make ourselves a story which helps us to cope up with our lives and go on.

Analyzing dreams became a huge part of the process which made me realize that dreams are brilliantly designed films. Dreams are metaphorical as well as symbolic representations of our reality, a great source of wonderful realizations and ideas and an escape from reality.

CONCLUSION


BIBLIOGRAPHYResources from the netLiterarydevices.netTheliterarylink.comCardboard Computers Kentucky Route ZeroWikipediaSounddogs.comFreesfx.ukYoutube.com

FilmsSatiemaniaFears of the DarkA Mysterious StrangerWhen the day breaksThe streetThe metamorphosis of Mr. SamsaA country DoctorThe Tell Tale Heart

BooksShort stories by KafkaIndigo - short stories by Satyajit RayStories by Edgar Allan Poe

Painters, Film makers, Sound ArtistsMax EarnstClaude MonetBlutch, Chalres Burns, Marie Caillou,Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuireTed Parmelee, Bill Scott, Fred Grable,Paul Julian, Pat MatthewsWill VintonKoji Yamamura, Hitomi ShimizuCaroline LeafWendy Tilby, Amanda ForbisZdenko Gasparovic

Kentucky Route ZeroJake ElliottTames KemenczyBen Babbitt

AuthorsOtto RankWilliam JamesJames Joyce

SoftwaresAdobe Photoshop CS6Adobe Audition CS5.5Adobe soundbooth CS4Adobe Premiere CS4Adobe Indesign CS6Pencil - 2d animation

Documents

Supernatural Fantasy