Chico & Rita

For this week's post, I'm going to be talking about an animated film called Chico & Rita that I recently watched and really enjoyed. 

Havana, Cuba 1948. Chico is a young Cuban pianist who dreams of making a place for himself in the jazz world. Rita is a singer with an extraordinary voice which captivates everyone. Music brings them together and they embark on a passionate and tormented love affair. With a soundtrack of latin jazz as background to their love story, we´re immersed in the world of Cuban passion, sensuality and music. 
Directors: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono Errando

The film is 90 minutes long so here is the trailer:

The entire movie is filmed with live action actors.

The sets include dummy objects and tracker marks for camera tracking.

The live action shots are edited in Final Cut Pro and becomes the live action version of the animatic.

Approximately 2 frames of every second of live action is traced in TV-Paint and becomes the drawn version of the animatic.

The traced frames are printed on paper, pegged and sent through a classical 2D hand drawn production pipeline with rough animation, key animation, clean up, ink & paint and compositing.

The live action shots are used to create backgrounds in either 2D, 2½D or 3D where 2½D refers to 2D elements positioned in a 3D universe.

All 2D animation and coloring is done in ToonBoom Harmony.

The production takes place in 11 studios around the world.

Despite the artists working in 7 different studios they are all experiencing it as if they are working on one central server on their local network. 

Besides the sever installations HoBSoft has ensured that every studio complies with the productions security strategy in terms of firewalls etc. 

HoBSoft has also done the necessary training in each studio to make the local artist capable of working with the production standards in terms of where to save the files and in which format etc.

HoBSoft automatically renders and transfers the necessary movies and setups to the director and various supervisors in the main studio in Barcelona, Spain. 

Part of the automatic updates is to update Final Cut Pro in several studios with the new footage every time a scene is updated in any one of the studios. 

Mariscal´s recreation of the exhuberant Havana of the late 40´s is full of light and colour. He contrasts this with winterland New York, and the decadence of places such as Las Vegas, Paris and Beverly Hills. The film is packed with scenes of great beauty and visual richness.

Final Cut King

This YouTube channel is one of my favorites. I feel as though maybe some day I would be able to recreate some of the things he's done (although I wouldn't be using final cut). He's pretty young, and it seems like he keeps trying to find new ways to make his imagination come to life.

In this one, Final Cut King does a great job of making this small cat look just as pikachu would in real life. The audio may be a little off, but it shows that even a young person like him  can edit if they set their mind to it.

I think that everyone should check out the rest of his channel! Maybe I'll be the "after effects queen" by the end of this class?

I thought I'd focus on typography for this post because of our assignment for class. After reading though some previous posts on typography on this blog, a recent viral video came to mind. A lot typography videos I've seen are almost always purely digital but the video that came to my mind was actually a cool combination of typography with live-action video.

I don't exactly agree with this video but I appreciate how it used typography to enhance the message they were sending out. It's a great example of how seemingly simple animations can make a video really powerful. After browsing through the website of the video's production company, I found out this video was made with the Final Cut Pro suite, although I'm sure it can be done in Adobe After Effects as well.

A Simple Signature

As I begin my search for an internship for next semester, I started to think about small production companies and the production of commercials. This made me start to think about visual effects that we see everyday on television. Immediately I thought of the Orbit gum commercials and their signature "tooth sparkle" (for lack of a better description). Without discussing these commercials any further, I'm sure a large majority of people know exactly what I'm talking about. Orbit has turned this effect into a signature Orbit animation.This is a very simple effect that can be created even without After Effects. By simply making a shape in Photoshop, then giving it a simple motion effect in Final Cut Pro, you can make the same effect without extra software.

I wanted to point out how such a small detail can make a huge difference. Because the world of After Effects is new to me, I find myself testing out the bold, huge, flashy effects. While these types of effects have their time and place, it's important to not forget how small details can have a major impact.

Pleasantville: Basing a Film Around a Simple Effect

One of my favorite films is Pleasantville, which was made in 1997. Pleasantville centers around two teenagers from the present day who are transported back to a black and white world and slowly turn it back to color. The film experiments with black and white vs. color and bases the entire plot around this. In the film, certain things and people turn to color while others remain black and white.

I looked into how this effect was done and found this tutorial on how to do the "Pleasantville Effect." In this tutorial, the author uses Photoshop to create this effect and it is actually pretty easy to do. In another tutorial (below) Final Cut Pro is used to create the effect.

Learn How to create "Pleasantville Effect" in Final Cut Pro. For more Final Cut Studio How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

It's interesting how such a simple effect was used as the basis for an entire movie. The result is an aesthetically beautiful film that is very entertaining. I've included the trailer below in case you haven't seen it.