Behind the Scenes of Explosive Love - (Escape Studios PR5001: Studio Project)

Mar 25

Introduction to PR5001’s first Short Film, titled “Explosive Love”.

PR5001 is an 11-week module at Escape Studios consisting of two group projects. The goal of both of these projects is to conceptualize and produce a short film - firstly over the course of six weeks, and then again over the course of five weeks. This blog will describe the processes, plans, and intent of each step of production during the first short film - titled "Explosive Love"

Firstly: a quick rundown of the group's members and their roles.

Director - Alba Rodriguez

Screenwriters - Alba Rodriguez & Julia Iglesis

Producer - Rohnak Sharma

Art Director - Iulineia Filip

Board Artists - Iulineia Filip, Muhammad Sarfaraz

Modelling Artists - Alba Rodriguez, Noemie Lafrontiere

Texture Artists - Claudia Alcalde, Iulineia Filip, Julia Iglesis, Rohnak Sharma

Lead Animator - Noemie Lafrontiere

Animators - Ben Swallow, Giorgos Konstantinou, Muhammad Sarfaraz, Rohnak Sharma

Lighting Artists - Alba Rodríguez, Julia Iglesis, Noemie Lafrontiere

VFX/Simulation - Alba Rodriguez, Giorgos Konstantinou

2D Compositor - Julia Iglesis

Editor - Giorgos Konstantinou

CG Supervisor - Julia Iglesis

Due to the small size of the team, many students took on multiple roles.

Story, Scripts & Schedules.

Our first task was to come up with a story to tell. During the initial week of the project, all students were welcome to pitch ideas to the class, and our group would select one idea to eventually make into a full film. The pitch that was selected, as you will already know from the title of the blog, was called Explosive Love. This short film concept was pitched by Alba Rodriguez, and tells the story of a lonely pufferfish named “Gordon” who falls in love with a naval mine after confusing it for a fellow pufferfish due to its shape. He doesn't get the romance he expected, and upon leaning in for a kiss, the bomb detonates! We are left on an ambiguous ending, where bubbles pop on the ocean's surface.

According to director Alba Rodriguez, the inspiration for the short film stemmed from a specific piece of art, shown below. The intent was to tell the entire story, leading up to and showing the conclusion of a romance between a pufferfish and a naval mine. Surely, it could only have one outcome…

*“Mine” by DeviantArt user veprikov*

The inspiration for the premise of **Explosive Love**

Original Page

After a successful pitch, the next step was to create a script. The areas of the story that were focused on at this stage were: How do we effectively portray the character as lonely? And: How do we create tension and a build-up to the eventual payoff of the bomb exploding? Explosive Love is a comedic short film, therefore the story’s structure is very similar to the structure of a joke. There is a set-up, where we receive context for the events that are unfolding. Next, the elements that make the key moment of the film - the explosion - work are introduced. There is some intentional delay between the moment that the audience understands that the pufferfish is in love with a bomb, and the moment the bomb goes off. Showing a bomb on screen in any form makes the audience expect that it will go off, therefore the suspense in the moments between the reveal of the bomb and the explosion stems from dramatic irony. The audience knows that the object of Gordon’s desires is a deadly bomb, but the character himself does not.

Below is the full script of the short film. In the column on the right side of each page is feedback from Escape Studios tutor Amadeo Beretta, which has been addressed in the main body of the script but has been kept to show how our writers developed iterations of the script based on feedback. This was also broken down further into a shooting script, which finalized the number of shots needed to tell the story.

*Script for* ***EXPLOSIVE LOVE*** *written by Alba Rodríguez and Julia Iglesis, with feedback from tutor Amadeo Beretta addressed, and responses to feedback highlighted in blue.*

Immediately after the script and shot list were completed, Production documents were made to distribute work among the relevant team members and create a roadmap for the completion of the project by the deadline of 30th March. The Progress Tracker document below serves both as a way for team members to show their progress and the overall progress of the film, but also as a smaller version of a script breakdown, detailing which sets, characters, props and camera movements would be used in each shot. This document was updated regularly by team members throughout the production. Columns show each stage of a shot's development, and each cell contains the name of the member that the work has been assigned to as well as the ideal completion date, and the date that the task was actually completed. This gave each member a strong idea of the work they should be doing at any given time.

*Shot progress tracker created by Rohnak Sharma, screenshot taken on 23/03/22 during lighting*

A second document was created as well: the Deliverable Tracker. This document was set up similarly to the previous, however it was concerned with individual deliverables as concept art, 3D models for our sets, textures and lighting setups. It was updated by team members as well, as each piece of work was completed.

*Deliverable progress tracker*, created by Rohnak Sharma, screenshot taken on 23/02/22*

*As the entire document is considerably lengthy, only a small section is shown here

Story, Setting, & our Puffy Protagonist.

*Initial Storyboards by Muhammad Sarfaraz*

*“Gordon” Pufferfish Character Design by Alba Rodríguez*

The next step was to plan our visuals. The images above, from the initial pitch of the project, informed the look of the film significantly. As did our main source of filmic inspiration, Pixar's Finding Nemo. Our character’s design was cemented quite early on in the process, being based on the aforementioned art that inspired the concept as a whole. Our pufferfish, Gordon, would be a little more sad and downtrodden than this. As an added fun fact: his name was inspired by the word Gordo, which is Spanish for “fat”.

An important part of the preproduction process was refining each sequence for maximum clarity and cinematographic appeal. Over our two weeks of preproduction, many versions of an animatic were made. Below are our initial and final animatics, which should highlight the development and improvement of the sequence over time. Though the main story beats are similar, the main improvements come from a stronger focus on guiding the viewer’s eye, keeping focus on the most important part of the shot, and using timing as a device to enhance the emotion in the story.

Initial rough “pitch” animatic of Explosive Love

Drawn by Muhammad Sarfaraz
Edited by Giorgos Konstantinou

Refined animatic with finalized shot numbers and cinematography

Drawn by Iulineia Filip and Alba Rodríguez

Edited by Giorgos Konstantinou

Gordon Himself

Unlike other groups in this module, ours decided to create our main character's rig from scratch, so that we would have the character needed for our story, rather than tailoring our Story to the resources available to us online. The result is the Gordon rig by Alba Rodriguez, with expressive facial features, flappy fins, and blend shapes so that he can puff up like his namesake, and make a kissing expression too. The needs of the animators and the story were considered fully when creating this rig, making it specialized for this particular film.

“Gordon” Pufferfish Rig by Alba Rodríguez

Supporting Characters

However, other characters were present in the story. The other sea creatures, who would all appear in couples, just to contrast and exaggerate Gordon's loneliness to a viewer. The rigs used to represent these characters were sourced online, to save time, and because the rigs available online were suitable for the task. They are pictured below.

Concept Art and the Set it informed.

Concept Art by Iulineia Filip

Once our story was planned out and finalized, we had to create or source each asset to build a set. Art Director Iulineia Filip worked closely with the director to create designs for each asset, such as the naval mines, Gordon's home in the reef, and various plants and other features of the environment. These were then in turn used by modelling and texturing artists to generate the pieces that would make up the set. Final sets were a combination of sourced and original assets, put together by modelling artists with the idea to match the animatic's composition but add detail and carefully planned colour to improve the visual appeal and further guide the eye through the use of colour and brightness contrast.

Various models, textures, and render tests created by the team

Layout and Animation

Once the set had been created, it was finally time to animate the characters! This was another example of an iterative process which was refined through daily feedback with tutors. It was the responsibility of the producer to note down the feedback and relay this information to the director who would ultimately decide which changes to make and which not to.

The process began with 3D Layout, carried out by Lead Animator Noemie Lafrontiere. This gave the other animators a guideline for the positioning of the characters in each frame and the overall timing of the movement.

Next, a file with each shot was given to the corresponding animator according to the Shot Progress tracker shown above. Each animator focused on creating fluid movement and exaggerated expressions for the characters, giving them a sense of personality and making them feel alive.

Below are videos of the animation at various stages: 3D Layout, Blocking (rough animation), and Splining (polished animation). Graphics for the film were created as well, with each being assigned to a team member as a small side task which they had creative control over.

Under Water Studios logo - Noemie Lafrontiere and Alba Rodríguez
Escape Studios floating logo - Muhammad Sarfaraz
Explosive Love title - Rohnak Sharma
Credits - Giorgos Konstantinou

Our editor, Giorgos Konstantinou, sourced final sounds for the animation and slightly altered the length of certain shots in order to create the most suitable timing and sequence of shots.

Explosive Love 3D Layout by Noemie Lafrontiere

Explosive Love blocking with animators credited

Explosive Love splining with animators credited

Rohnak Sharma