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1. The Pitch - where the heck did the idea come from?

I had had an idea, months before I submitted to Random Acts, for a *series of still photographs where I dressed an Oak tree with loads of giant cardboard acorns. I had just made a micro film Duck Shoot using cardboard and really enjoyed working with the material. I like the fact that it's free, and I know I won’t run out! Cardboard is actually very versatile too and you can create lots of different textures by squashing, tearing or bending it. For this film the fact that I was taking a material that originates from trees to the woods (and bringing it back to life) appealed to me too.  

Initially, I pitched the film to Channel 4 / Lupus as O.A.K. As well as the obvious reason behind the title, it was also to stand for the names of the three main characters i.e. Oscar, Albert and Kevin or something like that. In my original idea the discovery of the Oak tree was the ending, and there was no dramatic twist, so that title was more appropriate to the story at that stage.

This was the original synopsis:

A trio of cardboard creatures on a quest for the perfect meal.

A squirrel, a pig and a bear travel the countryside scavenging for food. They come across, and subsequently reject, many synthetic things from a discarded hamburger to, a child’s birthday cake. And just when they are on the verge of turning on each other they find their holy grail…A huge tree full to bursting with oversized cardboard acorns and oak leaves.

A piece of concept art that I submitted with the pitch

An acorn that I made as a development piece for inclusion in the pitch

(*I would like to create this original stills idea at some point too).

2. Mood board

Once I had been commissioned, and before starting on the script, I began making a mood board. This was to help me get a sense of the look of the film from colour palette, to character and prop design. I find that sometimes ideas come to me more freely when I am just sitting doing something else, so I thought this would be a good way to get a fresh perspective on the narrative.

Two artist's that I greatly admire are Tim Walker and Wes Anderson. Their work often has a playful, innocent quality which is underscored by dark and serious themes. Imagery from Walker's photographs and Anderson's films (especially in terms of colour) really influenced the look of this short. For example Anderson's beautiful film Moonrise Kingdom takes place, for the most part, in a woodland setting and the Scouts wear khaki/cardboard coloured uniforms. So I thought that a similar colour palette would really compliment my characters in their very comparable environment.

I found this board very helpful when having preliminary talks with my DP Pete Ellmore. Looking at it, he was able to get a real sense of what I wanted to do with the visuals quite early on. This gave him time to think about how he could achieve this in camera with lenses and filters. This is something that I really like to do, and really admire Pete for. I love the idea of creating the look as much as possible for real on the shoot, rather than doing it in post. Then when you arrive at that stage it's just a question of enhancing and polishing what you already have, rather than creating from scratch.

3. The Script

One of the strongest influences in my work has to be my childhood. I wrote the story with a fairy tale like structure. Genre-wise it is a buddy movie, a quest and a dark comedy. I liked the idea of the 'magic three' characters with different personalities, travelling and working together to achieve a common goal. The acorn is like the Golden Fleece, or The Holy Grail. It is the materialization of all their longings and needs. Therefore I made it physically giant to visually represent how much it means to them when they find it. As you can see, originally I included a title sequence at the beginning of the film. But Random Acts films go out without a title, so I cut that sequence, eventually replacing it with the table scene.

O.A.K (working title)

Script

Dir. Rebecca Manley

Ch4 Random Acts

Ext. woods daytime

We see three characters moving through the wood. Squirrel, pig and bear. They see something ahead on the ground, partly obscured by leaves. They approach it and we see from their pov that it is the word O.A.K (or the title of the film). Squirrel reaches out and picks up a letter, which he then nibbles on tentatively. Blurrgh! It is horrid, he recoils and tosses the letter away. The trio looks disappointed.

Music kicks in (it has a beat to march to).

The trio starts walking.

They walk through the woods traversing logs and negotiating undergrowth, sniffing around as if to find something.

Suddenly in the distance, at the edge of the wood, we see an over-sized fast food container on the ground. The squirrel approaches it and opens the lid. Inside is a giant half eaten hamburger. Flies gather around it, buzzing and clamoring. Squirrel turns his nose up and rejoins the group. When he gets back to the others he shakes his head. They sigh and continue on their way.

They move into a field, and walk down a dirt path. Alongside a fence they spy a large set of tools, paint tin and brushes, next to which is a plate of biscuits and a flask of tea. Bear breaks away from the group and approaches the plate. But just as he reaches out a paw to grab a biscuit some trainers step into shot and the bear runs away

A man’s voice mutters, “Bleedin’ bear, paws off my Bourbons!”

The bear rejoins the group puffing and out of breath. They shake their heads.

The trio continues on their way but by now they are visibly tired and hungry. Sniffing about for food, Bear momentarily sniffs at Pig’s leg. Pig, unaware of this, sees something and runs towards it, his sudden movement bringing Bear sharply back to reality.

Pig approaches a dog food bowl on the ground next to a brick wall (farm in the countryside or at least an isolated building surrounded by parkland). The bowl is full, pig approaches, but just as he is about to put snout in bowl a dog’s head lurches into shot and sends him running. They all run, scared out of their wits. They run into a patch of dark shadow, but panting and exhausted it takes them a moment to realize and look up at the cause…

There before them is a giant acorn hanging on an Oak tree. Squirrel and Pig are overjoyed. But Bear is looking at Pig nervously. In his eyes, pig transforms into a pork chop on legs. Squirrel runs towards the tree. But when he looks back for his friends, only Bear is left…slowly, contentedly, he licks a paw...(cut to black).

(Music - 'Guilty')

THE END

4. Pig as Pork Chop

It was somewhere around this time that the idea of Bear hallucinating Pig as a pork chop materialized. I was chatting to a friend about the film, over coffee and giant marshmallows in Shoreditch (you know who you are!). I don't know how we got onto the subject but we were talking about the device in old cartoons like Tom & Jerry, where Tom sees Jerry as a chicken drumstick or in a swiss cheese sandwich etc. And I realized that this would be a really funny image to incorporate into the film. And so the new ending was born. Who says sugar and caffeine aren't good for you! 

Apart from the visual gag itself, what appealed to me about the twist (the idea of Bear eating Pig) was that when the going gets tough Bear reverts to type, back to his true nature. Friendship goes out of the window - and who hasn't born the brunt of that sort of behaviour at one time or another? I also liked the idea of this 'dog eat dog theme' juxtaposed with the cute look of the characters. So I went away ruminated over this new ending...

When I mentioned it to Chris Shepherd he advised me to look at the cabin scenes in the Charlie Chaplin film The Gold Rush. There is a particular section in the film where The Little Fellow (Chaplin) and a character named Big Jim are trapped in the middle of nowhere in a log cabin without food, and they are starving. Eventually Big Jim hallucinates that The Little Fellow as a chicken and tries to kill him. I used this scene for inspiration for the shot selection in this section of my film.

A still from 'The Gold Rush' 1925

To make it more clear at the beginning of the film that the characters are hungry, I came up with the idea of the trio sitting around a table with plates, cutlery, napkins etc. In my mind, it's like this is a regular thing for them - They meet up once in a while and have a meal together. They take it in turns to bring the food, but this time Squirrel has turned up empty-handed, and so they are forced to go and forage for something in the woods. The addition of the napkins provided me with a device to make the ending a bit clearer too. I designed Pig with a yellow napkin tied around his neck. This helped to make him seem very eager to eat at the start of the film, and then at the end, when we see bear wiping his mouth with said napkin, we know for sure that Bear has eaten Pig. (Logistically I couldn't cut to a wide here, and show that Pig is definitely not there, as of course the puppets don't have legs, and I needed to frame out the puppeteer).

Making this section of the film as clear as possible was one of the main challenges that we came across in the edit. But I'm very happy with the result. Avye's subtle change of body language (on pork chop), even with such a basic puppet, gave me the raw material (excuse the pun) to be able to put across the moment of realization, on the part of Pig, that he is in trouble. I used a wide lens on the final shot of Bear too, as I felt the slightly strange look it gave us would help both to separate him visually from Pig/pork chop, and to put across that he has finally surrendered to the hallucination and his natural instincts. 

5. Character Designs/Mood Boards

Meanwhile I was making mood boards and concept design sheets for the characters:

To make these sheets, I gathered lots of images online, from illustrations to photographs and three dimensional work. Then I cut them up and stuck them back together - digital collage. I used this stage to help me get a sense of the character's personalities and how I could express each one through physical appearance. And although the puppets ended up looking very different from the above designs, it really helped me to work through my ideas and either eliminate thoughts or bring them forwards for further development.

6. Storyboard & Animatic

Before drawing the storyboard proper, I worked through a couple of thumbnail boards. Doing this always helps me to be really loose with the shots and the action, and not get distracted by being too precious with the drawings themselves. Then when I have worked out the flow of action and basic shots, I can move on to more detailed drawings. I also began making the puppets and went on the first location recce before starting on the final board, so that I could get a better idea of the camera angles and possible backgrounds that I wanted to use. I find it really helpful to take snaps of possible shot angles on recces so I can use them as reference for my drawings. In the end I did a couple of different versions of the storyboard. But here is the final final version:

Animatic:

Because I come from an animation background, I am used to making an animatic for every project that I direct. So even though this film is live action puppets, I did an early animatic just to give me a sense of the pace of the film and what I could fit into the 3 minutes. It was useful for those reasons but I didn't refer to it much or do more than one version, as I didn't want the action to become stilted. I wanted to leave a bit of room for manoeuvre and ideas to develop.

7. Music by Brains & Hunch - the original score and Guilty

I was very lucky to be introduced, by a producer friend of mine, to the very talented duo Brains & Hunch -Tom Haines & Chris Branch.

I met Chris briefly, at a Christmas party, and a month or so later dropped B&H an e-mail about the project. Luckily they liked the script and so were interested in working on the film. I went to meet Tom at their studio in Hoxton in early March, and we got on really well. He was very keen on the story and the references that I mentioned from Desplat to Morricone. Tom has a background as a percussionist, and we discussed perhaps making cardboard instruments and incorporating lots of live sound into the score. It was a great first meeting, and I went away feeling really positive, with a few cds to listen to and ideas to think on. What impressed me about the guys was the very unique, modern feel of their work and also the fact that they continually get involved in a variety of different projects from theatre, to animation, to live music (with their band The London Snorkelling Team). This gives their work a variety and energy that I really like.

So over the next few months I liaised with Tom, sporadically going into the studio for sessions, and bringing all manner of biscuits and cakes with me for sustenance. So serious were we about our biscuits at these sessions, that one day we even discussed the merits of the fig roll, it's status as Über food stuff, and superior/inferior brands, for what must have been a good half an hour...Tom can explain it to you...It has to do with cycling.

I also like that their studio is an Aladdin's cave of cool instruments:

Chris (left) on guitar, and Tom (right) in the driving seat

Throughout the whole process we exchanged notes and versions of the score and thus, I feel, we were able to tailor it to really compliment the film. Their enthusiasm, and their willingness not only to listen to my musings and requests, but endeavour to interpret them musically and add them into the score, was both impressive and very much appreciated.

Guilty

From very early on, once I had decided on the Bear eating Pig ending, I wanted to use the track Guilty to finish on. The Al Bowlly version of this beautiful track is featured in the film Amélie. Again I really liked the idea of juxtaposing such a sophisticated, elegant song with the images of cute, slightly psychotic woodland creatures. And so began the battle to secure usage of the track from EMI with little to no budget. Here, all my thanks must go to Charlie Stanfield at Independent who fought til the bitter end to make this happen for me. So in mid June I went back into the studio, and we re-recorded our own version, performed by Chris Branch and sung by Pascal Wyse. Although we only used a few lines, I really enjoyed directing all the nuances in Pasc's voice. I am very happy with our version, and I think it really helps to give the ending more impact and that darkly comic feel that I wanted.

The London Snorkelling Team with Pascal far right

8. Puppets - overview

So I have a confession to make - I'm actually not that keen on traditional puppets like marionettes. I grew up watching things like The Muppets and Labyrinth and those are the sort of puppets that appeal to me. I have always wanted to direct something similar and knew that the micro budget for Random Acts was too small to be able to do stop-frame to the standard that I would be happy with. So I decided to take the plunge and make this film a  mini homage to all those programmes that I loved as a child.

My background is in animation and although I have made stop-motion puppets before I had never made live action puppets on this scale. As well as the three main puppets Squirrel, Pig and Bear, which had to be able to last the entire shoot and express different emotions, there were the dog and the flies to make too. 

As a research trip, I decided to go and see a couple of puppet shows at The Little Angel Theatre in Islington in order to get an idea of the movement that could be achieved, the mechanics of the puppets, the position of the puppeteers, and so on. I went to see Boris & Sergey... and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. 

The beautiful A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

These productions were very different. The former is for adults only and the latter is primarily for children, but they both showed the versatility of puppets and how as an audience member you can forget that there are puppeteers on stage and be totally carried along by the action and immersed in the story. 

The puppet's eyes in A Very Old Man were something that I noticed immediately. (For me the eyes are one of the most important parts of any puppet). They seemed to be simple shiny black beads. But the way they caught the light gave the puppets a depth of expression that I really liked. The arms and legs were jointed with what looked to be fabric or leather and this also interested me. It allowed for a freedom of movement that could not be achieved using stiff hinge joints. In both these productions the puppeteers were visible on stage, but of course I didn't want to imitate this as I felt it would be too distracting on film. So I decided to make them as rod puppets operable from underneath (like The Muppets) so the puppeteers could be framed out of shot. A friend put me in touch with professional puppeteer and tutor at The London School of Puppetry Emma Fisher, and over Skype chat (she is based in Ireland) I was able to hold up the puppets that I had started to build and ask a few questions about mechanics. I was keen that the puppeteers not be hindered at all by my limited technical knowledge in the area. But fortunately Emma assured me that I was on the right track and gave me a few tips which I very much appreciated. And so, armed with a bit more knowledge than before, the puppet build was truly under way!

9. The Props

I realised quite early on that I would struggle to make all the puppets and props on my own. At this point I had no other crew on the film, and so I was effectively both directing and producing. So I started looking for someone to help me. In the end I found Mark O'Brien's work by chance whilst looking at pictures of cardboard sculpture on line. As I looked through his portfolio I was impressed and transfixed by the quality of his work. It had charm and character and the diversity of his models was lovely too - from shoes to cameras, cowboy hats to laptops and even a life-size Mini Cooper.

This is what he says about himself:

"Crazy cardboard craftsman for hire! I make work for use in shop display, illustration and set making/props. I use cardboard boxes to play in a seriously fun and creative way.

I'm also working on running workshops for anybody interested in playing with crafty cardboard and other recycled materials. In my spare time I just make things for the enjoyment of it! 

It's fun!

I am currently based near Manchester."

I approached Mark via e-mail with some details about me and the project, and luckily he was interested in coming on board. When we spoke on the phone he was really enthusiastic and I was sure that he would do a good job. I thought that his style would compliment mine, but was aware that they were quite different - Mark's is very realistic and mine is more stylized. So in order to create a sense of synergy, the props in any one scene are either made by Mark or myself. I found working together very simple and stress free. I gave him a brief on the phone about the things I needed him to make and we agreed that he would keep me up to date on his progress with photos. And so we began quite an exciting journey. It was great to get e-mails from him every so often with yet another beautiful model finished. I am truly grateful to Mark for his professionalism and the quality of his work on this film. And we've never even met! On completion of everything, he sent all the finished models down to London by courier, and they were as amazing in real life as they looked in the pictures.

In the end Mark made 3 sets of cutlery, 3 dinner plates, 2 napkins, a box of assorted biscuits, a flask, 2 paintbrushes, a paint tin, a hammer, a saw, a pair of 'Converse' high top trainers and a dog food bowl complete with loose cubes of dog food. [I made the giant burger and fast food container (which onscreen doesn't actually look that big but is in fact about 40cm square and approx. 25cm H)]

Here are some of the work in progress snaps that Mark sent to me along the way:

10. Squirrel, Pig & Bear - the making of 3 friends

It was funny how the puppets evolved. Of course cardboard is stiff and flat and so I used these properties to my advantage with the design and constructed them out of flat shapes making them 3D with seams and visible hard edges. I felt that being constrained in this way by the medium would help to create a very individual look to the film. I had done this previously with Duck Shoot, but the difference and the challenge in this case was to make the puppets seem alive and enable them to express a variety of emotions.

SQUIRREL

I started on the squirrel, and I found him very easy to make. Luckily he seemed to evolve quite naturally out of the pieces of cardboard. And when I had constructed him fully and added his shiny black eyes, like the Gingerbread Rabbit in one of my favourite childhood stories, he had character. And with just the smallest bit of movement he felt alive.  

PIG

The same thing happened when I made the pig. But with his naive personality in mind, I tried to make him appealing in a slightly sorrowful, vulnerable way. The trick with him, I thought, was to put this across and yet avoid making him irritating. In the end, simply due to bad planning really, I made two versions. The first one was great and I really liked it, but unfortunately I made him a bit too small. He was the same size as the squirrel, and visually I wanted the three characters to go up in size small>medium>large. The pig is the only puppet without jointed arms. I did this on purpose so that he felt more stilted and less agile than the others. I felt that this would help to give him that air of vulnerability that I wanted. But I was a little worried that he would be appear too stiff and lifeless compared to the others. I had been working on the storyboard alongside the early models and I thought it would be nice if the pig's snout could move. So when I started on version two of the pig, I devised a mechanism with string running from inside the snout through his head and down the back of his neck, that would allow the puppeteer to pull on the chord and make the pig 'snuffle'. Although the movement would be very subtle, I thought that it might help to bring the pig to life a bit more, especially in close ups. In order for this to work in cardboard I had to make a concertina type piece for his nose out of fairly stiff brown paper that I ripped off some old cardboard boxes. It took a while for me to get this right as it was a delicate balance between too stiff to move and ripping it completely. But eventually I got there. And although this movement is almost invisible in the finished film (we had to cut some of the sections in which it was clearer) I think it adds a touch of life to the puppet. I also loved the fact that when I bent the cardboard the creases and texture created looked a lot like piggy skin. (This came out even more when the puppet was painted).

Pig #1

Pig #2

BEAR

The bear however was a completely different story... I made a few prototypes, over a period of about a week, before I managed to get him right. After I had made the first one, I looked at it and knew straight away it wasn't working. But it took me a little while to work out why. The shape was too much like a teddy bear, and there was no personality or life in it. Even the shiny black eyes looked dead.

Bear #1

I tried to make another bear's head large scale, but it just looked s**t and I was getting really frustrated. So I decided to work really small with very thin cardboard from a box of tea bags, so I could cut and construct it easily using scissors and masking tape. (At this stage the bear design still had a ruff or collar, as if perhaps he had escaped from the circus). This prototype measures just 8.5 cm to the tips of the ears, so it's pretty small. But because I could work quickly and more roughly, I managed to inject the personality I was looking for into it. So then I all I had to do was translate it into a three foot tall puppet...Errrr...

I had to keep a close eye on the different ratios and proportions on the face e.g. muzzle area : face area; eye size, distance apart etc. But when I had made the basic head, to my disappointment, there seemed to be something lacking. I ploughed on though, making the entire body with jointed arms. And then stopped to have a think.

Again please excuse the pun, but I thought he looked a little bit bear. Then I remembered a picture of somebody at the 'Jack in the Green' festival that I had seen recently. And also a photograph by Tim Walker (Vogue, July 2011) of a similar character in multi-coloured rag coat:

Tim Walker for Vogue July 2011

I really liked the texture and wondered whether I could translate that on to the bear puppet. I thought it would look good out in the woods if we were lucky with the light. But I have to confess that half way through adding all the textured pieces by hand (which took a hell of a long time by the way) I had a slight panic attack wondering whether it was looking 'twee'. Fortunately those around me came to the rescue, putting paid to my fears on that score. Sometimes I find it's good to take a bit of a break whilst making a piece like this. Because if you are working really intensely and closely on something for a long period of time, it is very hard to really see it clearly. When I came back and looked again, I was pleased with not only the texture, but also the personality that I could already see coming out in the puppet, especially through his eyes.

COLOUR

Just a brief note on colour. As I mentioned before I was inspired by the colour palette in Moonrise Kingdom. So I decided to make the squirrel a rich orange colour. I thought that this would look great against the natural colours of the woods - greens, yellows, browns. I also painted flecks onto his tail to give him a stylish illustration-like look. It took a few layers and a few adjustments to the colour mix to get the right tone of pink for the pig (and pork chop), but eventually I was happy with it. Dry brushing helped to emphasize the creases and textures in places like his ears and nose. I felt that it'd be nice to leave the bear natural cardboard but wanted to emphasize his eyes and give him a few highlights. So I just mixed up a dark brown and painted his nose, inner ears and around the eyes. Then I dry brushed the nose with a lighter brown to break up the dark block of colour and give it a bit of texture.

(Note: Oh and if you are thinking 'But I thought the puppets were made by Acceber Yelnam...', just flip it).