Introduction to Futurism:
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city. Fortunato Depero belonged to this era and it was he who brought the Futurist influence to the United States starting in New York.
Anihccam Del 3000 is a mechanical ballet written by Fortunato Depero. There is only one poster that survived this piece, showing two humanoid figures dressed up as locomotives. The ballet represented the progression of technology into the future and the two main characters’ evolution towards humanity. Having only the one poster as a reference, it was left up to the team to re-imagine the ballet and the setting and story preceding the ballet. The ballet depicts the growing relationship between two locomotives. Initially they are fully mechanical high speed trains but as they leave the industrial city behind and journey through the countryside, they shed their mechanical confines and embark on a human emotional journey. On arriving at the final terminal country station, the locomotives transform into humanoids where they feel the need to express their emerging emotions through dance.
The whole piece was to be made into an animated short introducing the industrial city, a journey through the countryside, the transformation in to humanoids and the emotional ballet. The length of this piece was determined to be around 5 – 8 minutes long.
The project was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MART). The team had two advisors: Franco Sciannameo, the artistic Director and Don Marinelli, the Executive Producer. Both of them share unequivocal passion for Futurism and wanted to see this piece come to life. Being the artistic director Franco Sciannameo approached the team with his creative vision. He had a clear idea about how to approach the topic of presenting the ballet. The team had creative space to expand the vision and make the journey not only interesting but a memorable one.
Things that went well for us:
The team was very excited when the idea was introduced by Franco Sciannameo. Latching onto it we started brainstorming on how to make it exciting, how to tell a story. With all the creative heads at the table some very beautiful ideas come across and most of them were adopted. The most important decision that had to be made was: How long should the animation be?
The time that was given to us was approximately 15 minutes. After discussing how much assets will be needed and other issues that are a part of an animation, we came to the conclusion that 15 minutes cannot be done given the project time frame of 4 months. We then relayed the necessary information to our advisors, pointing out the fact that a quality animated film would not be possible due to various technical reasons and the entire pipeline timeframe needed. Considering these reasons, our advisors agreed to make the animation duration to be approximately 5 minutes. This gave us a huge boost as we now could move on to make a high quality piece that would make everyone involved feel very proud.
After roping in the time needed for quality production, we moved on to technical issues and schedule. The most important aspect of the animation was the ballet at the end. We knew that it had to portray the right emotions and have the correct look and feel that Depero had initially wanted to convey. The options that could be used to do the ballet were: animation, filming, green screen, and motion capture. We settled for motion capture and decided to use the motion capture system available at Carnegie Mellon University’s main campus. Using this system meant that someone had to actually do ballet. Considering that our team had no dance expertise whatsoever, we contacted Attack Theatre who specializes in unique theatre performances. They were very interested in the story and contributed by giving their own interpretation of what these two locomotives would be feeling as they transform and awaken into humanoids
One of the toughest tasks was that of effective communication within the team of 8 creative people. The realization of this helped us in continually improving our communication and we employed various ways to be on top of things happening in the project. We made a schedule which was highly detailed. Every shot was accounted for, people responsible for it and time needed to deliver, and everything was included in the schedule. Towards the latter half, we wrote down all the scenes and assets that were left and who was responsible for that task, on a whiteboard for everyone to see and check them off when the task was done.
Things that could have been better:
There are several key things that could have been done better. However, the wisdom to implement them came after learning from our mistakes.
Communication: With such a large team and working with external contractors, communication was something that we could have definitely improved on. Firstly coordinating the work tasks and class schedules of eight people was a challenge. We tried different mediums to relay information, trello, email, and Google docs dailies; however they were not as successful as we had hoped. Therefore to communicate better we set up a physical whiteboard with all the tasks and assigned people to those tasks. The producers then relayed this information to each team member. With that said however there was still not as much communication as we had hoped within the team when it came to working on scenes. Since different people were assigned to different scenes and task, we really needed to work together to bring all those scenes together to create a consistent look and feel.
We only noticed this problem until we brought all the scenes together to be edited. In the future this should be done much sooner so that there is more time to correct any issues.
Audience Screenings: Just as with any product, play tests should be performed to see how different people react. We believe that more audience screenings would have helped to get a better understanding of what individual audience members took away from the piece and how shots and scenes work together. It is only after viewing the full piece that we really get a sense of the film. Therefore more time should have been allotted for this.
Team Dynamic: Team dynamics can always be improved on. We believe that having had more team building exercises would have improved team dynamics on the team. If people are more comfortable with each other and have an understanding of how each person works and the individual styles, more effective communication could be reached. In addition, it has been found that if everyone is comfortable in a team setting they are more likely to speak up and relay how they feel about the work.
Lessons Learned:
As this was the first animation project for most of the team members, some very valuable lessons were learnt throughout the process.
1. Scope:
Our team had 2 members that had previous experience with making an animation short. With their experience we were able to analyze and realize that the duration of the short will be of upmost importance. The reason for why a 5 minute piece is the best choice in the given timeframe was explained to our advisors. Before discussing the scope, we had done our homework quite well. Every technical detail was taken into account such as assets required, motion capture and cleaning the data, rendering time required and ,even, individual schedules.
2. Team Strength:
It is absolutely important to sit down and discuss what each team member brings to the table. Once you know that it becomes easy to schedule and assign tasks. It also encourages amiable nature in the team.
3. Communication:
Our team size was quite big and with this communication becomes quite important. Everyone on the team had a schedule of classes everyone was taking, assignments and project work. Initially we had a little trouble in this section but we recovered before it could have become a major hassle. Each team member got assigned tasks and after completing them we would discuss what all has been done. This process became more refined over the course of time.
4. Story Board:
Being an animation project, we needed a story board. Our story board needed more than just pictures depicting the events. We needed to know the camera angles, what type of shot would it be (close up, medium, long), what assets in the shot would be 2D and 3D. Another important thing we needed was the duration of each shot. The detailed storyboard is available on the project website (http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/anihccam/?page_id=565).
Conclusion:
Seeing our final product we believe that we have created something that we are proud to show to fans of Depero’s work and new viewers alike. It is also a clear reflection of how the team came to achieve a common goal. After an initial road block with the scoping of the animated short, the team had to come together to find effective ways to get the client to understand our point of view. However once we presented and discussed these issues with our client, he was more than sympathetic to our needs and we were able to move forward on the project after halves. Looking back at all the progress we have made from the start, we have learned not only the necessary technical skills but also the skills required to effectively work on an animated short as team.
