American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 14) Right: In a violent fit, Colleen snaps her teeth at the camera and a splattering of blood streaks down the lens. Here, the filmmakers capture the liveaction “blood” element, which then underwent the rotoscope treatment. Below: Pointing the camera toward a mirror, Andy London takes a moment to reflect. copy animation. To achieve that look, the original digital video frames were exported to Photoshop and manipulated with filters before the rotoscoping. The filmmakers played with other visual tricks, such as using a digital still camera to shoot pieces of paper that had been crumpled and then compositing them into the image. “We didn’t want it to look like it was just the pen tablet and Flash; we were really trying to bring the footage to life,” says Andy. “In the white-on-black footage, the black has a bit of texture to it, and in some shots, you can even see coffee stains!” A haunting scene comes in the wake of Andy’s nightmarish loss of virginity at the hands of a seemingly 14 February 2008 rabid Colleen. She’s lying naked on the floor in a stupor, and suddenly, she begins to thrash uncontrollably in a fit of rage. Andy initially assigned the rotoscoping to one of his interns, who used a brush and ink to trace over photocopied frames. The result was artful and delicate, but, like the early hand-drawn tests, it did not suit the feel the filmmakers had in mind. Ultimately, Andy took responsibility for the task, working once again with Flash. “I had to do that last scene because I was probably the one most emotionally connected to it,” he says. “I animated most of the film, but I left the last part for somebody else because it was just too upsetting. It really bugged me to draw my wife, frame by frame, thrashing around naked on my floor. It also reminded me of that night 20 years ago. But I had to be the one to go through that stupid night, painstakingly, for three whole days.” Using Flash allowed the Londons to work quickly, but the process was also fraught with technical problems. They discovered that when a project grew to upwards of 30 or 40 frames, render times would drag or the program would crash. At one point, several days of work were lost in a software malfunction. But they took it in stride. “There’s always going to be a faster way or a better way to do something, but it should be a journey,” says Carolyn. “I’m not really turned on by technology, anyway. Computers and software are just tools in my palette.” The Londons started A Letter to Colleen in August 2006 and finished it in September 2007. All told, 21⁄2 months were devoted to testing and script revisions, and the rest of the time to shooting and rotoscoping. Andy worked on the film wherever he could bring a laptop. “It was emotionally grueling — it never went away,” says Carolyn. In order to submit their project to festivals, the Londons had to strike a 35mm negative. Heavy Light Digital in New York handled the transfer; Andy exported the original 720x480-resolution Flash projects as 1440x960 TARGA sequences, and Heavy Light uprezzed those frames to 2K in Adobe After Effects. The files were recorded to 35mm with a 4K Cinematrix recorder. “It’s nice to have an old-fashioned film experience where you can just walk into a theater and really get lost in the images, and that’s what happened when we saw our film blown up so huge,” says Carolyn. Andy adds, “Film is the ultimate art form right now, and we want to be a part of it, even if it’s only a small part.” I
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