Part of the inspiration for the new opening sequence which uses photographs of some of my previous work came from the opening titles of To Kill a Mockingbird. I felt that this opening sequence was very effective in giving a sense of the world in which the story would take place. It uses objects to represent each of the characters, their personalities, their age, their preoccupations in a meaningful way.
We have decided to make a real book and shoot a stop motion animation of it to act as the stage for our pages. Further down the line this will require compositing with the digital pages. But first to make the book. Fortunately I have just recently completed a book binding course and while most of the binding techniques won’t be applicable, it has given me a grounding in the principles.
I decided to make the book A4 size as this would be the most manageable to deal with physically. Testing the page dimensions against a 16:9 ratio beforehand also let me know that it could work within a film context.
What I decided to do was to use quite a heavy grade card and sandwich wire loops between two sheets. I then glued these two sheets together to create essentially one page. I made the wire lengths long enough to be sandwiched between two of these ‘sheets’. This meant that when we went to turn the pages that half the wire would be embedded in the book which would enable the other half to have a solid foundation. This foundation would enable us to manipulate the wire.
The design for the Melancholic Wife exists in the comic pages but her face has never been shown so a big challenge will be building on that existing aesthetic and deepening her personality.
For the closing sequence we felt it would be potent to use visuals that illustrated the ‘unromantic walls of her real life’ These include representations of the Melancholic Wife’s furniture, bookshelves and many elements of her creative process.
For the opening sequence we have decided to try and use design imagery that already exists from the comic work.
Gary Gowran 