Rumschringe International Short Film Festival

M'aidez will play at the Rumschringe International Short Film Festival this Friday November 7th during the 5pm screening at Zoetropolis in Lancaster, Pa. I am very excited about this one since I grew up in Lancaster County. I plan on attending and look forward to seeing the other shorts that will be playing with it.

Best Animation at West Virginia FILMmakers Festival

I was pleasantly surprised today to find out that M'aidez won the best Animation/Music Video/Experimental category at this past week's West Virginia FILMmakers Festival. Thank you to the festival for screening it and to those who attended. This means a lot after all of the time invested into the project. Thanks!

Festival updates

M'aidez was accepted to three more festival. It was also rejected by several, but let's focus on the positive.

It will play the International Animation Festival in Uruguay which takes place September 17th-19th

 

The West Virgina Filmmaker's Festival will be from October 3rd-6th  

 

And it will be shown out of competition at the Animasyros Festival in Greece from October 2nd- 5th

The Smalls update

M'aidez will be playing this Tuesday, September 2nd at 7:45pm as part of an animation shorts block at the Smalls Festival in London. Click here for more info

Film Festivals

I found out recently that M'aidez has been selected to play at several film festivals. I am thrilled that it will get to be seen by a larger audience and am curious/terrified how it will look on the big screen.

It will play the Reel East Film Festival this Friday, August 22nd at 6pm. I plan on attending this one and am looking forward to the experience.

The Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival, which runs September 26th, 27th, and 28th. No word on a specific time for that one yet.

And The Smalls Festival in London September 1st-5th. No time for that one yet either.

M'aidez is coming to an end... finally

I am just about finished with the final version of my animated short, M'aidez. The finished piece is exporting as I type (don't crash don't crash don't crash). Since I am submitting the longer version (about eight and a half minutes) to film festivals, I have pulled the short version off Vimeo. Some festivals don't want movies or even segments posted online, which is understandable. I will update the blog if my video makes it into any competitions so you can see the end result on the big screen. Next year I will post the whole version online once the year of festivals is through.

Puppet for M'aidez

I'm starting to work on a new section of the movie. It is going to have a different look (obviously). Hopefully everything will mesh together alright in the end.

Write up about M'aidez

Down With Film wrote a really flattering post about M'aidez back in February. I missed it initially, but here are the kind words:

"Not many short films can be described as an experience but Jesse Turnbull's incredible ‘M’aidez’ definitely falls into that catagory. Its one of the most expertly crafted 3 minutes of indepent film your likely to see, we can’t recommend it highly enough."

Thanks guys!

I have been hard at work on an expanded version of the short, and hope to get it done in the next month or two.

Space Knife

Here is a little prop I made combining an old discarded clipper blade, a dummy credit card (I love getting those in the mail for just this purpose), and some reclaimed electronics screws. There is a piece of card on either side of the blade, so it does collapse into itself like a pocket knife. I will do a bit more detailing to it, but the basic shape is there.

Making messes

Deanna puts up with me sprawling all over the floor very well. It's hard to work at my desk when it's full of junk.

Back in the trenches

I got to jump back into my stop motion short today. I haven't spent time with it since early December. I think its going to take a day or two to readjust. I started off slow today with some pattern making.

 

Animatronic hand

Here is a hand I made for some close up shots. I used this wonderful tutorial as a starting point, modifying for size mostly. Forgive the sloppiness here, it is now covered with white fabric.

Peace!

A candid behind the scenes shot of Lincoln on set; from the last batch of M'aidez shots.

San Jose International Short Film Festival 2012

The San Jose International Short Film Festival 2012 was held this weekend and my short M'aidez was shown there! I should have posted this befroe the showing but I wasn't sure of the date and time it would be screened. Thank you SJSFF for the invite, I hope things went smoothly. 

Also featured at the fest was the short "The Maker" by Zealous Creative, a studio out of Australia. I saw this a couple weeks back online and really enjoyed it. 

Proceed with caution

the set is coming along...

M'aidez (long)

I am back working on M'aidez again after a bit of a break. I am launching back into the project to try to complete the entire original story I had planned for the short. This will fill in what happened before the first version, and what happens to our doomed hero next. I have been making my first real set for the last couple of months between all my other responsibilities. It has been a lot of planning and measuring. Also lots of cutting... lots and lots of cutting. Here's a look at what I've been up to. The next step is figuring out exactly what the floor and ceiling of my spaceship hallway will look like, then painting everything. Then lights!

 

Ain't It Cool News

Mike, aka Muldoon, over at Ain't It Cool News runs a weekly Saturday short film post. I submitted my short, M'aidez a few weeks back and kind of forgot about it. I was bowled over yesterday when I was perusing this weeks selections to see my name and video posted. This is a big deal for me. I have been a very dedicated follower of Ain't It Cool since about 1999 and rarely go a day without checking in on what's new. Yes, I'm kind throwing all of my geek cards out on the table. I really appreciate the post and kind words from Mike. The post has been a big boost in getting people to check it out. Click the image below to see the page and check out the other animation shorts posted along side mine.

Short Film M'aidez

 I recommend watching this in HD, fullscreen, with headphones on 

Complete!!! I have finally finished my short. I have spent so much time with this that its going to feel odd not staring at that figure for a little while. I am pretty pleased with the final product. It is not the longer form narrative that I originally intended, but maybe I will come back to that someday. I wish I could give some estimate of hours spent, but I can tell you it was a lot. The figure, the suit, the backpack, the electronics, the sculpting and painting; and then of course the shooting all took a good chunk of time to complete. I have been working on these types of figures for about eight or nine years and its really satisfying to seem one brought to life a little bit. I am hoping to continue stop motion work in the future. Who knows what little short is next. I'll leave it at that. Thank you for watching!

M'aidez inspiration and sketches

I started work on this project years ago and came back to it from time to time. I have many sketchbook pages dedicated to different ideas and designs relating to it in one way or another. I was working out the proportions of the armature around this time. You can see I originally envisioned the backpacked being more like a jet engine, but pulled that back to a more realistic design later on.

  I also pulled a lot of space and astronaut images as inspiration from different sources. Sadly, I don't remember the book I scanned these from. You can definitely see some areas I looked at when creating the suit for my character. You can click the individual images to see them larger.