This Way up
This Way up directed by Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes of East End's Nexus Productions, is a story of two undertakers who face a lot of trouble burying an old woman's corpse. Mike judge from the Animation show was really keen for us to make a comedy short, something a bit more fun than many of the animated shorts he'd been seeing recently. We'd been planning on making short for years but found it difficult to find the time to make a short.The Animation Show gave us a deadline to get our act together and make something, "says Smith.
Over a couple of drinks, the director duo and the team worked on th central idea of two people trying to deliver a precious cargo and the actual events seemed to follow after."We came up with as many painful mishaps as we could think of, and then edited it down into an achievable script. We felt that 8 minutes was about the right amount of time in which to tell the story, and we didn't want to fall into the common trap of the over-long short film,"says Foulkes.
The film's story first began as a simple tale of two men trying to deliver a body to the grave. But then the directors thought that it would be nice if the father son went on an emotional journey. They wanted to explore the relationships between the father and the son. The father's character is someone who goes by the book and the son has radical ideas and doesn't want to do work they are doing. It also gave us somewhere to go with this relationships the fact that the son redeems himself with his actions and that at the end that are closer than they have ever been before. We also decided that it would be fun if we found out a little more about the old women in the coffin, so we brought in this scene where the important items of her life was described as the disastrous chain of events unfolded to bring about the destructive of their hearse. And we thought that if they had died and gone to the Underworld then it made sense that she could then come alive and all three could share a nice moment. This gave us the nice contrast of the hapless undertakers having the most stressful day of their lives and the old woman calmly enjoying a nice day trip in the country.'says Smith. Music in a film like this was equally important and acted as a response to each and every emotion the father-son undertakers went through while burying the body. The animation was produced in HD digital animation using a combination of softwares.3D Studio Max for modelling and animation, Brazil for the render, Painter and Photoshop for the backgrounds painting. After effects and Combustion for the composting. The entire production took about five months.
Although smith and Foulkes were unable to follow their film around their globe, where it has won many awards at various film festivals, now they have their tickets booked to walk down the red carpet at the Award ceremony. It'll be quite funny when the paparazzi cameras go deathly silent for our red carpet moment. Perhaps it's a good time for a Alan to pull some moves, says Smith.
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.