As a group we analysed the brief and after some talking about it, we arrived at our first idea which was to do our short film on a group of children making a birthday cake and then dropping it. Although it was very simple, it was also sweet and direct with a nice array of emotional responses from the characters varying from the boredom of making the cake to the happiness they feel when they finish and then finally the sadness when they drop it. We wanted to try and focus on the emotions of the children and felt that if we emphasised this enough, we could make it rather interesting. However after some further consideration, we decided that it would be very hard to effectively show the emotions of the kids because animated facial expressions are very hard to replicate with clay, especially when you only have two weeks. Therefore we moved on to the next idea which was based around a character called Haggai. I will tell this story briefly below.
The Story
One pleasant morning, a small, sleepy haggis called Haggai awoke to the soft bird calls and fresh spring air which tickled his senses into consciousness. However, once Haggai had enjoyed the winged serenade beyond his window ledge, he realised he was rather hungry. Haggai was used to this and so every night he would prepare one of his prize carrots and place it next to his bed so that he could start his days on a full stomach. So Haggai quickly arose from his bed , scampered across the floor and placed himself strategically by the carrot with his stomach growling violently. Making sure he maintains a degree of manners whilst he enjoys his meal, he starts with the leaves because after all, manners are what set us apart from the animals he thought as he takes his first nibble at a perfect emerald coloured leaf. He continues to eat through the carrot, ever expecting it to satisfy his deep hunger like it does every morning but it doesn’t. Haggai devours the carrot in a near frenzy and yet still his stomach begs for more in a curse of growls and groans. Desperate, he scurries into the kitchen to check the fridge but nothing. As his stomach gets loader and louder, he can no longer ignore its cries and decides to eat the fridge. He is almost taken over completely by his stomach as scraps of plastic and metal fly past him. He is in a haze, a day dream, a spiraling nightmare in which he in completely disconnected from the extremes his stomach is pushing him to. Before he knows it, the fridge is no longer in sight and he is scrambling atop of his house, crushing his car and prize carrots as if they were made of clay. Down comes his house, roof and all, straight into the menacing void of his gut but it still isn’t enough, Haggai needs more. He stumbles across the beautiful countryside, smashing whole forests underfoot in a desperate attempt to find calories. He spots a great city in the distance, dark against the skyline, his stomach begins to ache. Haggai knows he musn’t and he tries to stop himself but any attempt to control the beast inside himself is futile. Great concrete buildings which once towered above him where now nothing more than dust in his nose, scraps in his teeth and a shard in his conscience. When the monumental city was a mere crater in the landscape, Haggai moved on, searching for more. Nothing would fill the bottomless cavity in his belly and before he knew it, he was above the skyline, looking down on the world and the immense damage he had done however, he wanted more. To his horror, whole countries fitted in his colossal mouth like breadcrumbs, mountain ranges where nothing but a rough texture on his tongue and great rivers but a light dribble. Haggai begins to cry great oceans of sadness onto the remnants of the Earth below him, filling the great black chasms and craters his mighty mouth has subtracted from the planets crust. He knows he’ll never win, he’ll never beat the emptiness which consumes his whole being but still his stomach drives him on, relentless and tyrannical until finally, the whole world is gone down his throat and nothing remains but space, cold, empty space and Haggai realises hes looking in a mirror. Squatting on the lost and orphaned rock which was once a moon to the greatest planet in the universe, Haggai weeps, his screams bouncing off the endless vacuum of space around him. He longs for the sweet serenade of birds which lifted him out from his warm slumbers and the exquisite texture of his prize carrots but nothing remains. It has all been devoured by a great monster, never to be enjoyed again. In his sadness, he finally forgets his hunger, the screams in his head drown out the violent growling coming from within his stomach but instead, he is met by a far worse noise. Silence, dead, cold silence which echos around him in the engulfing abyss. Loneliness strikes deep into his soul as he stares out at the uncaring stars. He longs for a friend and a companion, for laughter and a conversation but most of all, for love. He scans the surroundings in a hopeless attempt to find a companion and much to his amazement, he sees Twerb the little pink Martian sitting peacefully on Mars waving a spindly hand towards him with a wide and welcoming smile. Finally Haggai feels the beast in his belly go to sleep and the void which caused him so much agony, was filled. All was well.
This was the basic story line of the film that we were going to try to stick to. We gave each other tasks and discussed the best way to achieve them in collaboration with each other. We knew we were going to need a number of props including a carrot, a house, a car, the contents of his bedroom and kitchen as well as a city, the earth, the moon and finally Mars with a resident Martian. We would also need some scenery and backgrounds with a set to place them into. Finally we would need a Haggis which would need the ability to eat things. All the props would have to be the same size in comparison to Haggai so that it would look like Haggai was getting bigger. Below are a number of photos documenting the process for various aspects of the project.
Props and Set Process
Some of the props made by various member of the group. We mainly used clay and cardboard for the models with a mix of watercolour and acrylic paints for the colour. Everything was built in relation to Haggai so we could easily portray him as getting larger as he eats more. Below are the sets being developed for the shots. We have a countryside scene, a room scene which we decided to use for both the bedroom and the kitchen to save time. On top of that there is a crater background for the city and finally a black night sky scene for the final few shots. We mainly used watercolour for these because we could quickly and easily get some very aesthetically pleasing backdrops. On top of this, Jamie was working on some backing sound and sound effects which is a bit hard to show on here. We decided to put the whole film to classical music so when he wakes up, symphony no. 5 is playing which is a very gentle, morning piece and then when he starts to eat things he shouldn’t be, it changes to the DUN DUN DUN DUNNNN!! piece. This worked really well and Jamie did an excellent job of arranging everything and finding the right effects. We all did some CAD drawings of various props but I focused on the oven for the kitchen. I used an online CAD software called OnShape which I have been using for years.
After finalising the props and backgrounds, we were ready to start filming. We decided to just use a phone and chose the one which had the best camera. We set up the first set which was in the bedroom while Haggai sleeps. Below are some photos of the initial set up. You can just see in the bottom right of the screen the set up we were using to film the shots. We found a test tube grip stand from chemistry to hold the phone still.
Scene 2- Kitchen
The next scene was the kitchen which was a bit of a faff to set up but we got there in the end. We tried to keep the phone in the same place in relation to the box while changing scenes. You can see the kitchen scene set up and in one of the shots were he’s eating the fridge. We were taking a lot of photos and Haggai was probably moving only a couple of mm between each shot but this will result in a fairly smooth final film though.
Scene 3- House
The next shot was outside with the house. The first set up we did looked way too bare and we were worried because the scale of the house in comparison to the tree wasn’t right. The tree and fence posts were further back than the house and yet were much larger however none of this story is exactly realistic. We painted some context around the house like a vegetable patch and a pathway. The actual filming of this was annoying because it was very hard to smoothly deconstruct the house while keeping it somewhat realistic. However we got it in the end and it might be a bit jumpy here and there. You can see all this in the posts below.
Scene 4- City
The scene after this was in the city with the crater background. The buildings were all made out of clay so they could easily be deconstructed unlike the cardboard fridge and house. We arranged the buildings so they were kind of hiding the crater in the background and then as he slowly tears them down, it reveals the extensive damage hes done. This scene was good fun to film as we could play around with the way the buildings collapsed around him. I feel like this is going to be one of the most satisfying scenes. Everyone likes watching a city getting smashed up, ask the directors of Marvel or Transformers and they’ll tell you.
Scene 5- Country
This scene was difficult to film due to the size of the stage and the prop we made. The prop was only the top portion of the earth so that Haggai was still smaller than the earth. However, I think we pulled it off quite well and although the countries kind of float off the surface of the earth into his mouth, we figured it was plausible because he has his own gravitational pull at this point due to his size. Some examples of the shots we were taking to film.
Scene 6- World
This scene was painful to film because of the position we chose to place Haggai in during the photos. We figured that because he was in space for this shot, he should be floating around the Earth. To achieve this, we placed some Play Dough underneath his back feet so it was hidden by the prop. This was it looked like he was kind of floating just above it. It looked effective but it was very hard to balance him while he gradually ate away at the planet. This shot was one of the jumpiest because of the difficulty of the shots. We were also experiencing some structural integrity problems with Haggai because the Play Dough was starting to dry up and crack which made it very tedious to move his mouth around. You can see in the photos below how his mouth is cracking up.
Final Shot- Twerb the Martian
To round the film off, we decided to go with Twerb the alien who resolves Haggai’s problem of loneliness and isolation. This scene is very weird and in the final shot, there are actually two aliens, one is sitting on the others lap. This was just because we couldn’t decide which one to use as a group. I made the larger pink one and Katie made the small purple one and named him Jimmy, not a Martian name at all. I mean have you ever heard of a Martian called Jimmy? No, me neither because Martians aren’t called Jimmy. Anyway we figured that Jimmy could just be Twerb’s child or something. This shot opens with Haggai crying to represent his loneliness but then spans across to see Twerb and Jimmy waving at Haggai which results in Haggai cheering up because he’s found a friend.
What I Did
Within the group of 5 we each had tasks assigned to us and overall we had a good balance of workload between us all and worked well as a team apart from some mild disagreements over whether Haggis’ are real or not (which they most definitely are). I did a lot of painting including the background for the countryside and the highly detailed space background used when Haggai was eating the Earth. On top of this I did some of the painting for the props including the house, oven and table. I also made the second attempt at the fridge which got used in the final take. The final prop I made was a building for the city. I felt like the buildings we had so far were all bland and boring with their blocky shapes so I wanted to add something more sculptural into it so I came up with the structure below which I really liked. It was a sad to see it get viciously devoured by Haggai during filming but ohh well. I also largely contributed to the actual filming of various shots with the help of various members of the group. A below I will display pictures of what I helped out with.
Final Result
After piecing together the scenes we’d filmed and making it all run smoothly on various apps on our phones and some amazing sound engineering from Jamie, we had our final film. It turned out at around 1:30 min which is perfect. We actually ended up using an animated effect on film because it masked a lot of imperfections we had, especially in the later shots where Haggai was drying out and starting to crack. Below is the final film…
Conclusion
Overall I was pretty happy with the final film. I honestly didn’t think we were going to be able to finish it because it seemed like so much to do in two weeks but being in a group which works well together really helps. It’s a bit jumpy in places and it was annoying that Haggai started to disintegrate as the filming went on but there wasn’t a huge amount we could do about it. On the other hand, it’s a rather amusing story with some funny shots and I think we pulled it off very well considering the time pressure we had. Next time though I would definitely find a more efficient way of portraying Haggai because he was a bit too solid and static which at some point made him look quite strange but considering the limited range of materials we had, he was very good as he was.
