THE STORY OF
ONE DAY IN A LIFE
by Jamie Congdon
VISUAL ARTS BACKGROUND
The artist states..."My
background is in Visual Art, drawing and painting my entire life. In 2001, I
received an RADF Grant...the first of 3 in recent years. A couple of years ago
I completed a Fine Art Degree with Honours, however to add a new medium to my
repertoire I wanted to learn animation.
It’s a strong method of communication
for a visual artist and I find cartoons funny as an unsophisticated person."
BACKGROUND IN COMPUTERS
The artist was once a signwriter, he
was also on a pension for 20 years but has weened himself off it and now he is
totally self sufficient, as he states being a "good boy"
The artist continues...
"I have use computers since
around 1995 for signwriting so there were some elements in the software I
understood, although in the grand scheme of things those were few and far
between, particularly in relation to using Maya and even more user friendly
software such as Photoshop. Although we had done some work using Photoshop in
my first year in Fine Art and after that I have also come to know it a bit
better. But I have some experience using Signlab, which is software signwriters
often use with their sign cutting machines."
THE MOVIE
The title of the movie is "One
Day in a Life"... "A Story I Just Felt Like Telling, For No
Particular Reason".
SYNOPSIS
This is a short movie that is the
tale of a day in the life of a sixteen year old boy named Roger, sharing a room
with his brother, duelling with his dog, and having silly arguments brothers
who share rooms together typically have. The movies climax comes when Roger
leaves through the bathroom window, after that he roams the streets and goes
home to bed, dreaming of fishing in the stars.
TREATMENT
We see a bird...you could say "
an albino sparrow" flying down...
and looking into a window. Two boys argue in a bright yellow and untidy room
they share. A third boy walks in, and they all leave. Then they are knocking on
a drug dealers door, and they are invited in to a swirling mess of colour and
gibberish chatter. The protagonist walks off, and leaves through a window. We
see dogs barking, then he looks up to a blanket of stars. The scene ends and we
see him in bed speaking to "The Man in the Moon". In his dream he
flies up and is fishing on the moon. The movie ends.
AIM
The aim is to create a short movie of
autobiographical content. For as the artists states..."We always laugh and
remember with fondness the mischief we got up to, and I'd like to document some
of these stories as short movies"
THE CONCEPT
The notion of 2 brothers, in the
height of their puberty, parallels with that of Bevis and Butt head. Either Bevis
or But head are getting up to mischief, and they are getting off on things only
males in puberty would get off on.
CHARACTERS.
Roger is the protagonist. He essentially is a 16 year old boy.
Buddha: Dealer, voice over. He comes in telling snippets of the story as a voice over. You could say essentially he's is the compare or host of the movie. In truth he comes in as a fixer for too much fiddling around....as a shortcut.
Toe: Rogers 15 year old brother. He has an enormous bog toe.
Scarecrow. He is a "king of the kids" type person, him and Toe probably share the least dialogue.
HUMOUR
The humour is not slapstick, for
example Bugs Bunny or Tom and Gerry but essentially aims at an adult audience...at the same time putting
in little tip bits for children, in a two pronged approach targeting both adult
and child. Some humour that might be
perceived differently by an adult are the dealer dressed in garb that a
"child of the 70s" realises, whereas a child might see this as a type
of funny clown. But an adult could
remember images of Leon Russel, the piano player who played for Joe Cocker. An
adult might find the non sensicle conversations of "flower people" ...off
their faces and speaking non sense, funny.
INSPIRATION FOR HUMOUR
The style of humour of The Simpsons
and South Park
INFLUENCES
It could be argued that the look of
the cartoon is not consistent through out the movie with the appearance of The Family Guy and
The Cleveland Show using straight pencil outlines and the muted colour schemes,
clashing with other scenes where the line work has more of an oriental feel due
to importing images and cleaning , flattening and smoothing.
As the artist said..." I learned
to work while driving a taxi, using the touch pad, and I became quite nimble
with my fingers. I discovered a method of drawing, scanning the drawing and
flattening it out and cleaning up the drawing in Toon Boom. I used some of
these drawings in the opening scenes, colouring them using the paint tool,
painting under the black lines." He continues..."Many sketches were
done in my taxi, after much thought..... Some of the audio was also recorded in
my taxi, as well as even some written words for this essay."
There are parallels with the movie
"Waking Life"(2001) directed by American Richard Linklater where a nomadic soul walks the streets, removed from
the world in a type of surreal dream, having
conversations with random people , seemingly under the influence of
hallucinogenic drugs.
WORK IN PREGRESS
Still being a work in progress there
are some mistakes in the animation, or more accurately unresolved issues such
as some inconsistencies in colour and line and character features.
The scene where the cigarette lands
in Toes mouth and then falls to the ground needs to be altered so it sits in his
mouth and he continues to smoke it, while sleeping, then issues with the sound
would need to be tweaked.
BITS AND PIECES
In the process of making the movie a
number of scenes have been abandoned, mainly because of audio problems. Here
are some of them:
The reason for this was the entire
audio clip was not completed first and as a result nothing came together. Along with story boarding and script,
this is the number 1 law in cartooning. It was not mentioned in any class to do the entire audio first, and the fact that
the audio was, in the end, done first, only happened because it was read by the
animator in a book while at the library.
TALK/MUSIC
There were a few songs that the
artist was juggling with as to which was most appropriate. Here are some
examples of discarded and unusable scenes, where these songs have been used
The songs of choice were Eagle
Rock(Daddy Cool, 1971); Riders on the Storm(The Doors,1970) and Moon Shadow
(Cat Sevens, 1975). All these songs have great sentimental value to the artist.
The animator grabbed some audio off
You Tube from an improvised jam session from an Australian 70s band,
Carson....which was an iconic and there for perfect choice of music. In saying
that the music became a bit too distorted with too much editing, however the
story of the day was told by using it. And the echo and scratchy sound suited
it's purpose of background music overlapped
with the non-sensical dialogue of hippies, giving an insight into the
state of mind these people had at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-7HyXGFT50
The piano piece in the dream sequence
is composed by the animator and based on
an old 80s song. The piece fits as melancholic theme music ,where the
protagonist is essentially lonely and grabbing at straws for company. It also
works, in spite of the depressing aspect, as a warm, gentle mood enhancer, that
creates a type of surreal feeling.
THE VOICES
The animator states..."I would
have preferred to have other people...preferably someone from Griffith
So it was back to the drawing board
and the entire audio was created from scratch, using the free audio-editing
software "Audacity". The animator states " I promised Andi I
wouldn't change things any more, and I don't think she believed me...but I
stuck to my word...with some artistic license." The audio is a mish-mash
of sounds sourced from the internet, piano playing, and voice recordings and
invented sounds through the Foley technique.
TURN OF EVENTS
There are commercially recognised
settings in the Australian Film Industry. 25FPS. HD. Wide Screen.. the animator
states... The animator ststes..."For me everything was fine until
Andi...big bad Andi...who I love, advised the scenes needed to be set to 25FPS."
he continues..." So a lot of these earlier works were now unusable, at
least according to my knowledge. But the change in settings I soon came to terms
with" These rules must be adhered to if one is to use these movies in any
sort of commercial venture.
MY
During the few years of making this movie the artist has lived
alone, being essentially unemployed although making minimal amounts of money
through art exhibitions, and some from signwriting. However his children have
dispersed and left home. This could be considered conducive for study, although
some might find it distracting, for as the artist said..." making great
art ... I feel, requires one to have a happy disposition and not have other
things on your mind when you make art."
ISOLATION
So the artist wrestles with the
problem...he states...."a blanket of silence envelopes
me in this God forsaken tombstone of a house, that makes me feel like one.
Normally there are ghosts of people that are my constant companion. The blanket
of oneness defines isolation,
and I understand the meaning of the
words...""if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it
really fall" Now I understand it and it almost has a virtual, other
worldly significance that only those who feel real isolation can have insight
into."
On other occasions he enjoyed his remote existence; his
children had left him and he had a type of removed relationship with his
grandchildren, which he felt was the greatest thing about being
"Pa Pa". One Day his daughter came home with the two children, he
states..."
foolishly and childishly I encouraged them, so they're all over me, and I can
no longer work. So out of necessity I turn my work(Taxi) and its space into a
studio. It worked very well for me because as I said when I feel isolated I cant
work properly and the core of driving a taxi is taking people around."
The artist felt there were other
benefits from this improvisation...these were...you get paid while making
art... making digital art while driving a cab is not messy, so it works....he
states..." I can carve out a name for myself as a Brisbane
These are just some of the drawings
the artist has done while in the taxi
CONCLUSION
In commencing this project the artist
virtually had no idea about anything
regarding animation or things of a digital nature... he states"
you've got it, in an elongated, slightly skewed, and distorted nutshell. But I've
never been one for order. But they say order comes from chaos,...so you judge
for yourself...has it?
My resolved project is what it is, an
animation created by a person with no idea about anything, who comes from a
Fine Art background. The tale of jumping out the window is one I tell my friends...or whoever
after a few drinks, for a laugh, and
my brother and me recall those moments in humour and other tales"
He continues...
"The short movie in the form of
an animation and the essay are complete
and for my purposes at this point presentable.
They are in themselves exposures, windows into me and I give them to you."
