16 weeks build.
30 weeks shoot.
9 stages.
These were our constant variables, the walls to the sandbox I could play around in. We could employ more artists and animators if we needed, or we could build duplicate puppets. But time and available space remained relatively the same.
The MOAS studio consisted of nine stages in total: four large accessible stages, one large but difficult-to-access stage, three smaller stages of differing lengths and narrowness, and one stage with a glass-top rostrum for under-camera effects animation. The size, accessibility and location of each stage influenced the sequences or sets that would be most appropriate for them. For example, the four larger stages would predominantly house our exteriors, while the smaller stages were best suited for interiors.
In Shotgrid I created a Stage field for Assets, linked these Stages to the Sets (identified during the animatic asset breakdown), and, after acknowledging how many shots those sets were allocated to and the total animatic seconds of those shots (which, based on the number of animators and length of the animatic, would provide an estimated total of seconds to target each week), I scheduled the Sets within the allocated time and available stages to form an initial, rough brainstorm schedule.
This process helped to lay out the land and I would later use this Set schedule as a guide for scheduling shots, while it also doubled as the build order for the set and prop makers. The schedule was fluid, never fixed, adapting constantly through pre-production and well into production as more and more variables came to light, such as puppet issues and clashes or delays in casting and voice recordings.
Some questions I also considered when scheduling this early were:
Are there any shots or plates the camera and lighting crew can conduct tests and train up on?
Are there characters or props that might be suitable for the artists to start with, to really understand and execute Adam's chunky wonky aesthetic?
Are there scenes or sequences that might help the animators gain confidence, adapt to Adam's direction and expectations, and get to know the range of motion and abilities of the puppets?
While assessing the film's needs, I identified three main exterior locations that would broadly dictate the schedule and how we utilise the stages:
Melbourne
Canberra
Perth
Each of the above locations consisted of a series of exterior sets. How we approached the construction of them would significantly impact the amount of time we spent building, bumping them in for set dressing and shooting, and then bumping them out for the next set/sequence.
Looking through Adam's set concept designs, patterns started to emerge...
I noticed the Canberra exteriors always had the same u-shaped hills, some with the Canberra Telstra Tower on the right, some on the left and some without. The Perth exteriors, whether it was the front or rear of the church, the budgie aviary, the firepit or the dam, all were conveniently backdropped by an apple tree-lined valley. And, instead of hills, the Melbourne set concepts almost always had a row of buildings.
Based on these findings, three components were established to aid the construction and visual consistency of these locations:
A backdrop, e.g. a sky
A background element, e.g. hills with trees or silhouetted buildings
A main/foreground set, e.g. key element or setpiece
Because Adam's aim was to shoot everything in camera (and we definitely did), we opted for using painted skies on canvas as our backdrops. Adam communicated what skies he would like and roughly what shots they should be used for:
Grey bland overcast sky - for most Melbourne shots, all graveyard shots
Clear cloudless cream sky - most Perth shots
Sunny beige sky with a few white fluffy clouds - most Canberra shots, Paris, Nude Cruise
Black sky with no clouds - for nighttime shots*
Specialty #1: Rainy cloudy sky
Specialty #2: Northern Lights
Specialty #3: Sunset for Luna Park
This limited selection of skies (which our incredible lead sculptor Julian Clavijo painted in one week) worked out really well for the production. It meant that three of our larger stages could house a location each, for as long as we needed to work through every sequence within that location. We didn't have to change or move a cumbersome canvassed sky from stage to stage, bumping sets on the other side of curtains, affecting animators in the middle of a shot or hurting our backs. We even shot day for night, and I scheduled those day and night sequences in separate blocks so that way we also didn't chew through time adjusting the lighting.
* As we shot day for night, the black "night" sky wasn't actually used -- even one bit. Due to the delay in casting Grace (the character with the most lip sync) and recording Sarah Snook halfway through production, this resulted in shooting the Canberra Library/street exterior simultaneously with Pinky's Pitypit/backyard exterior on separate stages. Because lipsync can take some time to animate, I pulled forward and scheduled these sequences as soon as I had the selected voice takes. To keep the location visually consistent, we repainted the "night" sky, replicating the sunny Canberra beige sky we already had.
For Canberra and Perth, our lead set builder Nate Reardon constructed two sets of hills, which were essentially two hills cut down the middle and painted in the colour palette of that location. This design gave us functionality and the freedom to compositionally arrange the hills to camera and the foreground/main set, per Adam's direction. We could have a dip (e.g. the swimming pool shot below) or join two together to form one hill, one and a half or two hills. There were tiny trees made using scrunched up paper on skewers that we could punch into the hills, dress the hills in any way and with as many or as little trees as Adam wants. And there were also two Canberra Telstra Towers, on skewers too, that we could dress in one sequence or leave out in the next, have on screen right or on screen left.
With skies and the hills bound to particular stages,Ā in Melbourne's case silhouetted buildings, it was really only the foreground/main sets that we had to rearrange or entirely replace. In some instances, such as with Perth, we could leave the grass in place and swap out the aviary cage for the church, the firepit for the small scale barn, dressing foreground apple trees differently each time. We even went as far as shooting the barn interior sequences with in-camera exteriors, saving time shooting plates for rear projection setup or saving money in visual effects by replacing green-screen with an exterior plate.
I believe a firm understanding of the budget, time limitations, the cinematic and art direction, and the crew resources available are crucial in successfully scheduling a stop motion animated film. On Memoir of a Snail we saved time overall during production by not having to repeatedly bump sets in or set dress from scratch, mainly due to Adam's story, direction and how these sets were intuitively constructed. But we also cinematically elevated the foam-board sets by allowing camera more time to setting up a move with the motion-controlled camera and DMX lighting, or giving animators an extra hour to imbue life and complex performances in our 'little clay blobs'.
It has been asked whether we shot this film chronologically. Due to our time restraints and resources that wasn't a luxury we could have, however there was one interior set that we did shoot chronologically and it lived on our fourth largest stage for well over half of the production period, longer than some of these exteriors.
Grace's bedroom in Canberra consisted of the most number of shots (150-200), the most number of props, and it's where we see Grace grow from child to adult, through gains and losses, grief and joy, life and death.
Stick around and subscribe so you'll be updated when new posts are published, sharing insight into the making and scheduling of Memoir of a Snail, in cinemas now.
Images from Instagram @adam_elliot_clay and trailers.
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