48 Hour Film Contest Houston - Our 5 Minute Carrara Animation "Special Agent: Gestapo"

Steve K

The contest ran 28 thru 30 June, with 38 teams making a 4 to 7 minute movie in two days.  Only two teams did animations.  Each team drew two genres from a list of about 30, and could make a video in either (or both) of the two.  The required elements were a character named Ryan or Rianna Dutsch (a tennis player), a broom as a prop, and the line "It looks like everything is falling into place".  Our team drew Musical and Spy/Espionage and chose the latter.

DesertDude

Well done Steve K!

I'm always so impressed what you can do in a mere 48 hours! Just coming up with a story let alone all the animation and rendering and editing...

Steve K

DesertDude said:

Well done Steve K!

I'm always so impressed what you can do in a mere 48 hours! Just coming up with a story let alone all the animation and rendering and editing...

Many thanks.  I have to admit the stories generally come from the great models available for Poser (and thus Carrara).  In this case, the huge "Flying Boat" (Short Sunderland RAF Bomber) and the "Self Destruct Device" pretty much set the plot, along with a lot of WWII German characters & props I already had.  So drawing "Spy/Espionage" was a good start.  ("Musical" not so much, but thankfully a year or two back they allowed a choice from two drawn genres)

And as I've said before, I do use environments I've previously test rendered, since the live action teams have the real world to use.  And you might notice a lot of single images (the contest allows pre-contest stills), like the Self Destruct Device going off, with some whiplash transitions in the video editor.  A little cheesy, but with only two days ...  And finally, Carrara can render pretty fast if you avoid fancy lighting, high poly trees, etc., and the Carrara clips can make character animation very fast.

 

Stezza

awesome work as usual... was half expecting a Sgt Shultz to make an appearance.. 

I wasn't expecting that ending, well done 

 

Steve K

Stezza_Carrara9 said:

awesome work as usual... was half expecting a Sgt Shultz to make an appearance.. 

I wasn't expecting that ending, well done 

Thanks.  If we had drawn comedy or dark comedy, Schultz would have been a good idea.  I'm not sure the (young) screening audience got the ending, but I couldn't figure out a (quick) way to make it more evident that the Brits ... well, no spoilers?

One other thing about Carrara's fast rendering is shadow catchers, letting the background image not have to get re-rendered over and over.  You can't move the camera, but still a great render time saver.