Kanto Ohara Maeda - Animation MA, RCA by Kanto Maeda

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Laser cutting

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Half-baked storyboard

Set-up 01

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Dungeon room multiplane. Large, adjustable glass on crank. Limited side lighting, metal frame around glass, and immovable camera and top lights.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:07:00 UTC

Test-shot sheet 1 with notes

Main aim of test shots:

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:07:56 UTC

Create key image of film - interior shot of bathhouse. Atmosphere is key to get right with technique. Essential desired effects to test are: shadows / lighting, steam, water, spatial depth. Testing various materials, lights, scale, camera settings...

Halted storyboard, as if image doesn't work, can't plan scenes of the film.

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Set-up 02

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:11:36 UTC

B2 studio multiplane. Guy's DIY version. Smaller and pain to move glass, but more flexible with lighting, side, back, top all possible, moveable camera. Difficult to animate with hands from side. Probably more potential with this set-up, and Guy close at hand to help.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:12:08 UTC

Test-shot sheet 2 with notes

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Test-shot sheet 3 with notes

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Animation test with sound of water fountain, own field recording from in Kensington Gardens

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Character Puppet Design

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Taking influence from own life-drawings with pencil and charcoal, Egon Schiele and Polynesian sculptures.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:20:38 UTC

Character puppet - charcoal on cartridge paper, joints with blue-tac (temporary). Look into sewing joints or use metal eyes, but flexibility of blue-tac also good.

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Foley workshop with Joe Hirst, 29 Feb

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Choppy animation for first scale, and limited perspective although smooth animation for second scale. Mainly about image - atmosphere, lighting, shadows, steam (lens filter and vaseline).

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:27:54 UTC

Exactly the type of image I would like to create - the lighting, the steam, the composition...

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:28:18 UTC

Mark Edward Harris, The Way of the Japanese Bath

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:28:39 UTC

Dir. Špela Čadež, Steakhouse (2021).

Observing paper-cut multiplane technique, steam effect, rendering of perspectival space in flat layers, drawing technique (oil paint and multi-purpose pencils on cel)

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:29:10 UTC

Clare Kitson, Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:29:40 UTC

Polynesian sculptures - observing exaggerated / abstracted proportions of human body

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 06:30:18 UTC

Egyptian art - observing the acknowledgement of 'flatness'

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kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 07:47:42 UTC

Ideas for set - considering hybrid of 3D model and planes of glass. Either set in vertical as stop-motion set, or horizontal as multiplane set-up.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 07:50:30 UTC

Idea of bathhouse as a temple-like tower, with stacked floors. Further idea of bathhouse as dynamic and able to change shape, as space is dictated by what user experiences. Tower concept led to infinite bottomless bath for submersion scene.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 07:51:29 UTC

Inherent link between spatial design and storyboarding

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Submersion scene and ideas for floor plan

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Considering the stages of the film according to sound, helped to define a path for the film structure. Loosely based on Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.

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Original storyboard start - January

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24 March storyboard - 1min version and 5min version

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Bathhouse studies and streetscape sketch

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Planning shot list and types from floor plan

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Bathhouse floor plan - own design, based on several references

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Composition study

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Dir. Špela Čadež, Nighthawk (2016)

Note repeating shots, how layered, use of atmosphere, character movement

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Dir. Yuri Norstein, Heron and Crane (1974)

Note fog, rain, camera movement, character movement, timing

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 09:42:32 UTC

Yasujiro Ozu, Floating Weeds (1959)

This shot - using the Japanese house as a stage, as characters enter from below and the side. Beautiful framing, and balance of colours.

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 09:45:20 UTC

Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo Story (1953)

This shot - corridor foreground, out of focus, moving. Background, main characters, in focus, still. Using internal screens to block out composition.

Dissertation

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 09:48:28 UTC

The Japanese Screen Space: Yasujiro Ozu and the Architecture of Screens

Own dissertation

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Ongoing: Animatic intro with voice (but to be taken out, and re-timed)

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 10:31:55 UTC

Script - ongoing

Logline

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 11:48:48 UTC

A short (5 minute) animation, about an old bathhouse, set in a near-future city, whose waters are a portal to the realm of the dead, attracting bathing mourners. As one man enters, he reckons with the memories of his dead wife, and is confronted with the choice to join her or stay.

When someone asks me, "what is your core concept?"

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 11:49:22 UTC

It is a film about the people we lose from our lives, but ultimately in how we must save ourselves from their haunting. It is not about death, but about the ephemerality of moments in time, and the trap of images.

The bathhouse is a device to cloak characters from reality, and place them in a state of deep contemplation and dreams. The water and bathing makes some mythological reference to purification, and rebirth.

Synopsis

kantoomaeda — 2024-03-26 11:49:51 UTC

The film opens onto a foggy, futuristic cityscape, at nighttime, where people wander, mostly alone. We see an old Japanese Sento style bathhouse wedged beneath the towering modern buildings. The film then follows one man into the bathhouse, as he receives a locker key from the owner, moves the through the screened rooms of activity, and into the changing room. We see him put away his business attire.

The scene then opens in the bathhouse space, where it is dimly lit, with strong shadows, and full of steam. The sound of splashing water is dominant, over the muffle of voices. The protagonist enters the scenes, from the far shoji screens which separate the washing area to the changing room. He passes through the other customers already washing themselves, and sits down to wash himself.

When he enters the bath, the focus turns from the space of the bathing space to the inner world of the character. The change in sound plays a big role here. We see him partially submerged, with his ears under water, as a Birds Eye shot looks down on his face. As the steam covers his face, we see his memories of his dead wife, morph from the steam, in disjointed moments.

As he sits up, he sees the reflection of his wife on the water surface. There seems to be a shadowy figure beneath the water, distorted by the ripples. As she raises a hand to him, his reaches out, and is pulled by her into the water. He is completely submerged and enters a bottomless underwater space, surrounded by shoji screens.

In the flurry, the shadowy figure has disappeared. But he sees her again, this time as a silhouette behind the shoji screens. The background behind her change, representing moments of their life spent together. He draws nearer the screen, and a close up in his face shows his emotions and longing to be with his lost lover. As he reached to open the door, the tension builds, and we cut to black.

The scene open back to the changing room, where he is drying his hair. The sound is now back to the diegetic world. He returns his key to the owner, and open the front door of the bathhouse for another customer to come in. We then see his shadow through the front door, walk out into the city again. The sound return to the streetscape, as in the beginning.