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Animation Mentor:
How did you come up with the concept for your short film?
Alli Sadegiani:
I was taking a shower and had only three days to come up with five story ideas. I had like 15 half stories and was starting to get very desperate. As always and as strange as it sounds, I tend to come up with most of my ideas while in the bathroom or taking a shower. I really don't know why, but I guess it's something with the feng shui that gets my ideas floating. :) Anyway, I was preparing to shave my face and brainstormed at the same time asking myself "what if..?" questions. One of the questions was, "What if a pimple suddenly popped up on my face. And what if once I pushed it, money appeared from nowhere."
I spinned off from that idea and the first story pitch I had was about this guy preparing himself for a date and shaving his face in the bathroom. The pimples would appear on his face as you will see in the final version, but the main conflict was that he’d have to go on his date looking like Hitler or give up all the gold in order to find the razor buried under all the money.
The story was kind of flat at that point and not evolving in any direction. After a lot of bounces back and forth with my mentor, Chris Derochie, and other people at the school, the whole concept evolved into being more about the weaknesses within the character and his addictions and greed. Suddenly the gags about him transforming into Hitler, which I originally just had put in for no particular reason more than being just gags, made sense in so many ways and I also think it gave the story depth on several levels.
Animation Mentor:
What important lessons did you learn from making your short film?
Alli Sadegiani:
I learned to not be afraid of my own ideas and not to judge them. EVERY idea is a good idea and depending on how I put them in relation to other ideas they can be brilliant ideas! In turn, I also learned to be very open to others’ input and ideas. There is a huge strength in showing your vulnerability and just leaving it all open for people to pick and tear your ‘baby’ apart. Never forget to have clear vision though, since it's you who will be sorting the ideas apart and mixing them into a tasty cookie.
Animation Mentor:
How long did it take to complete your film?
Alli Sadegiani:
I took me about 10 months from start to finish. I spent three months on the script, storyboard, layout and animatic. I also spent three months on the animation and another two to three months to polish, comp and render it.
Animation Mentor:
How much planning was put into your short film? Did planning help make the process easier?
To me, animating is EXACTLY like building a house. Now, I have never built a house, but I've seen it done on TV. :) You have to have your blueprints solid and waterproofed before even starting digging and getting muddy and dirty. After you have the blueprints right, you dig in and put one brick on top of another. Finally, the day comes when you decorate the rooms and put that fancy vase with the fancy flower in the living room, as a final touch.
If you haven't got your story and boards right, no matter how shiny and beautiful your final film looks, it's all gonna fall down anyway. If you don't have enough references and thumbnails and know exactly what kind of performance you want to get out of your shot, you're going to end up tearing it all down and redoing it all over again. Since I knew my short was longer and probably included more shots than the average Animation Mentor short, I really needed to get my blueprints right. I knew I didn't have any time to go back and redo anything either so this was very crucial to me.
Animation Mentor:
Do you mind sharing some of the pre-production work with us with a little explanation of what we're looking at.
Alli Sadegiani:
This is the final pitch I did. Still, the final story was about to take another turn before all the details were nailed.
Animatic: This is the final version of the story before going to layout with most of the editing and timing done.
Layout: This is the layout where I’m trying to nail down the camera angles and basic staging. Key poses are still very rough!
Blocking: This is the film in different passes of blocking.
Animation Mentor:
What obstacles, if any, did you experience during the creation of your short film? How did you work your way around them?
Alli Sadegiani:
There were times I doubted myself and wasn't sure I would be able to go through with it. When you are making lots of sacrifices and putting in a lot of hard work, it’s sometimes hard to find the motivation to go through it. So I sat down one day and tried to think of a person that I could identify myself with to see if there was anything in their path or achievement that I could get a boost from. The one type of person I came to identify myself with the most was an athlete (if you exclude the muscle mass and the fitness). :) I figured that their effort, goals and struggles in many ways were like what I was going through during that period of time. Athletes have to work alone and set up huge goals that are several months or even years ahead of them. The only person that guides them is their coach. Perhaps they can discuss their issues with other athletes, but mostly, they are the head of their own show and have to stay very focused within themselves to not become their own worst enemies in hard situations. So I started to Google around and found articles written by, or for, athletes where they discussed and shed light upon how to deal with such things like your obstacles and how to conquer your fears and doubts. In a nutshell, I learned a lot about taking it one day at a time and to tell myself that I was actually making progress, even if the goal was very foggy from where I was standing at that point.
Animation Mentor:
Tell how your Animation Mentor experience helped you in creating your short film.
Alli Sadegiani:
I could go on forever listing the wonderful things that have already been said about the school, the staff and the founders. The wonderful set-up and curriculum aside, the thing that stood out most and helped me when I most needed it was without any doubt the energy and passion that just beamed out of the screen every time I watched the video news or lecture! That energy is the key to why people ever go through with such a thing – sacrificing family, friends, kids, jobs and BBQs! It was the same energy and passion that helped me go through and create my film. Every time I had a bad day, I could just turn on the video news and my week was rescued :)
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