How To: Sleep - February Update

Howdy diddly dooley folks!

Welcome to our February 2023 update, so what’s been happening on the How To: Sleep project this month i hear you ask…

Well to start off the month, we caught up with our lovey voice actor Ryan, who voices our narrator. He’d been working tirelessly on some of his own projects and we had a new idea for the film to make it much more mixed media. So following a teams call we discussed some ideas and his availability over the next few weeks to get him in for  sound session to record a new version of the script.

A couple of weeks later following some paper work and a couple of meetings with a TV student consultant, we used our non-teeing week to get into the green screen room on campus. This is a great resource and features a 360 alcove which we had an exciting idea for you may find some of the crew and our narrator pop up somewhere in the film as a little easter egg!

This was a great experience and we’re dry grateful to team-mates, Sam, Ben and Gus for helping out on the day as we got to grips with using some new equipment and creating some Live action recordings to be placed into the film. These have been worked on by our lovely VFX crew to create some really cool pieces; adding a new dynamic to the film but also create some elaborate piece for showreel and portfolio work for a crew as we begin to look at post graduation progression.

Whilst this was going on in the green screen room, Director Eli was working with a smaller team to record some all important live action reference for our main character. This is to help understand h he moves but also gives our animators a good idea of the timings of various shots and a better ideal of the length of our film.

Following this we had an impromptu and all important morale booster visiting producer Cait at her part time job to the escape rooms! Teaming with up with the directors and producer from a couple of the other projects and with Cait hosting for the evening they successfully escaped from a nautical emergency!

But as got back to work in the studios, we headed up a day in the dubbing studio, recording our narration for the film and sound supervisor Oscar, showing second year freelancers, Azhar and Cuba how the foley process works to create our own sound effects for the film.

Throughout the month we caught up weekly with the team and our animators starting to begin the animation process of the film, updating our animatic and finally starting to see what the film couple look like in a few months time. It’s an exciting process and it’s been a productive month, but we’re very proud of the team and all the progress we’ve made so far!

So i sign off with a big thank you to our crew as we move into what we hope is anther super productive month in March before our Easter break and the final home stretch into deadline *Gasp*

Cait signing off for February!

Have a great March! 

How To: Sleep - March Update

Salutations! 

And welcome to the March 2023 update!

Following our super productive February, we slowed down a little in March but not to worry because we're still on track!

After another milestone, we had some important sessions in cinematography and story, and some recurring feedback made us suggest a possible addition to the film. In light of this Cait and Eli took some time to review and adjust the script slightly and mock up some new storyboard and a re-edit of the animatic we thought would be a good and strategic change to make.

But when we had a meeting with our Cg cream and lead CG artist Gus, we realised this change may not be as feasible as we’d hoped in the time frame, and regardless of further guidance from lecturers, we opted to revert to the original plan, as it just felt right. There’s no harm in trying something and whilst some of the feedback we received was positive about the change for our Director Eli it just wasn’t sitting right and with the agreement of the crew as well we opted not to implement the change.

Regardless we moved forward looking at the development of our CG environments and assets to hopefully complete the opening and closing sequences of our film. 

Producer Cait had to take a little time out from the project due to personal circumstances so taking a break is okay sometimes as you need to process, recharge and get back ready to get stuck back in. Not to worry though as director George and Eli, were straight on hand ready to Eli and pick things up for a few days. With a swift return, we celebrated crew members Gus and assistant producer Azhar’s birthdays and started to look at animating another character within the film, but I can’t say more than that I’m afraid as it would be spoilers!

To close off the month we let churned out the animation and had a good old boogie at the ‘Fixed in Post’ evening organised by producer Cait and some other coursemates

. It was a great evening surrounded by a lot of love and good energy as we broke up for Easter Break, many of the crew returning home to see family before the summer, but some of our third years are still around and working hard.

So long ‘till next month and a Happy Easter to everyone!

Cait out

X

 

How To: Sleep - January Update

Hello, 2023! 

Welcome back to the 2023 edition of the How To: Sleep blog 

so a quick post-Christmas update... we're going to keep it pretty short and sweet though as we've only been full back for a couple of weeks!

We had our final milestone just before the break and it went really well, we have now been officially cleared to move into PRODUCTION!!!

So to kick off the term behind the scenes myself, Eli ad George our directors had a couple of mini-meetings online to discuss what was going wrong in some of the animations and what needed to change prior to production. 

But before we properly kicked off production, we wanted to welcome back our team from the break and had a little quick review of the current animatic before playing a few ice-breaker games. Speaking of welcoming we've had 4 new faces join the How To: Sleep team, some second years looking to branch out their portfolios taking our official team number to 18! - we're super excited o have you guys with us :)

One of the big things we instigated this month was mandatory character workshops for anyone wishing to animate our lead character. he looks very cute and squishy but is deceptively hard to draw so following a couple of tweaks to his design we had our first character workshop in the studios and we'll have another in a week. this will encourage our one-to-one feedback with each member of the crew to get them to a standard of consistency so Morris will look the same in every shot! 

Finally, we've finished off this month by celebrating our lovely director Eli's birthday and having a night off, a big happy birthday to Eli. Keep smashing it every day!

but so long 'till next month guys!

Cait Out 

x

How To: Sleep - November Update

 Hi guys! 

so as the project picks up speed we've opted to change our updates to monthly if only as we're so busy, which is a good thing as the project starts to move forward!

At the end of October, we returned from our reading week ready to face it all head-on, and just in time for Halloween- Raising the studio spirits with some fancy dress fun!

To kick back off we started out with our lovely director Eli anointing core team member Emily to 'Props Master' - meaning she's responsible for the designing of all of the props featured in the film, from beds to doors to chests and more. This is to keep consistency amongst our designs on screen but also for continuity to keep these designs the same in each and every shot they will be featured in.

We also had a little evening with our producer and directors for a good old catch-up and a chance for some fun and board games as we're not just coworkers but also friends! - Shocker I know, but when keeping the professional work focus in the studios day to day it's still nice to have an evening of fun together every once in a while.

With some support from campus mascot Chester, we cracked back on with some sessions in the dubbing studios to grab some sound effects for the film but also to find the infamous voice of our 'Narrator' the voice guiding up to a pleasant night's sleep. After some careful deliberation by our directors and producer, it was safe to say we've found our narrator in the form of Ryan an Acting student at the university, and we're super excited to see what he brings!

Amongst the excitement of the month producer Cait (Me
) managed to do some damage to her drawing hand during an altercation between a radiator, tea towel, and some mosquitoes, don't ask. but safe to say she's on the mend with some dented fingers!

But the biggest development of this month wasn't technical director George's haircut, it was our writer's room with one more milestone before we break for Christmas we took the decision to bring in some peers, who are great at storytelling to evaluate the plot and work out how to make the film flow a bit better, and after 5 hours and six of us on the case we made some changes that have left as much more confident and very excited about how this film is going to look in a few months time.

As we approach December and our final milestone check-in, with confirmation for production this will also be our last post of 2022, for our third year we're approaching first semester deadlines in early December and then most of us will be returning to our families for a well-needed break and some time for recuperation. so we're signing off until 2023.

but till then... check out our Instagram page to meet some of the crew (@howto_sleep_film) but a merry Christmas from the entire How To: Sleep team and we'll see you in the new year!

Cait Out 

x

Have a great break, everyone!

How to: Sleep - Pre - Production - Week 5

 

 Hi guys! 

Welcome to Week 5... 

It's been a bit of a weird one.

Monday: Meeting Madness

Monday's meeting was another big one and we had both in person teams and some joining remotely, it was a really good point of updating everyone were were in terms of progress over the last week and explaining the new adjustments to the script and story. Everyone responded really positively and actively engaged in working out what tests we can facilitate moving forward. Eli and george explained the new elements wihting the storyboards and how the narrative follows and i checked in with everyone one to one, just to check that people are alright and how they're progressing with workloads. Overall, it was a very positive meeting and we came away feeling great aout where we're at :)

 
Tuesday: Presentation Panic! 

We had our first project milestone today of the story-beats, we formed a full presentation explaining the story from start to finish and then showed all the relevant tests we've started doing along with the development towards looking at what effects, designs and how we want morris to move 

It was a lot but so far so good there were a few suggestions from our peers and staff about clarity and adding a couple of audio and visual nods to add some further suspense and dread but overall it was a great mile of initial progress and really brilliant to see a collated quantity of everything that the team had been putting into the project, Which is a lot. A super proud moment to stand up there with everyone just showing how hard we've kicked this project off.

Rest of the Week:  Homeward Bound + Animatic!!

So Thursday was pretty Milestone-y as we finally had our first draft animatic. which is brilliant. amazing. super exciting. but...

We've had to make some changes. (Not great)

As director Eli started editing together our storyboards to form our first draft of animatic we noticed two things, 1. It was too long and 2. not all of it was quite flowing right. So whilst reviewing, the story bit by bit Eli changed the order of some sections and cut a few things out, which wasn't ideal but definitely necessary, in the end, we've got a brilliant first look at what our film is shaping up to be.

Next week is a little different as we have our reading week at the university which means for some students including me and some others on the team this is our time to go home and visit family. 

This is why towards the end of the week we've been preparing to return home or cracking on with other work, we'll still be clocking on the hours working remotely from home, or with parents and some of us will still be in the studios like our Dedicated Director Eli!

If you'd like to learn a bit more about our team stay tuned for Week 7's post where we'll Meet the rest of the Team!

but till then...

Cait Out 

Have a great week everyone!

x

How to: Sleep - Pre - Production Week 4

 Hi guys! 

Welcome to the "How to: Sleep" production blog

This is where we'll informally update weekly with developments in the project for anyone who's a bit more interested in the whole pipeline of the project or just wants to know a bit more about what we're actually doing from week to week 😊

This is written up by me, Cait (The producer) just as a little record about what were up to behind the scenes about what's been going on 

Monday: Our first full production meeting- Oh my God!

So, to crack off the week we started with hosting our first big production meeting in the studios with all of our core team and freelancers! This was great to have everyone in one room just discuss some announcements and plans for the week. We talked a bit about the expected schedule and workflow and took some suggestions about the future marketing along with hashing out some of the ideas for the script.

Tuesday: Script Reviews - We need coffee....

Eli, George and Cait had an intense meeting to review the script and story beats over a well needed coffee, we discussed and brain stormed ideas to change the flow of the script. Eli felt that there was a lag in tension throughout the latter half, so we sought and rearrange some of the steps. making it more coherent but also adding some padding the areas that were slightly weaker

Wednesday: A Knight of Honour and more Planning

Oscar became anointed to sound supervisor "Sir Oscar of the Sound" as we start to think about how we want the film to sound

Thursday: The studios are alive with the sound of Sleep

 We've started our first draft of storyboards and had our first Sound meeting! so were liaising with multiple courses as we work through the project and a student on Postproduction reached out to review the sound. We had a Mini meeting just introducing them to the concept of the film how we'd like it to run and possibly even sound with effects. They'll be reviewing some of the work with Oscar to look at the sound plan for the project and how we might move forward with our animatic (The rough cut of the film) in the future.

(No Badminton Rackets were hurt in the process of this meeting...)

Friday:  Storyboarding into the week's end

 

By the end of this week, we've been pretty wiped, and it won't be a quite weekend in by the TV for any of us, even if we're in the studios when we get home we're still cracking on. George and Eli, our directors have started drawing out our storyboards, reviewing alongside the script amendments so that our visuals are flowing with our narrative. So, when we come back next week, we should have a visual look of what the film's going to look like!

^^ Exciting!!!!

As we head into the weekend the team are finishing up more tests, everyone's had a go at drawing our main character Morris Stay tuned Next week for some Sketches and concept art!!

Cait Out 

x