LIVE ACTION

The work developed in this film with live image explores the characters relationship with different memory levels. To achieve this, we initially registered this real moments using chroma backgrounds to make it easier to do the characters clipping, for in a second phase integrate those clippings in previously animated sequences.

Father's hands close-up shot

The assembling of this shot, through the manipulation of image fragments which were rearranged later, were the main source on creating the aesthetic approach for the live image of the film.

First integration tests

How to connect two shots representing the same situation, but which have have been designed at different times, with different techniques (live image and animated) and different graphic designs? What formal relationship we want to establish between each two overlapping images, in order to explore the main character's relationship with the past? How clear is that connection when these images come to 24 frames per second? To find answers, we launched the first tests:

Shot 97

Hello, I'm Marta Ribeiro and in this movie I was assistant director for the live image sequences, as well as the camera operator. In this scene, the challenge was to follow the actor, who was running, with the camera, without ever losing the frame. The idea on doing this movement by hand, without any auxiliary equipment, aimed to create an unstable image, that would suit the concept of the film.

Animated image

Porque não queriamos que o movimento do filme ficasse refém do movimento da imagem real, decidimos criar primeiro o desenho animado e só depois filmar a correspondente real dessas imagens. A colagem dos recortes reais sobre a animação ficava assim integrada de uma forma grosseira como pedaços de memória soltos.

Raw Footage

Live image overlaid on the Animation

Final Result

Shot 79

When Zé Miguel realized it would be necessary to include live image moments in the film, we began to study the best way to do it. As testing progressed by trial and error we went on, constructing a language that ended up being applied to other moments of the film.

We shot some scenes on the exterior, but most were captured in an improvised studio in the choreographic center of Montemor-o-Novo, Espaço do Tempo.

There we filmed static shots, close-up shots and travellings. The actors used noses prostheses so we could connect to the drawn characters in the film, as in this shot in which the dancer Filipe Pereira (Mané) is filmed in a situation identical to the one that appears in the animation.

Apart from these images already introduced, which can be seen in the movie, we shot at the same time other scenes with a different goal, to help the animators executing some more specific shots, who lived much of its own human movement. With these live images serving as a starting point, the animators could understand and work other details in the animation.

All images, video and photography, were taken with a Canon 7D.