By Louise Dixon
LONDON (AP) --Hanging under blankets for audio soundproofing and working around patchy home Wi-Fi, a London animation studio is following the British motto of "keep calm and carry on" during the coronavirus pandemic to complete its first feature film in time for Disney's planned release early next year.
Some 270 crew members have been working from home on "Ron's Gone Wrong" in a re-imagined production process that Locksmith co-founder Sarah Smith calls a logistical "nightmare."
"It's exciting and complex and fun and incredibly challenging," said Smith, a writer and producer of the film. "And once you've done it once, nothing else seems even vaguely interesting because it's like the hardest thing you've ever done."
Most of the crew is remotely connecting to their office workspaces for digital modeling, rigging, animation and lighting. Editors then assemble the remote work, in some cases with temporarily out-of-sync audio.
"Looking at the stuff in edit was the hardest thing because it was out of sync and with your brain trying to figure out the fine timing of an edit, which in animation is super precise," Smith said.
The film and television industry halted production in March because of safety fears over the coronavirus pandemic. Some are now restarting production or exploring ways to do so safely.
Locksmith had been in production for more than two years before the pandemic hit. Suddenly, animators found themselves on lockdown wrestling with glitchy technology while their nearby children stared at tablets. "Ironically and brilliantly, the film is actually about children and screen time," Smith said.
The story is set in a world where talking robots have become children's best friends. For one 13-year-old boy, things don't go according to plan when his bot malfunctions.
"It's supposed to be taken away and destroyed for being dangerous. But he keeps it, and he tries to teach it how to be a friend," Smith said.
Voice actors have been unable to record in formal studios during the lockdown. The lead child star had to tell his grandfather to turn off the television and his mother to go offline in order to conserve home internet bandwidth for a remote recording session, Smith said.
Studio art director Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn said it's remarkable that animation is "thriving and surviving" during the pandemic, but he's hoping to gather with work colleagues in person soon.
"It will be great when we can all get down the pub because there's going to be some big wrap parties that we are all going to want to go to," he said.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More