Final touch up in the studio before the shoot.
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- Matthias Daenschel putting the final touches to paint details
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- The setup in the studio before lighting
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Yesilcam – Colours
Susanna Jerger, as always, did a really nice job on this set with the colours especially in capturing the richness and dreamy quality of the colours of the inspirational. By adding multiple layers of paint and pencil work, she achieved very dense yet subtle textures.
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- Windowframes
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- More windowframes
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- Paint Details
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- A day before shipment
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- work-in-progress
Yesilcam – The street with cobblestones
The face of Yesilcam Street has changed in the last years drastically – and not for the better unfortunately. But we’re nostalgic people – we’re sticking to the good old days and taking inspiration from the first times we visited the street.
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- cobblestone master
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- Patches of cobblestones
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- Done….
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- Detail – still from the teaser
Yesilcam – chimneys, tiles and airconditioners
The Yesilcam Street set lives from the incredible attention our set builders gave to its many – many! – details. And they never grew tired of being asked to avoid right angles and exact parallels – without getting wobbly or amorphous shapes.
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- All window frames were cut individually
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- Roofs should have a patched and worn look
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- Preparing the cast
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- Rooftiles – we found some really nice miniature clay tiles but had to make casts of them for the area where Kara would be sitting
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- Chimneys
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- Air conditioners
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- Balcony fence – finished except for paint
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- Jörg Steegmüller working on the balcony fence
Yesilcam – the first building blocks
A pretty solid wooden construction was built for the houses to ensure that the set would not shift or shake – especially since we knew that during the shoot parts – roofs or single houses – would have to be removed mid-shot and reattached later several times. Preferably without causing major set shifts.
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- Pablo Pinkus working on the wooden construction
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- Basic shapes
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- Details added
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- The building on the left is a reminiscence of Emek Sinemasi
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- Wooden part of the street is the only part the animator is meant to step on
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- Nina Milarch working on a roof
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- Paved street and plastered walls
Yesilcam – how we started
We had an inspirational design, a sketch and then glued and taped together another analogue blocking.
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- Inspirational
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- rough sketch
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- Blocking
Yesilcam – building Kara´s street
Now that everything is “done” (which of course still is not…), we finally get around to putting together more pictures from the set-building process.
Our most complex set – both in building and shooting – is the set of Yesilcam Street, Kara´s street. This street is based on a real location – except for the parts that are made up. Sinem, Kara´s alter ego, lived here in her youth and this is where Kara´s journey in Istanbul starts.
I will present the pictures in a loose chronological order – starting with one from one of our research trips to Istanbul, when I met Ayse Teyze, who was still alive and running her tiny kiosk on Yesilcam.
Sinem and her mother in Yesilcam
It's a wrap!
Ok, so this is a big moment for us…After presenting work-in-progress on the teaser at Cartoon Movie, which went really well and the emotional reaction we received was more than we could have hoped for, we jumped right back into the shoot. We still had two set ups to get through, one of them being the “background” (ahem!) plate of miniature Istanbul with all its various passes – fog, practicals, on green, on black etc… – and the other the deceptively simple truck out on the marionette theater for the closing. So after a few weeks of shoot with our now much smaller team, last week we popped the champagne and called it a wrap!!
Now all we have to do is remove some rigs, stabilize some layers, composite a few thousand frames, final grade the colors, compose the music, design the sound, and voila! We will have a 3-minute teaser on our hands. All the while going through many gigabytes of ‘making of’ footage to keep you guys updated. Piece of cake.
But let’s worry about the work ahead tomorrow and take a moment to celebrate the end of the shoot: here is a sneak peek into the (still work-in-progress) teaser. Editor Katrin Brinkmann and her team from NDR took the time to visit with us about a week ago and put together this report. (Sorry to the German speakers for slightly butchering what’s clearly not my mother-tongue, especially in front of the cameras (more comfortable behind them really), but the pictures should hopefully make up for it.)
Cheers everybody!
