Brown Blog Films

23 Degrees 5 Minutes – Making of, Part 8

Darragh O'Connell — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:58:05 +0000

When you’re setting a film in a specific time & place it’s important to do as much research as you can. While the internet proves a valuable source of reference, nothing quite takes the place of going out into the field!

So with kind permission from the good people of Renaissance Antiques on Capel Street in Dublin, Stephen O’Connor set off armed with a camera to snap away at anything interesting that caught his eye. Here are just some of the snaps which he came back with:

And here are some of the details & models that benefitted from this research:

click on images to enlarge:

23 Degrees 5 Minutes – Making of, Part 7

Darragh O'Connell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:05:56 +0000

Sorry there have been no ‘23 Degrees…’ posts for a while. Work commitments are crunching precious time once again, but work on the short film has been ongoing in spurts.

Here are some colour studies done by Stephen O’Connor. It’s amazing how colour can change the mood of a shot even though it’s the same object and angle.

Check out these studies of the Professor’s study:

Here’s a few more of the corridor leading to the Professor’s study:

These kinds of studies are a really great help when we’re charting the emotional story of the story, and a big dig out to the guys doing the lighting in 3D who know what they have to match.

Hope you like them!

Brown Bag Films on Facebook!

Jennie — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:19:38 +0000

As anyone who follows us on Twitter will know, Brown Bag Films now have a Facebook page! You can visit us at www.facebook.com/brownbagfilms.

We’ve all had a very busy summer here at the studio, so we were treated to a BBQ party at Kobra nightclub as an end-of-summer thank you. We were told that a mystery mode of transport would bring us from Smithfield square to the BBQ. Nobody had a clue what it would be until we found two Viking Splash bus/boats waiting for us in the square!

We toured around the city before driving into the sea in Dublin’s docklands and taking a sail around Grand Canal docks:

We left our Viking helmets behind as our ships dropped us outside Kobra. The party was also a great way to say goodbye to Aaron, who had manned the studio’s Reception for nearly 3 years and is moving on to pastures new. Photos of the partying are on Facebook here.

Positions at Brown Bag Films

Aaron Healy — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:32:11 +0000

Brown Bag Films are currently in production on a high profile 3D animation project and are looking for some highly skilled people to become key members of the development process. Do you have what it takes to be Brown Bag’s next top Modeler? Are you a 3D Texture Master? Is Character Rigging your bag?

To find out more about these roles please email and submit your CV and application form to jobs@brownbagfilms.com.

We are accepting applications for the following:

Work Experience

Storyboard Artist

3D Modeler

Please note that every completed application form submitted will receive a response via email within 1-2weeks

Systems Admin Day in Brown Bag Films

Aaron Healy — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:34:55 +0000

Today Brown Bag Films celebrated our first Systems Admin Day. It’s a day where we all show our appreciation for all the work our Systems Administrator does throughout the year to ensure all IT related issues are dealt with efficiently and effectively. SysAdmin Day is in its 11th year and what better way to celebrate something, during working hours, than with cake! And what a cake it was, a specially made Sys Admin cake provided by none other than our very own resident Systems Administrator, Louise Nicholls.

Darren, Louise and Aidan,Brown Bag's IT Team

Louise's wonderful Systems Admin Day cake

Stephen O Connor just wanted a slice of cake

Aidan, Darren and Bronagh enjoying the delicious cake

Happy Systems Admin Day from Everyone at Brown Bag Films.

Animation Workshop for kids, Dublin July 20-24

Jennie — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:45:26 +0000

Thanks to the Irish Film Institute & the Polish Embassy in Dublin there will be a 5 day animation workshop for kids next week from July 20-24th. In this free workshop kids will learn about basic animation techniques, using music by the classical composer Fryderyk Chopin (in order to commemorate Chopin Year, 200 years since the birth of the famous composer). For the workshop, participants will be guided by expert animators and will be shown how different animation techniques work. They will also make a short film of their own, with a Chopin soundtrack.

Age 10 – 13
July 20 (Tue) – July 24 (Sat) 10am – 5pm (with intervals)
The workshops will be in English language.
Kids must be familiar with using the computer.
Bring your own lunch
We are aiming for the group to be international
Workshops will take place in Digital Hub, James St and IFI, Eustace St.
Workshops are FREE OF CHARGE

To book a place or for more information, please contact:

Alicia McGivern, Irish Film Institute, tel (01)612 9466 amcgivern@irishfilm.ie
Nikola Sekowska, Polish Embassy in Dublin, tel (01)219 7430 dublin.culture@msz.gov.pl

Dolby – The men in white coats fight back!!

Dominic Lawrence — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:45:21 +0000

I possibly did myself no favours by rattling on about surround sound and Toy Story 3 and whatnot in my last post, and that was me giving the simplified version. I admit it, I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to tech and alike.

Anyway, my new best friends at Dolby are back on the road to COOL with this video…don’t believe me, believe in Beardyman himself:

“The piece was produced by Think Espionage and Dolby and is super sick in the face. If you like it, that makes you really cool”

Kinda animation related (and would definitely be nominated for this) so stick your headphones on have a nerd-tastic weekend!

Oh and having been accused of being a geek on Brown Bag’s Twitter….

…I have to make an important distinction: geeks are a totally different beast!!

See for me, Nerds are still essentially men-in-white coats but they do or make cool stuff eg. Dolby

Geeks are men-in-white coats that do or make nothing vaguely interesting or useful to everyday people e.g. Just how does snail slime work…

Or maybe I’ve been deceiving myself for too long…

Courtesy of xkcd.com

5.1 + 2 = Toy Story 3??

Dominic Lawrence — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:14:46 +0000

Things have been pretty light on Pixar loving of late but that ain’t gonna last too long with the release of Toy Story 3. No doubt its going to be a masterpiece of style, technical wizardry, storytelling and everything else that they do all so well (its all guesswork until I see it but lets face it, Pixar don’t exactly do bad films…). So ye can all drool over the visuals but what caught my eye is that Pixar, along with Skywalker Sound and Dolby Laboratories, have developed a new 7.1 surround sound configuration for the film to be viewed in – unfortunately Dolby are essentially men-in-white-coats and lack the creative genius of Pixar so the best name they could come up with was well….Dolby Surround 7.1.

Nerds, put your specs on, things are gonna get wordy!!

As a refresh, your basic 5.1 surround setup consists of 6 discrete signals – front left, center, front right, left surround, right surround and a subwoofer. The new Dolby Surround 7.1 standard involves adding left back and right back speakers right behind the audience. By doing this you have much more control over where sounds are placed (you have 4 specific surround ’spaces’ as opposed to your normal 2 ’spaces’) and 360 degree panning (the way the sound moves around you from left-right-front-back) is much smoother. Dolby have helpfully provided a utility via Google Maps to find the closest 7.1 capable cinema – for those of you in Galway, you’re in luck. Unfortunately, from one of the press releases I saw it doesn’t look like it’s getting a 7.1 release in Ireland.

Its actually not the first time 8 discrete cinema speakers have been used, with Sony developing the Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) in the early 90’s which deployed 5 speakers at the front (Left/Left Center/Center/Right Center/Right) and 2 rear surrounds (left/Right surround) and the .1 subwoofer channel. Unfortunately, a bit like the whole Blu-ray vs HD-DVD situation, SDDS has lost the battle against the massively popular Dolby Digital or Dolby DTS formats. SDDS required a whole new mix, additional hardware and (more importantly considering todays market), SDDS was never really supported by any home cinema equipment whereas all the new receivers (such as monster Onkyo models….used to sell them in a previous life so if I plug they might give me a freebie??) pride themselves on supporting DTS-HD/Dolby True HD and being THX certified. While the format is still alive, Sony quit manufacturing any new hardware a few years ago.

Dolby on the other hand have only gone from strength to strength and its not the first time Dolby have hooked up with a major film studio to launch a new standard. In collaboration with Lucasfilm (Mr Lucas really does have fingers in ALL the movie pies…), they launched the 6.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX system which premiered with Star Wars Episode 1 : A pile of **** Phantom Menace – although to be fair the Pod race does rock…..

Now, well done, you’ve lasted 3 paragraphs, as a reward here’s a nice article with Lee Unkrich on Toy Story 3 in general and funnily enough, he loves the panning joystick on the mixing desk…

Right, back to the science and lets not forget that it all started with well….silent movies (no speakers), mono sound (1 speaker) and stereophonic sound (2 speakers – left front/right front) with brief affairs into quadraphonic or quad (4 speakers – front L/R, back L/R)…After that the evolution of Dolby cinema sound looks a bit like this…full info is available from Dolby themselves here but i figure we’re an animation company so everyone would prefer pictures as opposed to reams of words!

Dolby Analog

Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital Surround EX

Dolby Surround 7.1

If you have a home cinema at home and want to get the best from them, check out these videos from Dolby and Onkyo – don’t be one of those people who hides speakers under a couch…please….

Anyway, my own personal feelings are:

7.1 will only really impact those that are in the ’sweet spot’ seats in the cinema – if you’re stuck against the right hand wall intricate or immersive panning will be lost on you.
Yes, in the real world sound comes from all around you but I can’t help feel that with that kind of immersion, it would be hard to concentrate on the screen (its one of the reasons that most of a films dialog is in the center channel so that it at least ‘anchors’ you to the screen)
I would love to see a push into the z-plane – speakers on the ceiling or have a high center speaker (similar to IMAX or the new Dolby Prologic llz home theatre standard). I think this dimension would be better value to the experience for a wider amount of people.
Where the hell does this leave TV?? Stations are still broadcasting stereo (RTE…ahem…) while others in the US are looking into upmixing all content for broadcast to 5.1 in the next 2 years. These people could make my life very complicated down the road….
As with all tech, is it here to stay? There have already been examples of 11.2 and, at the moment, its not possible to mix to this standard outside of Skywalker Sound. Another obstacle is that a lot of studios (us included) are based around Pro Tools and in essence, PT’s doesn’t ‘know’ how to mix 7.1 because there’s no panning laws for it (he says opening a huge can of worms….). If by chance I’ve piqued your interest in Pan Laws, read this, if not just accept that PT’s can’t yet do it! Despite this, I think this one kinda has a shot since Skywalker do a LOT of the big big films so it will get plenty of screen time, most modern cinemas should be able to upgrade to the new system cheaply (for some its even as easy as a firmware download!) and Blu-ray has native support for 7.1 audio so it does at least open up the home market.

Lastly, if you’re gonna do 360 degree coverage, I think this is the way to go – I would bet it sounds spectacular on something like Cars or the benchmark for pan-tastic audio, Transformers, would be pretty damn cool with everything whizzing about too.

Todd-AO in LA

As a final reward for slogging on to the end, here’s a pretty cool video on the sound process for Toy Story 3 courtesy of the excellent Soundworks Collection

Toy Story 3 – Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

EDIT: I’ve actually been writing this blog for about 4 weeks now and it appear that Pixar haven’t in fact made a dud…something about a $109 million opening US weekend suggests otherwise. Shrek 4 doesn’t have a hope…

23 degrees 5 minutes – Making of, Part 6

Darragh O'Connell — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 10:28:45 +0000

The voices of your characters are hugely important, especially when you have to compress so much exposition into as little time as you have to tell the story! You want your audience to care about them and understand why other characters in the film would care about them too.

Myself & John Hurt Voice of Professor Orit

I was delighted when John Hurt agreed to do the voice of Professor Orit. He has such an iconic voice and I was always inspired by his voiceover of Hazel in Watership Down, which remains one of my favourite animated films.

He had a terrible cold when we recorded him in London but he soldiered on in good spirits and was kind enough to pose for a picture afterwards!

For the second character of the film I needed a younger voice, but again it had to be warm & passionate. My first choice was Stuart Townsend who was an old friend from Dublin but has been living out in Los Angeles for over ten years. Stuart did a great job and it was great to catch up for a coffee afterwards.

Here’s a shot of myself & Stuart with some friends at the Glastonbury festival back in 1996!

Glastonbury 1996

Brown Bag to Produce Doc Mc Stuffins

Aaron Healy — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:18:48 +0000

Brown Bag Films are to produce Doc McStuffins, a new 52 episode series for Disney that will be broadcast on US cable TV channel Disney Junior.

The Doc is in! Doc McStuffins

Official Announcement:

THERE’S A NEW DOC ON THE BLOCK…

PRODUCTION HAS BEGUN IN IRELAND ON “DOC MCSTUFFINS,”AN ANIMATED SERIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS TO PREMIERE ON DISNEY JUNIOR BLOCKS AND CHANNELS AROUND THE WORLD BEGINNING IN 2011

Academy Award-Nominated Brown Bag Films to Produce

Production has begun in Dublin, Ireland, on “Doc McStuffins,” an animated series about six-year-old ”Doc” McStuffins, who communicates with and heals stuffed animals and toys out of her backyard clinic. This imaginative series, with an emphasis on healthy living, will highlight the importance of taking care of oneself and others. The two time Academy Award nominated animation studio Brown Bag Films (”Granny O’Grimm,” “Give Up Yer Aul Sins”) will produce the series in association with Disney Channel. Beginning in 2011, “Doc McStuffins” will premiere on the soon to be branded Disney Junior blocks on Disney Channel, and Disney Junior channels around the world. The announcement was made today by Nancy Kanter, senior vice president, Playhouse Disney Worldwide.

Kanter said: “Helping their kids live a healthy lifestyle is a top priority for parents. ‘Doc McStuffins’ combines every kid’s dream of their toys coming to life with valuable lessons about health and wellness. We are confident that Doc’s relatable warmth and charm will ease young viewers’ natural trepidations about familiar situations including visiting the doctor, getting shots and taking medicine.”

Doc runs her backyard community clinic with the help of Squeakers, an alarmist squeaky toy fish; Hallie, a jolly hippo receptionist; Stuffy, an overly proud stuffed dragon; and Lambie, Doc’s fashion forward best friend lamb. The kids in Doc’s neighborhood aren’t quite sure how she does it, but they believe in her ability to heal their beloved toys. The series models a strong sense of community and the importance of lending a helping hand, or paw, when people and stuffed animals need it most.

The Hollywood Health & Society division of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center will serve as the health and medical consultant for the series, advising on core health issues that are relevant to young kids and families.

Emmy Award-winning writer Chris Nee (”Little Bill”) is creator and executive producer and Emmy Award-winning Norton Virgien (”Rugrats”) is director. “Doc McStuffins” is a production of the Brown Bag Films in association with Disney Channel.