Titlescreen Project: Man down and New Start

A few weeks into the project we found out Alex was leaving the group to go onto the Deep project. So Sam and I met for a meeting to see if we were happy with the direction of the project. This was because before it had felt like he wasn't really into my idea and we were only doing Yesterday's Tomorrow as nothing else was suggested. A new direction was decided.

The new idea was a previous suggestion of mine, which was the biopic task based on the Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson. We spent a another week researching the author and formulating any new concepts. We regrouped and integrated our ideas into a general direction.
The new direction consisted of representations of Hunter's own and various alter egos characteristics from his various works (I will refer to Hunter S Thompson as HST througth out the project for personal ease). We also decided that we would intergrate a Ralpth Steadman inspired character animations (Sam worked on this section) into a 3D CGI enviroment for scenes (I would work on this half ). Below are some examples of Ralpth Steadman's work which is associated with HST as he used his illustrations for a few of his works..

The general idea consisted of the following stages:

• Starting with HST ashes reverse explosion with the camera following the ashes canister/bullet into HST's Gonzo funeral cannon. 

• We had a few problems in deciding how to go from the bottom of the funeral cannon into the next part which was set in HST's study(almost set out like a museum). In the end we just went with a fade to black which could blend into a shadowy corner of this study. The rest of the animation would be based within this scene. The two images that follow inspired us in how we would portray his study, cluttered and smokey enviroment full of character.

          

• The first section of the sudy we decided would contain a fireplace with a mantle piece conatining a Samoan war club and a framed Hawaii postcard to represent The Curse of Lono. In the book HST was ment to cover the Hawaii Marathon but due to the weather ended up getting high, then going fishing for marlin. He caught one and beat it to death with a Samoan war club.  The plan was to have HST walking into the scene, ducking under the club from rain coming from the postcard which was situated above the club. He would then walk back along the mantle piece and catch sight of something above him. The camera would follow his line of vision to a Richard Nixon mask (this represented Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72)on a moose head, lightning would flash and HST would proceed to shoot the mask off with the camera following its path down to it landing on top of a suitcase. This suitcase when would open to reveal its the suitcase from Fear and Loathing in Vas Vegas conatining drugs and alcohol. We had a few ideas with this section including; projecting a animated Vas Vegas into the reflection of the glass containers (which didn't happen in the end), having HST interacting with the scene by sniffing ether from his American flag hankerchief and falling off into the suitcases depths. The camera would then pan screen right into the shadey corner of the room, which would lead to...
• The next section would have the camera continuing panning to the right with HST walking along a bookcase with several other representations along with books. The first would be a sherrifs hat and badge, which represented HST running for Aspen County Sherrif. The second being a pair of binoculars which represented The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved. After the binoculars we decided to have HST change onto a motorbike which leads the audience to the next representation via him crashing into the end of the book case. The camera then carries on to a Hells Angels motorbike jacket hanging on a door (this represents Hells Angels). a big biker then appears in the jacket then punches HST in the final representation a Rum bottle depicting The Rum Diaries.
• The last stage contains personal characteristics of HST. We wanted to include; his various hats (like his bucket hat and Vas Vegas visor cap), cigarette holder, typewriter and his iconic yellow tinted sunglasses. These would be displayed either on a desk or other methods like a hat stand.
• I wanted to end with the camera sweeping up from the floor infront of the desk to the window behind. This I pictured having the sun shining through American flag curtains which would draw for the camera to go through into the feature film.

(A lot of ideas have been excluded as I'm reflecting back, not ideal.)