TRAN'S MISSION (An animated short film)

Tran's Mission from Vasanth Kumar on Vimeo.I

TRAN'S MSSION 

Directed and Produced by Vasanth Kumar and targeted at audiences of all age groups, TRAN’S MISSION, is a scientific comedy revolving around an inventor named Tran, who is gadget geek and engrossed in his experiments. The short film starts showing a graphic background having voice over introduction of Tran, which says that Tran is an engineering student, who is engaged in an electronic project.

In this short film ,Tran is always experimenting with electronics and the film progresses showing different consequences and how the efforts of TRAN constantly get interrupted by silly antics, unaware interferences in his work by a cute bird family, which live nearby his home.

Tran is a character and story is about his Mission thus its - TRAN’s MISSION. Also it goes with the scientific look of the film. It’s one of the title my friend Rushali suggested. I really liked this for obvious reasons.

 I wanted to simplify the human tendencies to solve problems, evolved in this millions of years of lifetime.The cycle of problem and solutions, keeps our species going.It’s a comedy!

Since 2010, it almost took more than 2 ½ year to complete this film. I used to work after my work hours it was a part time project.Only for the last few months I could dedicate full time for this project, cause I quit the job hehe.

Almost three months, for the basic script and storyboard.When I was started the production screenplay was still not finalized.I did three drafts of storyboard: basic, a little detailed and the final one. Proceeding to the animatic stage which was very crucial as this give you a rough idea for your film’s timing, choreography and duration. I did colour scripting to get the final look and feel of the film.

Pre Prod Design

It is a mix medium process, little tricky to handle. Mixed medium because of lack of resources (at that time) and time.After pre production, I took one and half month  to complete the stop motion production with green screens wherever necessary. This was because I couldn’t plan the exteriors at that time. All this was done on my  one and half month leave from the studio. After one month’s complete animation and green screen clean ups, I joined my studio then a year later I started with the CG production when I could spare some time.

I used two major mediums, Stopmotion and CGI. This is solely because of resource, time and budget constraint. I love working on mixed medium so I enjoyed all the more. The interior shots are done in stopmotion, as planned. Then the rest is in CGI. Animation is very snappy and 2d style, for maintaining crisp and tight action.

After the character design, the puppet / the character’s armature is made using aluminum wires, this acts like our skeleton, helping us in the movement: frame by frame. Then the character is mass with thermocol and clay and clothed in real fabric. For mouth movements we made replaceable jaws.

 Once the character is made we the right proportion for the set and other props, which is made out thermocol and other materials.

Due to budget constraints our lighting was what we call jugaad, raw tree polls, thermocol domes for soft lighting etc. our well ventilated studio seemed to be more mind boggling, cause we had to close all the windows to make it dark. It was fun nonetheless.

Prod Stills

Most Challenging part was storytelling. In my film, there is no dialogue, which makes it difficult to tell story. Story telling was the toughest part. Many times I re-edited, deleted many shots and I also tried many ways to communicate the story by adding some text in comic book. I discussed with many people. Finally, I communicated what I thought.

And technique wise also there was many challenging things.

Many times, I have thought of deleting my project directory especially when I was searching right person for sound design and music for almost 8 month. Only thing sustained my energy was to complete project.

Film Stils