Once the animations, the sets, the photography, the music, the video editing were completed, I thought that by now the bulk of the work had been done.... Instead I found myself in front of another effort: the sound! I hadn't calculated how demanding it would be to create the sound-desing and sound editing from scratch... In fact, every single cut of the film had to be completed by all the sounds present in the
sequence... It took months of work to annotate each single sound and noise to then find a way to reproduce, record, adjust, modify and edit them in each sequence... For example, how many sounds are there in 5 seconds by
Somalia94 - The Ilaria Alpi affair?
One
minute
How
many drawings there are in Somalia94 - Il caso Ilaria Alpi's
one minute of animation? I have not counted them but just look
at them to understand how much work there is including
layouts, rough drawings and finishes... In addition we have to
include storyboard drawings, character/mecha-design,
backgrounds, etc.... All multiplied per 39!
The photography
There are many phases of processing in
the creation of a cartoon: script, storyboard, layouts,
animations, sets, sounds, music, dubbing, editing and
photography... Among the extras of the DVD released by Dynit
of Somalia94
- Il caso Ilaria Alpi there is an interesting video
concerning this process. It shows the various steps to achieve
a scene by filming together animations, backgrounds, lights,
filters, camera movements, special effects, etc. In addition,
some shots cut out of the film are reproduced in full screen.
Don't miss to watch it!
The
sea
The
sea
is often present in Somalia94 - Il caso Ilaria Alpi. I
didn't want to use the usual "synthetic" sea in CGI
(0) because it would have been too realistic for a hand-drawn
cartoon, "seceding" too much from the other
drawings. So I painted one (1), I tilted it (2), I made
virtual copies and put them together (3), I added an optical
distortion effect (4), a heavy colored photographic filter
(5), I roughly drew shadows (6) and a little foam (7), and
overlaied them on the drawing (8). The result was an
"animated drawing" coordinated with the rest of the
film (9).
The
Ilaria's tape recorder
Perhaps the youngers doesn't know that before the ipods and
smartphones to record interviews and voice notes were used the
tape cassette recorders, such as the Ilaria Alpi's dictaphone
reproduced in a scene of our Somalia94 - Il caso Ilaria
Alpi.
Multi-layer
SOften
the scenography of a cartoon is composed of several layers, as
in this sequence of our Somalia94 - Il caso Ilaria Alpi:
on the main background of a sunrise (poster-colors on paper)
another layer of clouds was added (acrylic-colors on acetate),
then the animation was placed (the airplane), all shoot by
adding filters and lights.
Computer animation
Somalia94 is a work
drawn in cel-animation (also called frame-by-frame
animation). Only in 3 sequences I used computer animation (CGA): the feather that falls into Ilaria's dream, the flock of thrushes (where animating all the birds by hand would have been too
difficult) and the ventilation fan in the scene Ilaria's escape
(drawing it by hand would not even have been so difficult, but
the work mole I expected was still a lot so I decided to make
a "synthetic" one); "masking" them to seem
drawn like the rest of the film. These are the only 3 sequences
"drawn by computer".
"Backstage"
In some sequences of Somalia94
the shot widens to show the edges of the background. Actually
this would be an error, but in this case made on purpose: a
way to highlight the craftsmanship of the work to the
audience.
Cels' process
Dynit's brocure
Theatrical poster
Wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper
Storyboard
Character
design (Ilaria
Alpi)
Character
design (Miran
Hrovatin)
Character
design (Giancarlo Marocchino)
Mecha-design
Mecha-design (videocamera)
Layout
Layout
Perhaps
the least noticeable thing when watching a cartoon are the
backgrounds used to compose the sets, the one behind the
characters, which must be drawn with shapes that follow the
movements of the camera. In Somalia94 - Il caso Ilaria Alpi
there's one in particular used for the long vertical plane
Ilaria's dream sequence of the feather that falls with truly
anomalous dimensions: 30 x 99 cm! Almost a meter tall! And all
hand painted...