Behind the scene video
Overall description
6½-A big middle finger to all of the politicians
This is supposed to be my seventh short film. Rather than a traditional story-telling film, it is more of a complicated feeling since I received so much different information from both news and reality. I combined 3D animation, which I normally use, also footage from news and live action I took from life, with homage to Fellini’s 8½, I named this film 6½.
As a person who lived on both sides of the East and the West (China, Australia and the UK), I see news that both sides try to focus on extremely negative events of each other, which gives the illusion that the other side is having a worse life. I am not sure if it is deliberately designed propaganda or just the nature of journalism, anyway reality doesn’t feel that way to me. Honestly, it feels much better and safer.
On the other hand, thanks to the news, I realised how evil politicians are, no matter where they are from. People work hard and pay taxes, yet they embezzle public funds or start wars to make themselves rich. They even get under-aged children for their sex parties, and they say fancy, hypocritical words to cloud and deceive people, or justify their behaviours. They are the real public enemy right in front of our noses, not some other place halfway across the planet that you’ve never been to.
Now after seeing those, I have made my own propaganda to fight them, but also joined the propaganda-making group which I hate in the first place. I am a snake eating its own tail.
The dream I had to confront the upper class has awakened. Back to reality, it feels so nice, I can almost forget all the negative information that troubles me. I ask myself, is it really this good or do I just happen to live in one of the good places? Or the bad things happen all the time but just not to me.
How I initially designed the story
It all started with this image in my mind. I got inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut and news of Epstein that the rich have their sex parties.
I’m a huge fan of David Lynch, in his films, you can always see the character go into a room full of weird people. That’s how I imagined this scene.
Ordinary people characters’ looks would be too subtle for this topic, so I made them wear animal hoods like animals from Animal Farm by George Orwell. Also, people at Eyes Wide Shut sex party wear masks, it’s a homage to the film again. But the characters won’t show any facial expressions with the hoods on, thus, I designed the little agent on the cane who speaks on behalf of the rich pig. It’s real in a way that in the West at least, politicians are nothing more than a microphone of the rich people who call shots in the behind.
As for the donkeyman who grinds the mill, it’s very straightforward, he is the most of us besides the ruling class. He is clouded by all the lies and works really hard constantly to pay taxes.
In the news part, I chose some examples of war criminals and dictators. Just before I made this I saw Israel bombed Iran and Lebanon, and their leader appeared on the news to say they are the righteous ones, they are on the side of the people in those countries they just bombed. And he called his victims terrorists. I’ve never seen anyone so shameless that he can lie with no flush on his face. I was so angry that I made the cut.
In the second part where the donkey confronts the pig, I could’ve made him succeed, but it won’t be deep. Just like every once in a while, there’s a crazy person who assassinates some politician, no matter if it’s personal hatred or assigned, it won’t change the whole situation. Hitting one down is far from enough. More people should know how evil and unapproachable the ruling class is.
In the last part of the montage, I start with a clip of a sleeping cat, as if the whole news dilemma was a dream. When it’s awakened, the reality isn’t all bad. At least in the UK, it’s safe and beautiful, even though there is news of the riots in the summer. My point is, that the news concentrates all the bad things, but in reality, there are not as many bad things. We sometimes need to stay away from the screens and feel the good stuff in person. Otherwise, life would be unbearable to live.
Modelling and rigging
I bought assets of human rigs and animal meshes, then I adjust the animals’ heads and attached them on the human bodies. For the bodies that have rigs, all I need to do was bind the head skin to the skeleton and repaint the skin weights a little. For the meshes that don’t have a rig, I imported them in Mixamo, then duplicate the Mixamo skeleton to the mesh with advanced skeleton, it’s so much easier than binding from scratch.
Some of the meshes I got don’t have textures, I made them in substance painter.
Animation
It’s same old method to make character animation, I filmed reference videos first, then set keys based on that.
The donkey pulling mill scene was a Mixamo push animation. I parented the hands to the handle.
The rabbits and pig in the second scene were played on loop, since they were not the one talking.
I mirrored the little man talking part, to indicate east or west are the same in the end, politicians always say the exact same thing about each other.
The stair scene means the upper class is unreachable to ordinary people, though they have complaints, there’s not much they can really do.
Lighting and rendering
I used unreal to render, it’s way faster than maya.
I made a texture on post process volume, so there’s a black outline on the meshes, kind of look like comics.
I don’t have a complex or realistic background in this film, it’s basically a giant cylinder or cube with a cartoon texture. This simple background looks good already, and it doesn’t distract my audience. I was going to make the animation part black and white like film noir at first, but the red looked so good in unreal, so I kept it.
I always think of the effect that I want to achieve before I go in to the making process, then I follow tutorials online for it. In the end, the project is actually a collage of different tutorials.
Post production
There’s not much on this part, just a simple shockwave effect from AE in the cane hit floor scene. And a little colour grading when everything is done.
I drew that cat animation in PS, it was very simple and easy.
Music and sound are also simple in this project, I just chose a piece of metal that I always listen to, the lyrics match the story.
Film languages
There are some metaphors I need to explain.
The mill pulling donkeys turn in to gears mean the people work endlessly like machines. Or we could say ‘another brick in the wall’.
Pig with a crown is obviously the rich people with actual powers.
The little man is their agent and microphone.
The rabbits are girls in sex parties give them services.
The donkey astronaut means even when he got in to the space, his still under slavery and spinning with the earth like the mills.
Julian Assange in the end of the news, he is a true hero, it’s very convenient for him to say those words, even though it wasn’t the original meaning.
Sleeping cat means a transition from a dream of news to reality.
The trees and trains footage have the same function.
Sunset scenes are the beautiful stuff I want to remind people to pay attention to.
I got inspired by the film Tree of Life and the montage in the end of anime Eva.