Aug 6, 2013

Nathan Moura's "Sun of a Beach

The Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival is made possible by sponsor JibJab and their strong support for up-and-coming filmmakers.

"Sun of Beach" by Nathan Moura is the shortest film to debut at Cartoon Brew's 2013 Student Animation Festival. Moura created the film as his graduation project at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada.

Each year we receive many student films of two minutes or less, but few microshorts have the storytelling and filmmaking discipline of Moura's film. Director Moura understands and capitalizes on the value of every frame, not just every second. He has used his valuable performance time to create a highly accomplished film with characters that have arcs and a story that has origins and ends. Moura conveys his ideas with a fun and bold visual style that seamlessly combines computer animation and hand-drawn techniques.

Here is what the director had to say:

During production, I began to think of the film as a kind of homage to my own childhood. Having moved to Canada from Brazil as a child, the beach was always a magical place for me. Over the years, playing with my two young brothers brought me back to my own childhood and shifted my focus to more playful and whimsical stories. Like most of my ideas, this story came to me while doodling at three in the morning. The final story came together when I was living in Los Angeles the following summer, observing people on the beach.

My work was a hybrid of 2D and 3D, created in Flash and Maya and composited in After Effects. I wanted to experiment with a more graphic 3D aesthetic. I felt that a flatter environment would make the story more playful by bringing the sun closer to the people on the beach. This was accomplished by using a mostly orthographic perspective in Maya and eliminating all 3D lighting. Lighting effects were done in After Effects to keep the flatness I was going for. I also animated the small characters in Flash to allow for easier control of the design. The entire film was put together as one After Effects file with over 300 layers. I don't know how the program didn't crash.

The most important thing I learned is how to edit a story down to just what I needed. I don't think this is necessary for every story, but it is a worthwhile exercise. The best structured stories I've seen are commercials. When I completed my first animation in three minutes, it became clear that my idea only needed a minute and I had to justify every second. I think it's important not only to ask yourself how long your story needs to be to be effective, but also to consider how much of someone's time your idea is worth.

Early in the story development process, I rewatched the movie "Before Sunrise" and was reminded of how effectively a sustained shot can draw the audience into the story. Many people recommended this limitation, and I thought it would add a sense of realism to my film and help maintain a flat aesthetic. I truly believe that choosing limitations is the most freeing thing you can do creatively, and in this case I couldn't have been more helpful. Later, I decided to add one cut to emphasize a turning point in the story.

I enjoy animating first and foremost, but in the early stages of my career I feel there is still a lot of work to be done. I was originally drawn to animation by filmmaking, but I see a lot of potential in new and different forms of storytelling. These days I'm mainly interested in the interactive possibilities of storytelling in games and apps. Working at JibJab for the past few months has brought me closer to the programmers for the first time and has made me think about the story from a different perspective. Being able to experiment and problem solve is exciting to me and I hope to always have that flexibility. [Editor's note: When Moura's film was selected for the festival, I was unaware that he had recently been hired by the festival sponsor, JibJab.]

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