Ok so I thought, before I started talking about the making of Baggage, I should really say a little about my background.
If you're short of time then as famously penned by Simon Pegg "skip to the end".
But if you'd like to know why and how I got to the point of wanting to make a short film, then please read ahead. I'd also like to apologies for any grammatical errors. I love stories but English has never been my strong point.
I've always loved making movies, well since about the age of seven when my parents bought a big old JVC camera. These were the days when you couldn't even put a tape in the camera, you had to plug the camera into your VHS/Betamax recorder. No batteries either, just a very long power cord.
But it wasn't long before I was making my own horror movies with my brother and sister and discovering how you could make someone disappear with the magic of pausing the video and removing the person before pressing record again. I kind of miss those days, making the most of the limited technology.
I knew from that moment on that I wanted to make movies. I went through school studying the usual stuff. The closest we had to movie making in school was Media Studies in the Sixth form, not exactly ideal. I also studied art and graphics at both school and College.
It was after leaving college that I decided I really wanted to go out on my own and set up a video production company. So I got in contact with a good friend and before too long we were running our own company.
Things were ok, we had a steady stream of weddings and the odd corporate video. We even got a contract with cable and wireless to produce a Local Channel.
Although I enjoyed the work for a while, I found myself longing to get back into story telling, and there's only so much of a story you can tell about someone getting married...well unless you start to dig up some dirt and I don't think they'd appreciate that on their wedding. And stories about the council digging up another road or new parking restrictions really didn't get me excited.
I decided that seeing as we had all this equipment it would be a good opportunity to shoot a short film. I'd always loved special effects and one thing I knew I wanted to do was a film that had some cool special effects in.
So I started to learn 3D. I discovered a package called Lightwave, it was version 5.5 for any 3D historians out there :)
I found it amazing that you could create images almost as good as things like Jurassic Park. I was hooked and spent weeks and weeks reading through the manuals over and over again to learn everything I could about the package.
Meanwhile the cable and wireless contract got canceled and we just didn't have enough money coming in. So we had to make a decision to close the company.
I was at a loss of what to do. I put my dreams of making a movie on hold and started to look for a job.
I knew a few friends that had got into the games industry and so decided to give that a go.
I phoned up an agency and before long they'd got me an interview at a company called Climax in Portsmouth(UK).
I'd created a few CG images of the last few months so had at least something to take with me to the interview. To my surprise I got the job. I started working at their new Brighton Studio, this was back in late 1999.
I stayed at Climax for five years working on a game called Motogp. I had a range of duties from creating the tracks to creating the bikes and buildings. It was a fun five years, something I believe was as close as going to college as you can get when working for a company.
After five years I decided to leave and stretch my legs a bit. I'd been in the games industry for quite some time now so decided to stick to it. I still had that burning desire to go and make movies but by this point I really didn't know how I'd get into them.
So the safest bet seemed to be to stick with what I knew. I got a job at EA making their new Battlefield 2 game. It was huge title and I didn't want to miss out.
I stayed at EA for 6 months. There was some great people there but I just didn't like the clinical feel to the game making process there. It just didn't feel fun, it felt more like you were a cog in a machine. Nothing like the fun days at Climax.
So I made the decision to leave and to go back to my old Job at Climax. Climax became Disney Black Rock studio in 2006 and all the games from that point on were to be published under the Disney interactive brand. After finishing our last Motogp game (Motogp 07) we started a new franchise called Split Second.
During this time I decided I really wanted to learn more about animation. Up in till that point the most I'd animated was some basic creatures and I always felt it limiting that I could create the models and texture them but then never make them come to life.
So I decided to do a course which is when I signed up for an online course called Animation Mentor. I graduated from Animation Mentor in July 2010. If anyone is thinking of doing a animation course then I highly recommend it. You can find out more about it here
AnimationMentor
After finishing Split Second in 2010 things went very quiet from Disney's end. We spent a whole year not knowing what we were doing next. There was a lot of prototyping going on, but never a concrete lead on a new title. Then in April 2011 Disney announced to us that they were getting rid of a large percentage of the staff. In May 2011they got rid of 100 staff (including me). Then in September they closed the studio completely.
Since then I've been working freelance on bits and pieces and a silly youtube channel which if you're interested you can view here
Bubblegummonsters
I'd decided when I left Black Rock that I should get back to where I wanted to go and that was into film. I decided that one of the best ways to start getting my foot in the door was to enter a film festival.
The one I'd seen pop up every year was the Virgin Media Shorts. I'd actually wanted to enter last year (2011) but was just far too busy trying to figure out what I was going to do when I left Black Rock.
So this year I was determined to enter. I was at first going to do a live action short. After all it's what I was used to doing.
But I decided that I should use the skills I'd learned at Animation Mentor and do an animation instead. Plus it meant I didn't have to rely on other people in any way. Didn't have to worry about locations either. The only problem being was that I had to create everything from scratch. So the following pages will be all about how I did this.
And so here I'll stop, I've waffled way too much. If you did take the time read through all of this I hope it was of some interest. If not, hopefully the making of Baggage will be.
Thanks for reading
Peter
