Influences

When I came up for the concept of this film I really tried to avoid any kind of influence. My aim was to come up with something completely original (even though that’s impossible) in terms of design but now that the storyboard and animatic are in process the influences have begun to show.

My influences for my film appear to be centred on anything epic. Through the whole process of developing the concept of the story, the presence of flight has remained constant. I really enjoy flight, whether it is flying machines or flying superheroes, spaceships or rockets- anything that flies in the sky or in space is awesome.

I can really appreciate flight in ‘anime’. Gundam, Macross and Eureka 7 are some good examples of anime that I have seen recently that make good use of flight with machinery or mecha. Some critics don’t rate Japanese anime highly, but I find that the cinematography used with flight in anime is epic and I’m pretty sure this has formed a lot of my motivation for pursuing a flight orientated third year film. On a side note I want to make clear that although I appreciate anime’s visual aesthetic, I have no intention of replicating it, only the shot and direction.

On top of that is the flight of able bodies like Kung-Fu heroes and Marvel superheroes. Wire-action in Kung-fu movies for me is epic. It might be an exaggeration of a martial arts form but the form and posture held by these heroes as they defy-gravity begs to be marvelled at, at least to me anyway. I know that it’s mainly for this reason that my main character does not fly in a plane or a spaceship. I want to show off the human body in the same way that Kung-Fu superheroes do.

The other thing I wanted to utilize in this animation was speed. The film will be epic if it’s happening at speed. My favourite thing in a film is a chase sequence and the faster they are, the more exciting they are. I like the car chase in Ronin, but as a combination of cool machinery, flight and ridiculous speeds- it’s all about Pod Racing.




There is a chase in my story and I think that this is the best way of making full use of speed as a tool for generating excitement and making the overall film epic. So that’s my influences and intentions simplified. Generally if it can be described with the words ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ and is remotely sci-fi, then it’s in there somewhere.