One of the more ambitious projects that Film Australis has been working on in the last few years is a series of animated shorts based on the long running science fiction television show, Doctor Who.
A six episode first series had gone into production in 2010, with an intended release for the end of that year or early 2011, but various things have caused the production to be delayed. The series should now see it's first episode be released sometime in 2012, with the other episodes following shortly after.
The series will feature a future incarnation of the protagonist known as The Doctor, whom at first is still travelling alone. He takes on a new companion in the first episode reluctantly and from there, the series kicks into full gear.
2010
Production of the series began when I downloaded some mods for 'The Movies' such as a TARDIS prop and some other Doctor Who related items. I put these into a quick test video, threw some special effects in using Adobe After Effects and editing it together in Adobe Premiere Pro. The end result would eventually form the basis of the first series finale.
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| The console room for my adventure game. |
From there, writing began on the series in earnest. A concept I originally developed for a Doctor Who adventure game a number of years earlier (which ceased production after losing the original source code and many image files in a hard drive crash) soon became the basis for another episode, and then writing for the first episode to introduce my incarnation of the Doctor and a new companion began.
The Doctor was initially set to be a much older gentleman, akin to that of the William Hartnell First Doctor, but this was changed to a slightly younger Doctor, more along the lines of Tom Baker.
Originally, two companions were thought of, but this was cut back to one to deal with casting issues. I doubted that I would be able to get anyone to do voices for characters, let alone getting three separate leads.
Work on graphics and the title sequence came whilst writing, and the title sequence was finished shortly after:
The title sequence above lacks the final logo that was created, but does feature the name of the first episode of the series. It also features the theme music of the show, composed by Nick for the Whomix website back in 2005. This music was also the music that was intended to be used for my above mentioned adventure game.
After the first drafts of the first, second and sixth episode were written, the problems with 'The Movies' began. Work on shooting scenes for the episodes ceased from this point and focusing on writing became the priority.
2011
The first episode, currently titled 'Skinwalker' features the introduction of the new companion and will feature a werewolf as the title villian. The initial prologue sequence was put onto Youtube as a teaser on June 28th, 2011:
The sequence was rough, and was made so that I could see if my ideas could be done. The scene of the werewolf attacking was done completely with a green screen technique, before compositing with the plate background of the forest. This test proved that ideas that I had written down in the script could be put together using various means.
The lack of sound was also due to this being a rough test.
Nothing more of the series could be done during the year. The problem with 'The Movies' persisted, and responsibilities as a father stopped most of my creative work for 2011 from happening. A series of toy reviews and some design work took most of my spare time, as well as visitations to a chiropractor for a long term back problem that I have suffered with since the age of 17.
One thing that was good for the end of 2011 was the upgrading of my computer. A new graphics card that is twice as powerful as my previous card was bought and put into my rig, as well as upping the RAM from 2GB to 6GB. This allows my work to be much more smoother and it has definitely shown with various tests I have conducted.
2012
Moving on to 2012, and the main problem that caused production on the series to halt has been fixed. The series is now moving full speed, with the re-writing of the scripts to change some issues I had had with them, and changing some things to do with the build up to the finale.
Pacing is another issue with the series that was a major problem as I originally intended the series episodes to be split into a number of 10 minute parts due to time restrictions. However, during 2011, my Youtube account was given the ability to upload videos longer than 15 minutes so this issue is no longer a problem, and thus episodes will go for roughly half an hour.
Due to this extension, the series is going to be given much better characterization for it's leads and hopefully you will come to fully enjoy these characters as much as you would the official series.
The problems with 'The Movies' were finally resolved, as a crucial file was seemingly placed in the wrong folder and thus stopped most of the things I needed for shooting to be missing from the game. Since this was resolved, shooting has recommenced on secondary scenes not focusing on The Doctor, his companion or any other major characters. These include a major action scene for the introduction of the finale.
As of right now (13/01/2012), writing work on the first episode is about to be completed and casting voices for characters will then be undertaken. Once voicework is done, shooting the scenes for the episode will commence to take advantage of the lip syncing feature within 'The Movies'.
