Anifex

Author: Michael Cusack:

Congratulations to Richard Chataway ACS who last night became a Life Member of the Australian Cinematographers Society. Wonderful recognition for all of his outstanding achievements in the film industry. Thoroughly deserved!
On a more personal note, Richard and I have been business partners for around five decades (doesn't sound as bad as fifty years!) and in that time he has produced all of our short films and has been the cinematographer on the majority of them.
His is a remarkable talent and this recognition is so well earned. Richard is currently shooting our latest stop motion short film "Charlie" and is bringing a wealth of experience and knowledge to that project.
Congratulations to him again.

Author: Michael Cusack
Well, after a couple of frustrating weeks, I have finally managed to get back to shooting our latest film “Charlie.”
We had some issues with the Mo-Co rig which wasn’t behaving itself, but now appears to be fixed, but it took a while. It came at a particularly difficult time as I am in the emotional heart of the film and these delays have been quite disruptive mentally. I’ve had to work at not letting these issues affect the animated performance. Like any actor, you have to try to shut out any and all distractions that get in the way of your thought process.
I need to place myself into the passion of the scene and when that method is disrupted it can be hard to get back. It is no different to an actor on the stage if they are suddenly taken out of the moment. It takes effort to get back to the right head space.
My usual modus operandi is to play some music on set which is appropriate to the mood I want to create. Immersing myself in that usually does the trick. I started the new shot a couple of days ago and I’m pleased with the result.
Hopefully, from here, I can just keep going providing the Mo-Co rig behaves itself!

Photos:
The Mo-Co rig, now up and running again!
My logging… the high pile is what I have shot so far. The lower pile is the animation that I have yet to do. Each page represents four seconds of action.

Author: Michael Cusack.

I found this picture a day or so ago.
This young guy sculpting a creature in modelling clay couldn’t ever imagine that this would be the start of a career that has spanned over fifty years (YES! FIFTY!) and is still going. If I only knew then what I know now. But then again, the uncertainty, the self-doubt was part of the journey, part of the adventure. If I HAD known, then no doubt things would have played out differently anyway.

This was a photo from the days when Richard Chataway ACS and I were working on our first “proper” film together (The Disc of Magala) while we were still training to be teachers… a career we never pursued because the lure of filmmaking was too seductive.

By contrast is a photo of me working on the last completed film, The Better Angels. The curly hair has gone and there are significantly more wrinkles, but the passion remains the same.
Many decades later from the first photo, we are working on our next film (Charlie) and it is highlighting just how wonderful and frustrating this animation business can be.

We are now down to the last few shots… it will still be a while before we are finished because each shot is quite long and I am now getting to the emotional core of the piece, so the acting from the puppet is critical, and that takes more time.

Richard and I decided that we should put a camera move into the next shot to highlight the drama, but unfortunately, our motion-control rig decided to misbehave and three of the movement axes failed on us as we were planning the shot.

As luck would have it, we were able to ask Leith Greig, who is our go to person for this kind of thing, to fix it. He was able to do that, but not before we had to wait to get the parts from overseas. The repairs were done, but because the next shot is so long and complicated, we need to test the rig before we start in order to ascertain that it’s all behaving itself.
We were all set to do that, when I came down with a sore throat and a fever. It was just a cold, but it set the test back by a couple of weeks. So, hopefully we are good to go on the test next week and then on to the shot itself. Like I said, frustrating but I wouldn’t want it any other way.