for the love of making movies, and not just our own
Services
We can provide the following services: idea- and story development, storyboarding and animatics, production and character design, animation, various techniques camerawork, editing, music score, direction, production. Apart from developing our own projects we assist others to realise theirs.
Idea- and story development
From idea to inspiring brainstorm session to a workable treatment to a well structured screenplay.
Beatboards show an inspirational glimpse of the movie, storyboards supply a clear step by step plan for each shot, the animatic actually plays the story for you.
More often than not Erik's finished films closely resemble their initial storyboards, which means the boards are pretty much wizzywig blueprints. An animatic ia a rough sketch of a movie. It plays as smooth as a movie, complete with well acted voices, sound effects and temp music; an entertaining glimpse of what the might be. Creating animatics is a fast process to discover which scenes actually work and which ones need more work.
The right colors and shapes to put an engaging protagonist into an epic scene.
A character should fit the project. A face should fit it's dialogue, as well as the world it lives in. In turn, the world should fit the characters and the style of framing, editing, and coloring should fit the story. The tiniest prop should be in the right place, at the right time. Period. A lot of thought goes into a coherent production design. Everyone should work together in order to get everything to work together.
Various techniques: hand drawn, puppets, computer generated or yet to be contrived. That’s the joy of animation!
Animation is not a genre, for any genre movie can be done in animation. Animation is a bunch of different techniques to create moving images, other than live action shot by a camera. We can animate drawings, clay, 3D computer images, tableware, human beings, sand, puppets, food... ehr... anything really.
Well executed animation relies on good animators, creating the right movements to move the audience. One has to be an artist as well as a technician. Erik is a hands on filmmaker, often animating himself. On larger projects collaborations were established with companies like Pedri Animations, Frame Order, Beast Animation, RockNRoll Animation and Sergio Lara Jimenez.
Animation: Erik van Schaaik
Editing and compositing
Sculpting the raw footage, shaping it into that hurtling train you don’t want to get off of.
Erik on editing: The audience never gets to see the tricks done in editing, simply because it doesn't know the quality of the raw material. In other words: hopeless material can be cut into something watchable or good, great material can be cut into shit. Speaking of shit, a colleague of mine once said that I can turn a turd into something beautiful, of which I'm very proud.
Erik enjoys the process of combining different layers of video, adding effects, tweaking light, color and focus. It's like sculpting with scraps of video.
Music score
Tunes, moods, soudscapes that fit the edit, complementing the story. Don’t say it, play it.
When Erik grows up he wants to be a popstar. Colonel Chopka!
Direction
Delivering the perfect pitch, pushing forward, inspiring the team with a clear artistic vision, getting the best out of everyone.
Production
Basically? Making sure stuff gets made.
Communicating the grandness of a project, creatively drilling for cash flow, scouting, planning, negotiating and marketing the hell out of a good idea.