Miniature warfare #2 The Sands of Hell

[Matthew Quinnell]

Here is my second stop motion short film

Miniature Warfare #2 - The Sands of Hell - YouTube

Would be great to hear people's thoughts, I spent a lot of time on the miniatures but regret that I ran out of time when it came to writing the story/dialogue and filming the actors.

[Roger Gunkel]

I thought it was great fun to watch and I can appreciate the time and care you have put into the animations. The explosion and firing effects are mostly very effective and the scenery works well.

Once you cross over into actors and dialogue/story, you are venturing into a totally different field. You need to put as much attention into the costume and props detail as you do into the models or it becomes unconvincing. The uniforms looked like casual shirts rather than military, and the shoes are definitely not desert ware. Weaponry needs to be convincing and pot shot .22 rifles and what looks like an out of Vietnam AK47 model gun is not going to convince. There are really good plastic replicas available for low prices for this sort of filming.

They are not intended to be harsh criticisms, as costuming and casting can be very expensive, but just take them as observations. The other thing with actors is that characterization is vital, words are not enough, characters need to have personalities and depth. Not easy in a short, but achievable and always an interesting challenge.

I admire you taking on the production and moving into real actors and will enjoy seeing more of your work. Out of interest, there was a very successful animator in the 70s/80s, Gerry Anderson who produced thunderbirds and other successful action puppet and animation shows. He also introduced actors into his work with the SPACE 1999 series, which might be worth looking at for some ideas. His productions were pre CGI and relied heavily on miniaturization.

Roger

[Matthew Quinnell]

Thanks for watching.

Yeh would like the costumes and props to be better but am still just working on a $0 budget, im still sort of in the experimental phase with these videos, figuring out what i can do and what my limits are.

my only real regret is that i should of spent much more time on the characters and story, we only had one afternoon to film it all and although i had the basic story of some soldiers attacking a town and cutting the wires in my head i kept putting off actually writing any of it down until right before we started filming, so i kind of ran out of time to add any detail and colour to it, but thats my fault.

But yeh all up im still really happy with how most of it looks.

Im already making buildings for the next one set in russia. not sure if it will be a proper short film with characters yet or just a simple action sequence. and a mate of mine has had an idea for a WW1 short with the tanks of that period.

[Chris Hurd]

One minor nit-pick, perhaps easily fixable: your opening quote is attributable to T.E. Lawrence (not T.S.). I know this only because I just recently finished reading his magnum opus, "Seven Pillars Of Wisdom" -- the unabridged 1922 version, that is!