City Paradise

Title: City Paradise
Length: 3 mins (TV broadcast version) 6 mins (longer version)
Commissioned by: Channel 4 Television as part of the AIR (Animator in Residence) Scheme

Production Company: Passion Pictures
Director: Gaelle Denis
Sound Design: Fabrice Geradi
Mix: Andy Thompson
Music: Jocelyn Mienniel/Joanna Newsom/Daby Toure
Editor: Tony Fish
Producer: Erika Forzy
Production Assistant: Lottie Hope
Executive Producer: Andrew Ruhemann

Live Action Crew:
Director of Photography: Sarah Bartles Smith
Cast: Tomoko: Hiroe Takei
Next Door Neighbour: Robert Stevenson
Camera Assistant: Kash Halford
1st AD: Josh Wilkins, Esteban Gitton
Choreographer: Simon Phillips
Production Manager: Demi Jones
Sound Recordists: Dizzy Toba + Tom Williams
Gaffer/Sparks: Lee Wooster
Grip: Paul Worley
Art Director: Sarah Frere
Art Director’s Assistant: Andrew Alleyne
Wardrobe/Stylist: Becky Seager
Wardrobe/Sylist Assistant: Joe Bibby
Make-up Artist: Christophe Faraglia
Casting: Amanda Tabak

Animation: (Passion Pictures)
Lighting + Texturing: Antoine Moulineau
Models and Animation: Nicklas Andersson
Lighting Assistants: Nikos Gatos, Bruno
Matte Painting: David Lea
VFX Supervisors: Neil Riley, Chris Knott
Compositing: Niamh Lines, Ian Sargent, Johnny Still, Cassiano Prado, Ian Murphy, Paul Cheshire
Additional Editing: Tim Denin, Jamie Foord
CG Co-ordination: Emma Phillips
2D Animation: Louis Clichy
Software: Photoshop, AEFX, AfterEffects, LightWave

Post Production: (Rushes) Duncan Malcolm (HD Inferno)
Andy Hargreaves (3D rain & smoke)
Adrian Seery (Mastergrade)

Monday 31st January 2005

City Paradise is a short film, using a combination of live action and animation, directed by Gaelle Denis at Passion Pictures. City Paradise has just been nominated for a BAFTA award for Short Animation (2005). Gaelle Denis was the winner of a BAFTA for best animation in 2003 for her graduation film Fish Never Sleep. Her new film, City Paradise was commissioned by Channel 4 television as part of the Artist in Residence (AIR) Scheme and was first broadcast in November 2004. The music which was specially commissioned for the film was composed by Jocelyn Mienniel and also features a song from Joanna Newsom’s last album.

A young Japanese woman, Tomoko, arrives in London. London is a big city and can seem overwhelming and frightening to people who aren’t familiar with it. Tomoko’s learning English, but she’s a beginner, so when she asks questions, she can’t understand the answers people give her. During a visit to a swimming pool Tomoko has an accident and slips. She sinks down into the water and, as she descends, she enters a strange secret world, hidden beneath the city. Now everything changes for Tomoko.
Director Gaelle Denis says, “I have travelled a lot, but in Japan I found myself feeling like a real foreigner. As the story of City Paradise is about a foreigner arriving in a big city and trying to understand the language, I thought that having a Japanese character would be appropriate.” Denis wanted to use live action as well as animation and she approached Passion Pictures to produce the film because of the company’s experience in this area. Denis says, “Tomoko the leading character needs to be emotional, silly and lonely sometimes and those emotions had to be expressed subtly. I did some tests with animation, but in the end I decided that only an actress who had the experience of arriving in a big city like London could get it right.”

Technical Info
Director of Visual Effects Chris Knott says about the technical aspects of the making the film: “The crew used Adobe Photoshop extensively for preparing image maps from generated images, 2D artwork and for composing montages from photographic stills, some archive material, and some shot specially for the project. We also used Adobe Photoshop to compose matte paintings of large vistas that would have been very time consuming to build in 3D, examples being the opening and closing panoramas of London. 3D elements were built, animated and rendered in LightWave, but most usually rendered as elements to be composited in AEFX, as this gave Gaelle the greatest creative input for the look of the final frame. AfterEffects was used for all the compositing in the film and the “Keylight” plug-in was used to key the live action blue screen material. AEFX coped with everything the team threw at it, pulling in 2D artwork, 3D elements and live action footage, enabling Gaelle to develop and refine the look of the film during production so as to realise her initial concept of using Adobe Photoshop artwork as a moving image.”

When Passion Pictures' director Gaëlle Denis approached Rushes with her short film, ‘City Paradise’, the project had already been crafted to a fantastically high level as the Passion team of animators and compositors had been working on the film for some time. Rushes VFX Artist Duncan Malcolm and Gaëlle then set about recomping some scenes, adding extra focal and atmospheric depth to others. The film was worked on in its original resolution, keeping it within an HD canvas to reduce archive time and help with the approval copy playouts. Extra rain, smoke and atmospheric elements were created by Rushes 3D Animator Andy Hargreaves, while the final film was mastergraded by Rushes Director of Telecine, Adrian Seery. The credits were handwritten by Gaëlle, using Duncan’s Inferno tablet, enabling her to write them all on screen herself. This added to the hand crafted charm of this elegant, stylish, quirky piece.

Director Gaëlle Denis has previously won a BAFTA (Best Short Animation 2002) for an animation entitled: Fish Never Sleep and adds, “It had been an exceptional experience to work with Rushes on City Paradise. Duncan has great and sensitive eyes to understand the mood of the film and to find the right colours, textures, light and effects. He is very fast and did not hesitate to work hard to achieve what the director wanted.”

Biography
Gaelle Denis was born in France and studied animation, graphic design and video at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris from 1996 - 2000. In 2001 she took part in an exchange scheme with the Kyoto University of the Arts in Japan - an experience that was to prove influential in her work. Denis completed a MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art in London in 2002. Her graduation film, Fish Never Sleep which was set in Japan, won a BAFTA for Best Animation in 2003 and the film went on to win many other awards at film festivals world wide. Her new film City Paradise continues the Japanese theme, this time with a Japanese visitor’s impressions of London. Gaelle Denis lives in London and is represented for commercials and music videos by Passion Pictures.