Watchcat Story Development

Our Watchcat review of Black Panther had over 1280 views and still continues to get more views. This tell us that there are a lot of people who also liked this movie and hopefully will discover our blog. We also got several ad clicks helping us get closer to our $30 goal.

This week, I picked up an animation desk, carried it down a flight of stairs and then drove it back to Burbank. It had belonged to an animation studio called Duck, a studio where I animated this hot dog running from this College girl.Today, I'm the proud owner of a Duck desk. All I need now is a smaller chair to go with it. 







Tune into our LIVE Watchcat Wednesday Blogcast this Wednesday, April 18th @ 7:30pm PDT! on our Watchcat Films Youtube channel. Stop by and see! 

Watchcat LIVE Blogcast!
WatchcatWednesday 4/16/18@7:30pm
https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchCatFilms9/live 

We are still in the process of story development and have discovered that Watchcat is also too perfect and sure of himself in our first episode. Sometimes we think too much about what Watchcat can do, rather than why is he doing it. Nobody likes a "Know it all", because this character can never fail, he's always right and thus will never learn anything new. He needs a little more character development so the audience wants to see what he's going to do next.

Currently I'm teaching a class about Story, Storyboarding and Animation Principles. In doing so, I am rediscovering the importance of telling a story through the character's eyes and not just hitting different plot points. Asking more questions about " Why and How" would Watchcat feel about doing this or that. Its easy to come up with a story driven by plot, but you need to let the audience know what the character thinks about what's happening to him.

We are introducing the idea that Watchcat has 9 lives and has flashbacks from those previous lives whenever something bad is about to happen. We also want to show the flashbacks in a different style, maybe even in stop motion, to keep things interesting.

Here's a flashback sequence we are currently working. Let us know what you think of it in the comment section below.

EXT.   WWll German cargo plane  Night

The plane maneuvers between explosions in the sky as missiles continue to fire upon the plane from the ground. We see another type of commotion happening inside the plane.

INT.  German cargo plane Continued
Three German soldiers huddled around a bunch of crates (containing German weapons). Several rows of parachute packs hanging from the curved wall of the plane wall. We see one of the German soldier pull out something from his jacket pocket.

We cut to a close up of a roll of microfilm as he hands it to his German officer. Close up of the German officer smiling as he stares at the microfilm.

German Officer:

                                   (German accent)

                   With these American plans, we will 
                   turn the war in our favor.

Cut to, a low angle shot, as we look up at the German officer holding the microfilm, behind him from the darkness of the roof of the plane, we see a set of white eyes open up from the darkness and a wicked smile, as if the shadow is coming to life.

OTS of the German officer

A black shape lands onto the German officer's back. He opens his arms wide and yells in pain, dropping of the microfilm.

Close up of the other two German soldiers looking up in surprise.

German officer knocks forward and crashes onto the other soldiers. They all fall to the metal floor.
CUT to close up of the microfilm landing into a small black cat's paw.

The German soldiers look up from the floor of the plane. On top of the crate, a Black and White Cat is holding the microfilm.
                                                                

                                 German Officer:
                                     Watchcat!!

                                     Watchcat:

               Don't you know you should never take

               what doesn't belong to you.

                                  German Officer:
                                     (To his men)

               Get that Cat and get the microfilm!

Watchcat flips over the two men trying to rush him. He kicks the German Officer in the the chest, knocking him back down to the floor.  Cat flips back and lands on one of the Germans Soldier's face as he starts to scratch it up.

                                    Watchcat:
                                      Yeowl !!!

                             German Soldier 1:

                            Get it off! Get it off!!

The other Soldier (soldier 2) swings the butt of his rifle into Watchcat, but Watchcat flips off soldier 1. The butt of the gun hits soldier 1 in the face, knocking him back into more crates.

As the soldier 2 looks up, we see Watchcat sitting on top of another crate, licking one paw and holding the microfilm in the other.

                                   Watchcat:
                                   (Smiling)
                          You guys never learn.

The angry Soldier pulls out his gun.

                               German officer:
                         NO!! You idiot, not in the.

The German officer tries to grab the arm of the soldiers gun, but it goes off! BAM!!
Watchcat dodges the bullet. The bullet hits the pilot, who slumps forward onto the steering wheel. 

The plane turns downward. Everybody starts to fall forward.
Watchcat drops the microfilm as he rolls forward along with the Soldiers.

Ext.  German cargo plane - Night

The plane is speeding downwards as clouds wisp by.

Int.  German cargo plane - Night

Everybody is bunched up together trying to get up.
Close-up of the German Officer as the microfilm rolls right in front of his nose. He grabs the film, gets up and grabs a parachute. He turns and struggles to open the door of the plane.

The door slides open, wind blows everything in the plane.

Close up on Watchcat, as he sees the German Officer wearing a parachute smiling back at him. He salutes holding the Microfilm in his hand.

                                  German Officer:
                                     (In German)

                                       You lose!

German Officer jumps out of the plane.

Watchcat runs to the door looking down.

Ext.  Man falling in the sky - Night

The German Officer's parachute opens, floating him to earth. Close-up on the German Officer looking back at the falling plane.

Extreme Close-up of the German Officer's face changing from victory to sudden shock. POV Watchcat flying towards camera.

Everything goes dark. 


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Watchcat Review: Batman, Gotham by GasLight

An Evening at Gotham By Gaslight!

By Gregory Bradley

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the premiere of Batman: Gotham By Gaslight by my good friend, Michael Hatch. The film is based off the first D.C. Elseworld comic by the same name from 1989 by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola with inks by P.Craig Russell. "Elseworld" is a term used in comics for the regular superheroes storylines as "What if Batman met Jack the Ripper" as an alternative storyline. It allows writers to come up with a different, sometimes outrageous stories that's not considered canon for their main heroes.

Interestingly enough the word "Elseworld" hadn't been invented when "Gotham By Gaslight" was published in 1989. The comic was actually called "Tales Of The Batman."
 
Two of my favorite characters in comic books & literature are Batman and Sherlock Holmes, I've always been fascinated with Victorian England, especially with the case of Jack the Ripper. This animated film has Batman hunting down Jack the Ripper in Victorian Gotham in the 19 century. Great concept!

The comic book was very successful and now they just made an animated movie based on it. I will talk about the movie itself later, but first, the premiere night.

It was a nice small gathering of Batman fans at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills. And on the screen, you can see the title of the film. It look very cool. After watching the film, they brought out the cast to talk about the making of the animated film.

The movie stars Bruce Greenwood as Batman and Jennifer Carpenter as Selina Kyle.  The movie was directed by Warner Bros Animation's very own Sam Lu.

One of the breakouts of the film for me was Jennifer Carpenter as Selina Kyle.  I was familiar with her work on "Dexter" as Debra, Dexter's sister, but I never would've known she was the voice of Selina. Awesome job! I liked hearing her talk about what it felt like to get the role. 

As for Batman, it was good to hear Bruce Greenwood voice the main character again. I thought he was excellent in "Under The Red Hood!" He was very funny when he told us that as a kid he couldn't watch the 1960s Batman show because his parents thought it was too violent. Can you imagine that. 

I thought it was also interesting hearing him talk about playing Batman for the first time in "Batman: Under The Red Hood." 

I also enjoyed learning what it's like for a voice actor to do a performance to still images that haven't been animated yet.

And finally, we got a chance to hear from director Sam Lu talking about the difference between doing a live action film and an animation one. 

All in all, it was a really good night. And I was glad to have been able to see my first Batman animated movie on the big screen.

I thought the film was OK. It was entertaining, but I felt like there were too many missed opportunities and I was disappointed in some of the choices that the filmmakers made.

As I mentioned before, I'm a big Batman fan. As a matter fact, Watchcat is a big inspiration from Batman.  And I've always been fascinated with the Victorian era, particularly, the Jack the Ripper murders. So when I heard that they were going to combine both mythologies into one film, I couldn't wait to see it.

I was really hoping to get an all out rated R horror- thriller-detective story, I only got half of that. In my opinion, I felt that the movie focused more on the action set pieces and hand to hand combat, but less on the detective side of it. One of my biggest problems with a lot of Batman movies, live action and some of the animated ones, is the fact that he supposedly the world's greatest detective, but hardly ever detects outside of the comics.

I really felt that the "Batman animated series" did it the best. Particularly "Mask of the Phantasm " and strangely enough, the 60's "Batman"TV show did a lot of that as well. Batman is supposedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. He's supposed to be as smart as Holmes, so putting Batman in the Victoria era where Holmes was created, it felt like a slam-dunk. But outside of "one meet cute scene" with Selina Kyle, he really doesn't detect that much until near the third act which was so obvious, that anyone could have figured it out and it felt a bit of a cheat when you found out the Ripper's identity. 

I thought the movie should've been longer, with a little bit more red herrings and clues, so that the audience could piece together the mystery of who the Ripper is, just like Batman. They also could have added more Batman characters into the mix and used more of the Jack the Ripper lore.

I found the animation wasn't that impressive and needed to be more stylized. Both Batman and the Ripper should've been in the shadows for most of the movie. Both characters work best in the shadows that would have given the film a more gothic atmosphere. However, both characters fight each other thru out the film in light works against the tension and suspence it started with. Overall, this should have been as much a Jack the Ripper story as a Batman one.

(Three hours later)

OMG! I just read the comic! It's brilliant. What a great story. They should've just stuck to the comic. It gave me everything I was asking for that the film didn't. I got a chance to see Batman or should I say, Bruce Wayne as a detective. The comic really does focus on the Jack the Ripper lore that I was asking for.

I thought that the comic gave you better "Easter eggs" then the film. It was very inventive the way they used the newspapers of that time to depict both Batman and the Ripper as well as implying that the Batman might be the Ripper.

If I have one criticism about the comic, it's the same criticism that I have about the film. It should've been longer and just like what I said about the film, you needed more red herrings as well as more suspects.

I knew who the Ripper was by page 2 of the comics. But, it was such a tight and interesting read that I didn't mind it and this particular story really tied in nicely into Batman's Origin.

I would advise anyone who's interested in Batman or Elseworld stories to find and read the comic version first.

I have to admit, after reading the comic, it made me more disappointed with the film. I truly feel they sacrificed a really good solid Gothic horror story for an lame action adventure film. Most people are not interested in period storylines, but a good story is a good story. You have to give it a chance.

So that's my two cents. I enjoyed my time at the Batman premiere, but I prefer the comic than the film.

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