Stop motion innovation

MARY AND MAX: Image acquisition and Post-Production.

Mary and Max, directed by Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs is due for release in 2009. While the follow up to the Academy Award winner Harvie Krumpet is much anticipated, there is another story behind the scenes that marks this film as a truly innovative and anticipated Australian production. 

Mary and Max combines an innovative and integrated digital workflow all the way from the animatic/digital storyboard to delivery. The digital world meets the oldest film form to create a work flow that empowers the creative vision of the project.

Melodrama Pictures’ Post Production Producer, Henry Karjalainen and his team, in collaboration with Melbourne-based partner companies Stop Motion Pro (SMP) and XDT, have built world-class custom software and digital technologies to produce this claymation feature at a budget level and speed, far eclipsing conventional film animation methods.

Ross Garner and Paul Howell, Co-Directors of Stop Motion Pro, develop software to enable the sophisticated photographic capture of stop motion animation. Using Stop Motion Pro our animators are able to play back captured frames whilst displaying and then capturing a ‘live’ frame from a camera. We use Stop Motion Pro HD Studio and the latest generation Canon Digital SLR still image cameras, incorporating Canon’s new Live-View feature, to capture stunning RAW images in at 4K motion-picture resolutions and beyond. RAW images are simply the unprocessed data captured onto a camera’s image sensor.

Once acquired, the RAW images are processed by XDT’s custom software solution rawMotion. Our partners, Erik Otto, Managing Director and Gavin Stewart, Head of Research and Development, at XDT develop custom applications relevant to the Film, Television and Visual Effects industries. XDT rawMotion is a unique and powerful set of tools to render a variety of high-resolution post-production ready digital files from a RAW source. This process occurs at speed and delivers image files in minutes, where previously it took days if acquired on film negative. Existing film techniques, however, are applied at the processing stage to deliver masters at maximum quality and here we will work with our traditional Post Production partners Digital Pictures.

Navigating the vast volume of image data and metadata is kept simple using the M&M Post Production Content Management System (CMS) developed by our Post Producer, Henry Karjalainen. Specifically written for Mary and Max, the Post CMS manages all subsequent review, editing, digital effects, archival and delivery stages. The Post CMS automates and simplifies many tasks related to data and image management, messaging, reporting, and interoperability.

Melodrama Pictures will master and deliver MARY AND MAX to conventional 35mm motion-picture film as well as high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) video formats. Over the course of shooting the film, more than 250,000 frames will be captured and 125,000 used in the final 90-minute feature film.
About MARY AND MAX

MARY AND MAX is a claymation feature film from the creators of the Academy Award ® winning short animation “Harvie Krumpet”.

It is a simple tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the chaos of New York.

Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max’s friendship survives much more than the average diet of life’s ups and downs. Like Harvie Krumpet, “Mary and Max” is innocent but not naive, as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, trust, copulating dogs, religious difference, agoraphobia and much much more.

About Adam Elliot

Writer/Director Adam Elliot’s previous short films, Harvie Krumpet, Uncle, Cousin and Brother are amongst the most successful short films made in Australia.  They have won 5 Australian Film Institute awards, as well as many international awards including the Oscar.  The shorts continue to screen at festivals around the world, on the internet at http://www.atomfilms.com and on various DVD compilations, where they continue to entertain and move audiences. www.adamelliot.com.au

About Melodrama Pictures

Melodrama Pictures is an independent film and television production company based in Melbourne, Australia, creating distinctive feature films, drama, documentary and animation. Melodrama Pictures’ founder and principal Melanie Coombs has produced award winning shorts and documentaries.

The latest project is “The Funk” (2008) which screens on the Opening Night of the St Kilda Film Festival. 

Melanie is currently producing “Mary & Max”, a feature animation written and directed by Adam Elliot, and is developing other Melodrama Pictures with Adam, and other writers, directors and producers, including Cris Jones, Stella Kinsella, Kim L Wilson, Trudy Hellier, Leanne Smith, Kate Hampel, and Ruby Hamad.

For more information on “Mary and Max” or Melodrama Pictures Pty Ltd contact Melanie Coombs on