It’s already been nominated for a number of Oscars, including Best Film and a Best Actor nod for James Franco. And rightly so, I say! I wouldn’t give it Best Film because Inception deserves that one, but James Franco’s performance as Ralston was absolutely stellar. Even if Colin Firth is definitely going to win, without a shadow of a doubt (I have yet to see The King’s Speech).

And whilst we’re on the subject, why the hell has Christopher Nolan not got a Best Director nomination for Inception? Grrr!

Sorry, I’m getting off track. I’m a big, big fan of Danny Boyle; no two films of his are ever alike, but they’re always excellent. The editing is brilliant and at around 90 minutes long, 127 Hours rollicks along at a nice, snappy pace. I can’t stress how good James Franco’s performance is though. It has to be though because he basically is the film. You may therefore conclude that this film is brilliant.

Oh and that scene? I nearly gnawed through my finger watching it.

That’s right, I’m in Florence visiting Marie at the moment. It’s amazing what limited access to the internet will do for your productivity! Take a look:

I’ve been concentrating almost solely on the guy as he was the least complete up until now. I’m liking the reveal and the drop down with the car bonnet. I’m still not sure how well it’s reading when he comes out from behind it though. My idea for the scene was always that the mechanic/situation was so ridiculous that it distracted him from worrying about the werewolf (particularly because the mechanic is so unfazed by the event), but it’s difficult to convey that!

I’ve still got quite a lot of work to do before Sunday. The entire last shot and the mechanic in the first two and possibly an attempt at blocking out the faces… Oh dear.

Take a look:

I’ve not looked at the guy at all yet, only the girl and the mechanic. I started with the girl as she’s only in the first 2 seconds and I’m already pretty happy with her movement. Unfortunately she doesn’t get quite as much time on-screen as I’d like, but that can’t be helped right now.

I haven’t really done anything with the mechanic in shot 1 or 2 yet. I need to come to a decision about a few key acting choices before I get too heavily into those scenes. Chris had some great suggestions that I want to run past Mario in the Q&A today. The main stuff I looked at was the pointing and I think I’ve got some pretty good physicality there.

Need to do a bit more work before my Q&A later today, but looking forward to it! Any comments, questions or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

The second clip shows the new version (left hand) against the version I handed in on Sunday (right hand) – I know it’s hard to see a difference (especially when Flickr won’t let you can’t frame-by-frame it), but trust me, they’re pretty different!

I showed this to Mario in our class Q&A yesterday afternoon and it seems like I am going in the right direction with the cartooniness of the face. Mario seemed happy with what I’ve done and told me to push it even further (which I have actually done already – I playblasted this late last night), so that’s good!

We’re meant to be finishing this shot by Sunday and as I said previously I’m actually away this weekend, so I don’t have much time left. The things I still need to do are:

• Animate the tongue
• Check the jaw/lip bounces on the “can’t a girl” phrase
• Clean up the facial anim curves and add some subtle lip overlap
• Adjust the hips and line of action for the end pose
• Clean up the head movement at the end
• Ensure the head movement propagates down the body
• Any final tweaks

Not much to do then! 8)

Let me know if you have anything to add to the list!