Filming and Updates

I kind of forgot to post this! In my mind Addams Family was done and I forgot about the blog! So, on Sunday 10/10/10 I filmed the video. It was pretty basic, just moved the characters, took a picture, moved the characters, took a picture. Nothing really drastic happened, luckily. I used the 4 sets, but because it is such a short video, they were on and off quick! The video turned out very good and had the right look. Then I saved it and imported it to iMovie and enhanced the color and turned the first half black and white. So, I hope you all enjoyed it! Here is the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzyGG2iOVQ

Here is some updates and news:

I have decided to do a Thanksgiving video in November. It was a last minute decision, which is VERY unlike me because I have my videos planned over a year ahead of time. The video will be "I Will Survive" and it will be out November 10th.

Next up is that I have recently announced the 2011 Setlist:

UPDATE APRIL 2011

Surprise Video- May
Disney Celebration
Summer Movie- Winner Announced on Nov. 1st
Muppet Medley
When Your An Addams Medley
Frosty the Snowman- 20 minute special
Christmas Video- TBA


It says that the Summer Movie will be announced November 1st, but I will just announce it right now on my blog. My Summer 2011 Movie is (drumroll please)..


The Hunchback of Notre Dame!


Thanks to all who voted!


UPDATE: The Little Mermaid is the new movie. 


And here is the Christmas 2010 setlist:


We're A Couple of Misfits
Blue Christmas
No More Toymakers to the King
You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch
Santa Claus is Coming to Town




Also, some of you know last year, my last Christmas video was "Trim Up The Tree", which was ALL of my characters in one video. The song was copyrighted just a few days after I uploaded it, and my account was suspended. So this year I have decided to re-release it under a new song, which will be off Mariah Carey's new christmas album (which will be out November 2nd). I will listen to the album and decided which song to use. 


So that is basically it for updates! 


Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed "The Addams Family"! 


This blog is now closed. 

Sets and Props!

Now that all the characters are done, I can start the sets! Usually, I do the sets and then the characters, but I was so anxious to start the characters, I switched it around. There are 4 sets in the video.

1. The Addams Mansion from the outside (Opening of the TV Show)
2. The inside (Count Von Count's Set from Sesame Street)
3. A Grand Staircase in the Housed
4. The Graveyard

I started with the first set, the mansion. For the Sets I bought Light Gray, Dark Gray and black paper. I used a light gray piece for the sky. I took a fan paint brush and lightly painted dark gray areas on the Light Gray paper. Then I started drawing the mansion on the dark gray paper with a pencil and a ruler. Once I was done drawing and checked it over, I traced it in sharpie. The house took me about 45 minutes to make. Then I glued the house on the background and added 2 black scary trees.

The next set was the Grand Staircase. I used a dark gray background and light gray paper for the stairs. The set was a darker replica of my Beauty and the Beast set from Disney Extravaganza (May 2010). **This is not the first time I have made a replica of one of my sets. In Hercules, one of Hades' sets is a Forrest with black trees and a path. This was set up the same way as Pocahontas's Autumn set in Disney Extravaganza** I cut out the stairs and glued them onto the set. Then I used the same fabric for the curtains as I used on Grandmama. Then I used the spiderweb fabric I used on Morticia as the scarps on top of the stairs. This gave it a spooky effect.

The last set I made was the Graveyard. I made a bunch of hills with a sharpie and drew some trees. Then I cut out gray tombstones for the graveyard.

**** HIDDEN ITEMS: The tombstones have the actual names of the actors/actresses who played the characters on the TV show. I only put the ones who are dead though. The Man who played Gomez (John Astin), Cousin Itt (Felix Silla), Wednesday (Lisa Loring) and Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax) are still alive. But the rest have passed away, so I put their name, birth year and death year on each tombstone. One person, however was a joke. Debbie Jellinsky (played by Joan Cusak) and is a psycho black widow in the Addams Family Values. She marries men and then kills them for there money and repeats the process. In the movie, she marries Fester and because he is an Addams, no matter how many times she tries to "accidentally" kill him, he never dies. Her plans end up backfiring and she ends up being electrocuted. 

I bought a wooden tree at Joann's and painted it black. I also bought a small tombstone to put on the floor of the set. It looked very good all together!

So all the sets were done. Now props. There were not many props for this video. I made Morticia some roses she could snip the heads off, a lightbulb for Fester, a cauldron for Grandmama, and a a few other Halloween things. That was it! I was ready to film the movie!

The next post will be here tomorrow! The video will be out on YouTube tomorrow as well!!!!

Finishing the Characters!

This weekend for my school district was a 4 day weekend. We had off on Friday for Superintendent's Conference Day, and Monday for Columbus Day. It was also homecoming weekend, so I was very busy with homecoming activities. During the the week (October 3-9) I finished up the last 3 characters.

The first character I made was Gomez. Gomez is the husband of Morticia and the father of Wednesday. Pugsley and Pubert. he wears a pinstripe suit and has black hair and a mustache. I started by making his suit. I cut out the fabric and wrapped it around his body and cut out a triangle on the area that would go on his chest. I glued the fabric on and made a tie out of black fabric. Then I wrapped his legs and wire arms in the pinstripe fabric. I painted his shoes and hair black and his face and hands flesh colored. Once the head was dry I painted on his pace with a toothpick and a sharpie. I attached all the parts and he was done!



Gomez's Body

 Next character was Grandmama. I looked at the picture of her from the Tv show and didn't think it would transfer to a clay character well. So I went to Charles Addams' cartoons. I thought his Grandmama was ugly (shown below). So I was on my own. I used the cartoons for her basic body clothes and shape. I used a purple clear spider web fabric for her shall and black underneath. After the head was dry I began making her face, I made her eyes small black dots with white dots, which made her look cute. Then I made her smile right underneath her nose. She looked perfect! Then I found the perfect frizzy white yarn in my box and I glued it to her head and she was done!

The Ugly Grandmama



My Grandmama (before her arms were added)

 Finally, the last character was Lurch. I used black fabirc for his suit and did the same steps as Gomez. In the movies, Lurch is a pale greenish color, so I mixed the flesh paint, light green, and gray together and painted his head and hands. Once his head was dry, I painted on his face. Lurch was very difficult to recreate. I did not get the face quite right. It was ok though. Then I added his hair, which was gray and black string. I attached all of his body parts and Lurch was done.

Lurch's Body and Head

The characters were done! All I had left was sets and props.

2 more posts are left in this blog! One will be about the sets and props, and the other will be about shooting.

The posts will be up this week and the video premieres on Saturday October 16th!

Wednesday on a Friday?

Last Friday I made Wednesday Addams (Morticia and gGomez's daughter). Even though her name is Wednesday, i made her on a Friday, buts that's okay because her full name is Wednesday Friday Addams. LOL! She is a fairly simple character and I started her off by painting her hands and face skin colored and her legs and shoes black. I wanted her to look cute, so I didn't want to paint her face like a realistic human face, I wanted her to look more like the Charles Addams cartoons. That is exactly what I did. I made her have small black eyes thin black hair. She wears a back dress and I simply just used black fabric and put buttons on with white paint and a toothpick. Then I attached her arms and Wednesday was done!

Wednesday in Painting Stages

Next I made Thing. This was the easiest of all the characters because Thing is just a disembodied hand! I just painted the clay hand skin colored and glued him a a base and he was done!

Next was Pubert. In the 2nd post it explains that Pubert was the baby of Morticia in the 1993 Addams Family Values movie. He was also a simple character, I painted his body gray because that is the color of his baby clothes and his head and hands skin colored! After it was dry, I painted on his face, mustache and hair. Then I took a sharpie and made the buttons and spider on his clothes. Pubert was done!



The last character I will talk about today is Puglsey. Puglsey is the son of Morticia and Gomez and the brother of Wednesday. He is fat and always wears a white and black striped shirt. I wanted to make him look cute like Wednesday, so I used Charles Addams' cartoons to model him. But I don't like Charles Addams' hair on Puglsey. So I used the hair from the show. My dad and I could not find any black and white striped fabric with small enough stripes to work for Pugsley, so i got white and used a sharpie to stripe it.He was done!

Pugsley's body.

That is basically all I will say today! I uploaded the Trailer on to youtube yesterday where you can see some of the characters that I have made!

Characters left to do: Gomez, Lurch, Grandmama.

Morticia and More!

I have busily working on The Addams Family because I want to get it out as early as possible. I have learned from experience that it is not a good idea to release a holiday video on that holiday! For example, I released "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" on Easter day in 2009. The video barley got any views because people look up Easter songs in the first few weeks before Easter, not after. So it was up for one day and the next day everyone is over Easter and the video dies down and waits til next year. On Easter day 2010, Peter Cottontail got lots of views in the first couple weeks before Easter and then on Easter Day it got 3,000 views. The day after it got 200. So views drop dramatically after the holiday. I wanted The Addams Family to get a few good weeks before Halloween.

First I started off making all the clay characters out of Model Magic clay.

Top from left to right: Wednesday, Cousin Itt, Baby What, Thing, Fester, Gomez, Morticia (see next paragraph)
Bottom Row: Grandmama's Head, Pubert, Lurch's Head, Pugsley

I started by making Morticia. Morticia's dress is very iconic and i needed to get it perfect. For the most part, in the past, I have made dresses  that are very large and poofy at the bottom. Dresses like Belle, Tiana and Giselle are like this. It was very different making such a tight dress. I wrapped the dress in different ways than usual and folded and glued it down differently too. The very bottom of the dress has a circular area of frils and I cut out just that for the bottom. In the TV show, it took the actress 2 hours to get out of her costume. First she had to get the wig and makeup of her face. Then they took the frils off the bottom of her dress and unzipped it all the way up. It was very difficult to get out of and even more difficult to walk around in! I used a type of velvet to make her dress and I think it looked great! I painted her skin very light flesh color and made her arms out of wire. I attached a spider web fabric to her sleeves. The next day I added her hair. I used black yarn because I knew it would look good because I used it on Pocahontas. It looked very long and straight, which is how hers looks! Next I painted on the eyes with a toothpick. I looked at a picture of the movie version (Played by Angelica Houston) for the face.  She was done and I thought she looked great!

Morticia's Dress

Next I worked on Uncle Fester. He is a pretty simple character compared to Morticia. I started off by making his clothes. I cut out a black shall and glued it onto his body. Then I cut a strip of brown fun fur for his collar. Body done! Then I painted his face the pale skin color. Once it dried I made his eyebrows with a black sharpie. Then I painted dark purple circles around his eyes because Fester has deep,sunken-in eyes. Once that dried I painted on the eyes and made his smile. I wrapped his arms in the black fabric and attached everything and thought he was done. I put him next to Morticia and he was so small! His head was below her armpit!  So I showed him to my mom, who agreed he was too small. But she said that she remembered in the show, you could see his shoes. I looked back at Charles Addams cartoons and the pictures of the show and she was right! I quickly made short legs and feet out of clay and put them aside to dry.

Fester's Body

Finally I made Cousin Itt. Cousin Itt is one of my favorite characters, and in my head he was one of the easiest. I was wrong. I bought blond doll hair and started gluing it on with a hot glue gun. Naturally, there was wig hair everywhere. It was a mess. I would put a blob of glue on the top of his head and put the hair on it, but of course it stook up and I had to press it down, which caused me to burn my fingers on the hot glue. I got half way done and the hair was too thin. You could see the white model magic underneath and I would have to put another layer of hair on him. The plastic wig hair was melting and it was such a mess. I ripped it off his head, grabbed the whole pile of hair and threw it out. Starting over. I realized that the wig hair wasn't gonna work. I went through my craft box and found the perfect ball of yarn. I used it for Hera's hair in Hercules. The failure wig was bleach blond and straight. Cousin Itt's hair is more brownish- blond and wavy. This string was way better and looked even better. The one problem was I would cut about 10 pieces of hair, put a blob of glue on his head and then let it dry. These blobs started to add up and there was about 6 layers and the blob on top of his became a mountain of clear hot glue and it looked bad. I cut the blob off and made a new smaller blob and stuck all the hair to it quickly before it dried. Then I shoved his black bowler hat on his head and pressed down on it show the blob was compressed. It turned out pretty good and I put him aside.



The last thing I will write today is the making of Baby What. In the previous post, it explains who he is. I was about 2 1/2 cm tall and obviously the string and glue would be to difficult to to do on that small of a body. So I mixed paints together to make the right color and painted him. Once it was dry I used a brown sharpie to make hair strands. Finally I used baby pink paint to paint on his pacifier. He was done!

Baby What

 

Characters Done: Moriticia, Fester (except for feet), Cousin Itt, Baby What



Starting the Video (Research, Information, etc)

Hello! As I said in my last post, this blog with follow me through the making of my stop-motion video "The Addams Family."  I am sure most of you have heard the classic theme song sometime in your life. Some of the younger people, like myself, were not alive when the TV show was popular. So I want to give a little history of The Addams Family.


First off, the Addams Family started of as cartoon characters in the comic "The Addams Family" from 1938- 1988. They were created by Charles Addams. The Addams Family gained their fame in 1964 when their TV show was shown on ABC. TV was in color at that time, but The Addams Family was filmed in black in white to give it a scarier look. Despite the high ratings and merchandise sales, the network cancelled the show after just 2 seasons because they wanted to move toward a more serious format. 64 episodes were made. Over the coarse of the 70's the actors who played the famous characters had several reunion TV specials. In 1973 a animated TV series premiered. However, the animated show did not do nearly as well as the live-action TV show and only had 1 season. In 1991, a feature film was put into theaters and received mixed reviews. It stared Angelica Houston, Christopher Lloyd, Raul Julia, and Christina Ricci.   However, the box office was the 7th largest in 1991. In my personal opinion is that the movies were not that great.  In 1992, another animated series aired once again, it was not a major success. In 1993 a sequel to the movie was released to theaters. This one had most of the same cast with the addition of Joan Cusak. The sequel did better than the first, but once again, in my opinion, not a great movie. In 1998, another love-action show called "The New Addams Family" was aired in Canada. Also in 1998, a third movie was released direct-to-video with a new cast. Most recently, in 2010, the Addams Family Musical opened on Broadway in New York City. Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth portray Gomez and Moritica.


So back to my video. I have known who the Addams Family are since I was little because somehow we got the movies and I loved them! However, after watching the TV show and then watching the movies again, I liked the show much better. So I had to do lots of research to make this film happen. I printed off pictures of all characters. I tried to make a mix of Charles Addam's cartoons, The 60's TV show and the movies to make the characters.I also rented both seasons of the TV show and observed behaviors and other things they do.


The theme song itself is only 0:53 seconds, so obviously, that was too short to make a decent video out of. I am not going to spend hours on a character and make so many characters to be put on the screen for 5 seconds each! So I ended up adding lots of audio sounds of my own to make the video longer. I stared it off with a women's scream and them a clap of thunder which added about 10 seconds to the video making it 1:03. Then the theme song plays and I downloaded the instrumental version to put at the end. Then at the very end of the song and instrumental I added an evil laugh. All of this added up made the video a little over 2 minutes. Thats about where I wanted it. So, the audio was done! ( I did this in July)


There will be a total of 11 characters in my video.


Morticia Addams-
A slim woman with pale skin, long black hair and a Gothic appearance, clad in a skin-tight black hobble gown with octopus-like tendrils at the hem. She adored her husband, Gomez, as deeply as he did her. You can often see her snipping buds and flowers off roses and keeping the stem. She can light a candle with the touch of a finger and is often seen feeding her carnivorous plant Cleopatra. 

Gomez Addams-

Husband of Morticia and father of Wednesday and Pugsley, he is a very wealthy man who wears a black pinstriped suit. Gomez was remarkably athletic, his cigar lights the instant he drew it out of his breast pocket and extinguished when replaced, and he could perform complicated calculations in his head (making a mechanical sound as he did so). He often told time by reading the time from his wristwatch (which ran slow), then his pocket watch (which ran fast) and then calculating the difference between the two.

Fester Addams-

[Fester was a bald, barrel-shaped man with dark, sunken eyes and a devilish grin. He seemed to carry an electrical charge, as he could illuminate a light bulb by sticking it in his mouth. In the original television series, Fester was Morticia's uncle.

Wednesday Addams-

Wednesday was said to have been named after the phrase, "Wednesday's child is full of woe." from the poem Monday's Child Her middle name, Friday, corresponds to the 1887 version of the poem. In the TV show she was a sweet-natured, innocent, happy child, although she barely ever smiled. She was largely concerned with her fearsome pet spider,  A favorite toy was her Marie Antoinette doll, which Pugsley had guillotined.

Pugsley Addams-

Pugsley is the oldest child of Morticia and Gomez Addams. He is a pre-teen boy (stated to be eight years old in the pilot episode) who is almost always seen wearing a striped T-shirt and shorts. Originally unnamed (as were all of the family members), the character who was apparently the prototype for Pugsley first appeared in the Charles Addams cartoons in The New Yorker during the 1930s. In this first incarnation, he was portrayed as a deviant child with a vicious nature, shown committing deplorable acts with his sister. In all incarnations, he is overweight. In the television series, Pugsley usually eats over five pieces of cake at birthday parties.

Grandmama Addams-

Grandmama is the maid of the Addams household, and is also a witch who deals in potions, spells, hexes, and even fortune-telling. Her trademarks were her shawl and grey, frizzy hair.

Pubert Addams-

Pubert Addams was not originally in Charles Addams cartoons or the 60's TV show. He was introduced in the 2nd feature film sequel in 1993. From the minute he was born he was an Addams. He was born with black hair and a Gomez-looking mustache. Above his cradle, he has a mobile made from meat knifes. In the movie he became very ill and changed from an Addams to a regular child with curly blonde hair and he enjoyed childrens books and normal children activities. Of course the family is distraught, but in the end he gets better and goes back to his Addams self. Pubert is referred to in the unrelated 1998 straight-to-video film Addams Family Reunion and the short-lived follow-up series that aired on Fox Family Channel, in which Wednesday stated that there used to be a third sibling, but that they ate it.

Cousin Itt- 

Cousin Itt is a short-statured and has long hair that covered his entire body from scalp to floor. Cousin Itt drove a 3-wheeled car: a Messerschmitt KR175. He often wears a bowler hat on top of his head In episode 34 of season 1 of the original television series, when Gomez asked Cousin Itt what is underneath all the hair, Cousin Itt replies, "Roots!" He was known to speak in a high-pitched nonsensical gibberish that only the family seemed to understand, although in the "My Fair Cousin Itt" episode of the sitcom Morticia and Gomez taught Cousin Itt to speak in an understandable voice.

Baby What- 

In the second movie, Cousin Itt has a child with new character Margaret. They name him "What" because of the obstetrician's reaction. He resembles Cousin Itt because he also is made of entirely hair. Instead of a bowler hat, has a pink pacifier.

Lurch-

Lurch is a tall, shambling, lugubrious butler who somewhat resembles Frankenstein's monster. On the Addams Family television series, Lurch has a deep, resonant voice. Although fully capable of normal speech, Lurch often communicates via simple inarticulate moans, which, much like the dialogue of Cousin Itt, his employers have no trouble understanding. The Addamses often comment that Lurch is eloquent and vivacious.

Thing-

Thing is a disembodied hand that lives with the Addams Family.  Thing customarily emerges from a series of boxes, one in each room in the Addams' mansion, and the mailbox outside. He could travel from box to box in a matter of seconds without coming out of the box. He occasionally emerged from behind a curtain, within a plant pot, or elsewhere. In the films, thanks to advances in special effects, Thing is able to emerge and run on his fingertips, much like a spider. In my video, he will be able to move out of the box. 

So that is all of the characters! The video will also include 4 sets:

• The outside of the Addams Mansion
• The inside will be the same as Count Von Count's set in Sesame Street
• A grand staircase inside
• A graveyard

So we went shopping for the video last week and got lots of gray and black colors. The characters will be made in color, but the video will be filmed in black and white. I got lots of fabrics, Halloween items, paper and more. The cost was about $70 for this video. My next post will be pictures and information about the making of the video! Talk to you soon!