"Marry Me...?" (short)

A short I made to assist my pal Benjy with a marriage proposal to his girlfriend (*UPDATE* now wife to be).

Benjy initially approached me to produce a 5 second proposal sequence (for my convenience), as he knew I'd be doing this between commercial work, but I felt 5 seconds wouldn't justify or convey enough the significance of what he was about to do. I added an extra 15 seconds to give the short a little more narrative & emotion.

His brief was to create something with a classic hollywood romance musical-type feel. He also specifically requested a look inspired by Disney's award winning short, "Paperman", as his fiance (Victoria) really loved the film... Needless to say, I couldn't produce anything to that standard on my own & with the little time I had, but here's what I came up with in roughly 3 days. He proposed by hiring a cinema screen, where they watched a 14 minute film he made for her, & at the end of that film came this little short... The rest is now history.

Process-wise, I worked the timing & the rough animation in Flash (CS3), the cleanup in Photoshop (CS5) & the finish in After Effects for the diffusion & film grain. It was the first time I'd animated anything of my own in PS & I really enjoyed it (aside from a few annoyances with video layers vs reg layered frames). I plan on doing more of my future work using this same process.

Music: "Auntie Mame" main score.