The Making of Baguetella

Pre-Production:
Baguetella began when I was at a bit of a creative standstill. I needed a new film to produce for my media classes, but even after weeks of racking my brain, I couldn’t think of an idea that excited me. All my ideas were too mundane or normal - I needed something out of the box.
But then, as I was shuffling through story-starter cards, a word on one of them caught my eye: bread. 

I knew then that I wanted to make something silly and never-before-seen, centered around bread. And while I considered making an original plot, my experience led me to believe that using a well-known plot would help audiences engage and love what would become Baguetella.

Proofing (The idea and the bread):
Unfortunately, bread is not a full idea. What would the bread be doing? What kind of bread? Why bread? By the end, we answered the first two of these questions.

It was decided that a story being acted out by bread brought the pizazz to the project - it would be best to apply this bread to a well-known plot that would resonate with viewers. I decided, with advice from my peers, instructors, and family that Cinderella is one of the most essential stories that most people would know, and it seemed simple enough to follow, even if we baked up a little twist. Being bread.

A very rough proof was made, and once I was greenlit by my media producers, it was time. 

Production:
I wrote my script, hoping to include the perfect balance of bread puns. And then I waited - over winter break, I had family flying into town, and little did they know what I wanted for the holidays, being for them to be the star voice/mouth/eyeball actors in my newest film. (If you are really confused right now, you should make sure you’ve actually watched Baguetella)

As confused as they were, they obliged, and read through the script I had prepared for them while being recorded. It was silly and wonderful, and they exceeded my expectations with their emotion as they worked through their lines.

Once I had the lines down, the fun truly began. I cannot express how much fun this project was, while also being an extremely complicated and time-consuming endeavor.

I began by baking 4 baguettes - intentionally rock-hard. It was my first time making baguettes, and I was pleasantly surprised that I lived up to my baking reputation and made things that somewhat represented baguettes. Baked for 5 hours to withstand possibly weeks of production. They did not mold for 2 years, at which point I exploded them. (Video possibly coming soon.)

But how could these baguettes seem even remotely realistic without googly eyes and fancy hand-crafted felt hats? What more needs to be said? Additionally, I added skewer legs so I would be able to position my “actors” in a stable way.

Then, I set up a green screen and my softboxes, threw my camera on a tripod and connected it to stop-motion animation software on my computer, and started the weekend-long process of capturing, frame-by-frame, the (artistically interpreted) plot of Cinderella, fitting it into my script. 

Post-Production (A little technical, sorry):
After the Triscuit Telegram read its final lines and all the hats flew away, I was ready to begin editing. This project required a lot of entirely new skills for me, so it was an immense learning experience. 

After curating stop-motion frames to get the desired result, I exported each frame from my stop-motion software into Final Cut Pro. I began by retiming each frame to maintain the correct pacing, and then using the magnetic mask feature, I cut out the mouths and eyes of each of my voice actors, and manually used the transform feature and keyframes to align them to each baguette. It was also at this point that I keyed out the green screen to add in backdrops, and I began to think about music, titles, and sound effects. 

I won’t bore you with every technical detail, but after many weeks of editing, I began to have something that vaguely resembled the original vision, only much more chaotic (in the best way possible). I then sent it to my peers and instructors for critique and continued to improve the edits until I was convinced Bagutella was ready.

Neshamah (my cat) was very interested/confused.