Making of Wild Card

Wild Card won the best of the show at the Big Kahuna award, a Student Emmy Winner, screened at SIGGRAPH electronic theatre and SXSW film festival.

The idea came from my first-year class.
We had a paper cut out animation workshop.
I could not find any paper sturdy enough as I was searching for the art cabinet  I found a deck of cards. "Aha",   I decided to create paper playing cards cut out and use it for my class exercise.

The one-hour paper card exercise was a hit.
 So I decided to do my first-year film base on a love story/card theme.  Keep it Simple
Originally my film was more South Park and was kind of over the top.
I wrote the poem which really helps give my film structure.
Theme Love and Gambling


Logline:
"The lonely Queen of Hearts searches for a suitor that can hand"

Genre Visual reference


What other movies that I really like such as Geri's Game help me refine my film.

Geri's Game

Fantasy

Logline:

The lonely Queen of Hearts searches for a suitor that can when her hand.

Beginning | Middle | End

• The Queen is lonely
• She does not find a suitor
• She falls in love with the joker 

Simpler Beats

• Queen is lonely
• Queen looks for love
• The queen meets the jack
• The queen reject the jack
• The queen meets the king
• The queen rejects the king
• The queen loses hope in love until
• The queen finds love with the Wild Card

Story Beats:

Script/Poem

Once upon a time, a Queen had no lord

Many fools tried, but they just made her bored

She made a call throughout the land
Suitors came to play their hand

Some played it straight
Some tried to bluff

But no one,   no one was good enough

Not a pair
Nor even a flush, 

No single card could win her trust

Then one day 
She realized

Not a Jack nor even a king

No face card would make her heart sing
She did not want to play poker

All she wanted was the ......

Joker

Total production time:   Nine months

1.  Learned that film making was fun.
2.  Learned that I could tell a story.
3.  Learned that I did not know what I did not know. 

Check out the breakdown of how "Wild Card" was created in  "3D Magazine"

Wild Card  (Wildcard/First Year Film)

 Big Kahuna Grand Prize Winner, Student Emmy 1999 Winner, screened at SIGGRAPH electronic theatre 1999

Wild Card

First Year Film

One of the biggest things prizes that "Wild Card" got was the "Big Kahuna".   Not only did they flew me up to receive my prize they also included me in one of their issues and I got to share my production process.   

Take away

What I learned about creating this film was I really enjoy telling stories visually.  I also realized that my animation was not very good.   Since this was done a year or two before I was about to graduate I had enough time to focus my choices and energy on improving my animation skills.