17 posts tagged art

The Amazon Studios development process is visual, from comic books to “test movies” – videos that help an audience imagine what a story would be like as a feature film. Here’s the story of Burma Rising, a new test movie now available to watch for free at Amazon and Amazon Studios.

For Sung Jin Ahn, a career in animation felt right, given that he was always interested in drawing as a kid growing up on the East Coast. Just like it felt right for him to make his directorial debut with the Amazon Studios  test movie for Burma Rising, created by Titmouse Animation Studio – a place he considers a huge influence and inspiration.

Since this is a test movie intended for a wide audience and not a traditional set of storyboards for production, Sung Jin approached the material with an animator’s mindset which created a little more work, but in the end resulted in a more finely tuned project.  That the project is eventually going to be live-action in no way hampered Sung Jin. In fact, he felt it gave him more creative freedom.  “Before this, I had been involved strictly in animation storyboarding.” he said.  “So this being a live-action script gave me more freedom as a storyteller and as an artist also which was pretty great.”

Set in the 1980s during the Burmese Revolution, Burma Rising is a dramatic thriller about a group of mercenaries who must find their way out of Burma in the midst of a war between guerrillas and the vicious military junta.  The main character, Manny, “has been traveling and gets into some trouble, and in the midst of that trouble he meets this rag-tag team of ex-military and they end up having to stick together to survive all the turmoil,” said Sung Jin.  “It’s a story about how the main character grows and evolves through all the hardships he is forced to endure, and learning about what he has to sacrifice to make the right choices.”

What resonated with Sung Jin were the very real emotions the characters dealt with. “The feelings of lost identity, guilt, the burden of responsibility, and making sacrifices are all things that everyone has to deal with to some degree,” he said.  “So I tried to take those emotions I was most familiar with and personify them within the characters.”

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