Writers’ Block is a short film written and directed by Tom Gran and Martin Woolley and produced by WONKY Films with the support of IdeasTap.
„Set in a prison for criminally poor writers, it follows a gang of cons who get ahold of the script to their own lives and attempt to re-write it in order to make their escape”
Animation by Todd Setter, Tom Gran & Iwan Vaughan
Backgrounds by Adam Davis
Music by Paul Burke & Dan Pugsley
Voices by George Watson, Tom Gran, Hannah Welch & Adam Davis
Voice Recording by Jamie Ward
Sound Design & Foley by Iwan Vaughn
Visual Research by Madeleine Grossi
Clean Up & Colour by Robyn Leibschner, Madeleine Grossi, Jack Dubben & Rob Turner
Press release:
After a year on the festival circuit the WÖNKY Films & Spinkick Bros (Tom Gran and Martin Woolley) have now released their short film “Writer’s Block” online. Set in a prison for criminally poor writers, it follows a gang of cons who get ahold of the script to their own lives and attempt to re-write it in order to order to make their escape.
Speaking about the idea for the film co-director Tom Gran said:
„We usually build our projects from a genre or setting that we like and we felt like prison movies were an area we liked a lot but hadn’t really explored yet. We thought something about a character trying to escape from the film itself in some way would give us a chance to play around with the narrative structure of the film but still have a fun straight-forward story.”
Elaborating further on the films production Gran explains the development process and the interesting approach they took in developing the films characters…
„We actually built photomontage mugshot things of each character while we were trying to design them. Gill was based mostly on Gary Oldman and Bosco was mostly Ian McShane, with chunks of Jack Nicholson and Mel Gibson thrown in.”
„It was animated in Flash and then comped together using After Effects. Our background artist, Adam Davis, worked in Photoshop and Artrage. The bulk of animation took place over about a month, during which I was working with another animator, Todd Setter, but after that I spent a few months doing clean up, colour, adding in all the tattoos and regretting my life choices.”
Adding in all the tattoos wasn’t the only challenge and Gran says the biggest in the films production was the scene where the floor collapses;
„The scene where the floor falls apart. It had to be assembled out of about 50 layers to get the perspective to work and it gave me a thousand headaches.”
The Spinkick Bros duo began writing together while in university at UWE Bristol. Since graduating in 2010 they have collaborated on several projects and Writer’s Block is their first independent short film together. The film was produced alongside WÖNKY Films, who also teamed up with the Spinkick Bros on the comedy pilot for Frederator Studios Cartoon Hangover called Ace Discovery. The release of Writer’s Block marks a milestone in what has been a busy 18 months for WONKY Films and their short films having released their fast paced short film Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? online back in January, while also having more shorts on the festival circuit including The Nether Regions which features the voice of Brian Blessed as the Devil.
In conjunction with the online release of Writer’s Block, Wonky Films have also updated the films companion iOS app. The app which is available for free via the Apple app store for both iPad, iPhone and iPod now contains the full film, a look behind the scenes with additional content including storyboards, animatics and original concept and development work for the short.
Also included is the chance to create your own unique Ball Point Penitentiary prisoner I.D a permanent record of your writing crimes, before going on to take on the word master challenge and prove your innocence against the charges of criminally poor writing. The word master challenge will truly test your knowledge of the English language in a fast paced word game, have you got what it takes to be top of the leaderboard?
About WÖNKY Films
WÖNKY, are an award winning studio specialising in illustration and animation for broadcast, advertising and digital. WÖNKY work as a collective of creatives including illustrators, animators, musicians and writers to create content across a variety of media. Our passion is character animation and everyone at WÖNKY shares the same sense of humour that brings our characters to life.
About Spinkick Bros
Tom Gran and Martin Woolley began writing together while in university at UWE Bristol, England. Since graduating in 2010 they have collaborated on several projects including ads and prospective animated series. Writers’ Block is their first independent short film together.
