The Milan Machinima Festival is excited to present Martin Bell’s Prazinburk Ridge, a unique narrative short created with the Unreal Engine. Featured in the Counter-narratives program, Bell’s work will be available between March 19-26 2023 on the MMF website.
Martin Bell, a British animation and previs supervisor at Proof Inc., has made his mark in the animation world with his latest creation, Prazinburk Ridge. For those unfamiliar with the term “previs,” (or "previz") it refers to an important pre-production step in filmmaking. Specifically, previs - short for pre-visualization - plays a crucial role in which action sequences are animated and planned in advance to ensure that the sequence is perfected before any funds are expended on the shoot, which can become quite costly very rapidly. Incidentally, in the past, several filmmakers used machinima as a previs tool.
Prazinburk Ridge tells the true story of English rugby player Douglas Clark and his heroic actions during World War I on the Belgian battlefields. Clark, a Yorkshire rugby hero, enlisted in the army in 1916, with the first World War upon Britain and his international sporting career cut short. In 1917, he found himself on the mud-soaked battlefields of Ypres, in Belgium, during the Battle of Passchendaele. As part of the Army Service Corps, he was tasked to deliver munitions to artillery batteries shelling the front lines. During one fateful ammo drop, his team were attacked with gas and shell, and Clark had to rely on his old rugby training to save himself and his fellow soldiers. He would never be the same again. Prazinburk Ridge explores themes of bravery, resilience, and camaraderie, set against the backdrop of the Battle of Frezenberg, which the British misspelled as "Prazinburk."
Bell had been looking for a personal project for years, but found it difficult to make his own films in animation as he lacked a team. During the 2020 lockdown imposed by the government to limit the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bell decided to create a war film based on a personal connection to Clark’s story, which was originally discovered by his brother Steven. Bell found inspiration in Richard Linklater's Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (2022) and adopted a cel-shaded style to achieve a traditional feel while shooting at 12 frames per second. By working within the technical limitations of the Unreal Engine, Bell created a unique, painterly, impressionistic look, reminiscent of the American filmmaker’s best work (my all time favorite is Waking Life, 2001).
Despite having little-to-no budget, and Bell as the only visual artist, Prazinburk Ridge was made possible by utilizing commercially-available assets, cutting-edge techniques and human ingenuity and perseverance. Bell used a real-time pipeline in Unreal Engine with live dynamics and simulation, alongside motion/performance capture and more common animation practices. Bell did all of his own performance capture, capturing raw data directly into Unreal using a first generation Noitom Perception Neuron mocap suit and an iPhone with the MocapX app. He also directed the actors and recorded all the dialogue himself, but ultimately replaced his lines with voice-over actors. The project took Bell more than 100 days spread over a couple of years to complete. Rather than waiting for distribution or completing a festival run, Bell originally released the film online on his website and is still promoting it while applying to international festivals. Bell described in detail the production process - from conception to execution - in an article published on Indie Film Hustle.
Prazinburk Ridge is Martin Bell’s first proper animated short after almost two decades in the computer graphics industry. His credits include Jurassic World, No Time To Die, 1917, and The Wheel of Time. Most recently, he was Visualisation Supervisor on Batgirl. Bell’s brother, Steven, originally uncovered the almost-forgotten story of Duggy. Duggy is the subject of Bell's second book via Pitch Publishing, The Man of All Talents: The Extraordinary Life of Douglas Clark. Together, the brothers became the biggest fans of the larger-than-life British legend. Both the book and short film have been endorsed by Clark’s estate and the project thus qualify as a true transmedia endeavor.
Matteo Bittanti
Works cited
Martin Bell
digital video/machinima (1280 X 720), color, sound, 10’, 2022, England