Meet the Blooms

The origins of Meet the Blooms commenced on March of 2020. I'd actualized the idea of a sci-fi romantic comedy starring this anthropomorphic alien couple that would harken to them screwball comedies from His Girl Friday to Bringing Up Baby and them adult-animated sitcoms like The Flintstones & The Jetsons. But from the very beginning they started as human characters but for consistency sake that they be aliens which opened the doors to creating a retro-futuristic, mundane world that would blend high-concept technology with normality. Since I've always wanted to make a movie that was set in a utopian society for a long time. The whole "surviving out in the sea on a boat" premise still remained throughout the entire screenwriting process. The simpler the better. Because of software and animation limitations. Setting in good old 1964 would be perfect to reflect on America's concept of the future especially the New York World's Fair and Walt Disney's EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) blueprint. Originally the dysfunctional newlyweds were named Mander and Kari for which I changed to Stephen & Jasmine Bloom because 1) Once I came up with the last name "Bloom" that it would make sense to give them American names for the audience to alienate towards and 2) It would make the characters very stereotypical and not archetypal if given alien names. So instead I've given the Mander & Kari names to the couples' robot companions. Before making Stephen & Jasmine architects, I originally have given them marketing agent jobs something for the audience to identify with in terms of working in income positions but because of lack of marketing knowledge that architectural design was something I was fond of and was very cultivated with so it all worked out nicely and smoothly with that. They both work at the renowned Glint Architecture which they despise with a passion especially being constantly exploited by their boss Mr. Gomer Glint with the whole "Nebotopia II on the Moon" maquette. Actually want to start their very own architectural company called The Blooms and Co. which is keen on equal pay and rights for each employee. Fun fact: That's how Stephen & Jasmine met and fell in love. Started as gofers. A little backstory right there. The most daunting thing about creating the Stephen & Jasmine characters was making you feel very sympathetic towards their estranged marriage since my biggest issue with most modern rom-coms is that the couple are way too formulaic in terms of characterizations and plot which not only diminish their chemistry for each other but also being both a Mary Sue & Gary Stu. And I knew the hell I wasn't doing for The Blooms. So I based them a lot on 30s and 40s Hollywood couples including my own past romantic experience with my former flames to give them a bit more authenticity & realism. Especially with their dialogue. Wanted to give it that sharp, witty flavor that my favs Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges used to do with their films. All my life I wonder how come Hollywood doesn't create this kind-of couple anymore so I thought I would do the job to rejuvenate those romantic tropes implementing with the humanistic quality to make them more refreshing and awe-inspiring. Another thing for them too was their whole economic background within their families by making them more in the low-class side and not upper-class to challenge their marriage even more. Stephen's parents are more eccentric whilst Jasmine's parents are more smug. And they aren't fond with one another. Since the Blooms work for VECOM Robotics and the Rosses work for Contron Robotics. In terms of character design, I actually based Stephen & Jasmine Bloom off of Dr. David Huxley and Susan Vance from Bringing Up My Baby to signify the nerdy and the sassy type which wasn't easy to do but the results were substantial. Based their whole look on Osamu Tezuka, Jay Ward, and UPA (United Productions of America) cartoons. For the designs of the Contron C-1 Cruise and the Nebotopia Police Blimp they needed to be more streamlined and modern so they fit with the visual aesthetic/style of the movie so they used concept vehicles of the 50s and 60s as reference(s) which really helped out a ton. When fleshing out the world of Nebotopia, I watched a whole lot of "the city of the future" documentaries and read some articles on Athelstan Spilhaus' Minnesota Experimental City (MXC) including Isaac Asimov's I Robot series & studied Raymond Lowey's artistic designs to bring out its verisimilitude supplementing in real-life social issues from the JFK assassination to the rise of personal computers. As part of the whole President Matheson tragedy and Senator Garrison's corrupted officiation & the Walter Moore/VECOM vs. William Hancock/Contron conspiracy theories in our storyline. It was a lot to assimilate but honestly this was the most fun to research due to being a futurist in real life. Even gleaned on a bunch of marriage articles to create a more realistic portrayal of it than what most modern rom-coms do. Similar to how A Marriage Story created a realistic portrayal of divorce. Meet the Blooms' core theme is socialism. This took me at least about 4 to 5 months to animate this. It was my first time actually using a 3D-modeling software. But what made it so much easier to design & render in Blender was from my 3D animation course at MSJC but the only difference was that I was using Maya and stuff albeit getting more comfortable with its functionalities, assets, and scripting. Designing the cruise and the blimp was easy to model but the characters & ocean not so much. Wanted the ocean to be more stylish something you would see in a Osamu Tezuka/UPA cartoon but also have the textural look you see in real life to be more familiar with you. But as for the characters I tried to give them the 3D touch and not follow my original design which is probably the ultimate reason why I couldn't animate them at all. Like I said earlier I was novice to computer animation, and if I had more time to fix the problem, you probably would've seen them on the screen but you don't so I didn't include them. Which makes me very upset to this very day. So the only things that I successfully render were the ocean, the boat, and the blimp. For which I smoothly transferred them to Adobe After Effects to add in all the dialogue and SFX to balance everything out sublimely. My intention was to hire talented voice actors for Stephen & Jasmine, but because of the uproar of the COVID-19 pandemic, that I instead voiced them which wasn't really all that fun to be honest. So tedium being around a noisy family and next-door neighbors. Also voice acting isn't really my forte you know. More of a writers-director kind-of guy. The 21:9 aspect ratio and the 50mm film was the utmost importance to me so I tried to make it as cinematic and visceral as possible for the viewers. Because of After Effects' tedium rendering, I went straight to Adobe Media Encoder to render the film successfully maintaining that CinemaScope format albeit it being 720/480 not 3440/1440. To add on that note the 4:3 aspect ratio gives the film a claustrophobic stimulus to it. A famous Mae West quote "Getting married is like trading the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one." I incorporated in the opening credits to introduce the genre and tone right off the bat. That's the first rule of screenwriting 101. The choice of no music was to utilize the Yasujiro Ozu technique where you only hear just the ambient sounds in the background and foreground to make you feel like you're in that environment. Meet the Blooms was officially released on December 1st, 2020 even though it was allocated on the 31st because of school etc.