After seeing the feedback I made the changes that need to happen . This is what I have so far as of the animatic. Still some tweaking to be done and more scenes to come afterwards and to find to some sounds to liven it up a bit!
You must think I keep cropping up like the grim reaper on here ;0)
I'm still finding your animatic hard to follow - and partly it's due to the fact that some shots don't feel 'motivated' or attached to the character: I think you need to 'remake' the opening Ant - remake the shots, not use them again but shorter - and I don't know why it's sort of stuttering as we watch it, as if every other shot is missing. Your animatic needs to be an exercise in 'no ambiguity' - it needs to represent your vision clearly; it still feels as if you're making an animatic 'for you' (the director who is filling in all the blanks and knows the story very well) as opposed 'for me' - who doesn't have that privilege. If it's a smooth, continuous tracking shot - then make it a smooth, continuous tracking shot.
I've watched this animatic a few times and I still can't follow the action. I'm not being purposefully difficult, I promise - I just don't know what she's seeing, or what she's thinking, or how everything is coming together.
An example of a sequencing problem: when we cut back to the girl at the window, we next see tracking shots across the images in her room, and then we cut back to her at the window... but who does that tracking shot belong to? What is motivating it? Isn't it more obviously logical to 'attach' these shots to the girl, so we're seeing her room for the first time only when *she's* looking at it? So, we see her standing at the window, looking down at the world she wants to join, but can't - we see her turn away from the window to look at the walls of her room: we see an establishing shot of her bedroom from her pov; we cut back to her, we're closer now; we see her face, and her eyes begin to move - which then anticipates the next shot - the tracking shot across the girl's hopes and dreams as laid out on the wall...
I want you to consider more carefully the relationship between the shots; how and why we move from one set-up to the next and what we're meant to think about it. I want you to consider too how close-ups of character's faces encourage us to enter their heads and see their thoughts; how close-ups invite intimacy - and how different shots can help narrate your story for you. Personally, I don't much like what appears to be some of the more 'showy' 'evil' house stuff - eyes in windows, black smoke - because the changes in the architecture of the room itself is strident enough in terms of conveying her anxiety; otherwise it gets a bit Scooby-Doo for me.
I'm just really keen for you to nail this, Ant - because I think it could be highly effective - but bluntly, if your animatic isn't communicating without sound, then sound isn't going to help it. You need to think of it just like those paragraphs in your dissertation: shot one opens up shot two / shot two opens up shot three - think about what I need to be shown, not what you already know about what's going on.
In short - your animatic has to *BE* your film not be something *Like* your film - otherwise you'll get feedback on elements of it that you know aren't representative of how it's going to be (but we don't) and that's a waste of time. This job is exactly like your other 'structuring' task (dissertation planning) - it has to flow now and be right now, or it won't flow later and it won't be right later - regardless of how much work you go on to do on it. You probably want to get on with design - and you should be doing that too - but this job is really important and I think you need to take things a little slower and think really hard about the best way to get all your ducks in a row. It will be worth it when it flows effortlessly and finds it's most perfect shape :)
Hi Ant,
ReplyDeleteYou must think I keep cropping up like the grim reaper on here ;0)
I'm still finding your animatic hard to follow - and partly it's due to the fact that some shots don't feel 'motivated' or attached to the character: I think you need to 'remake' the opening Ant - remake the shots, not use them again but shorter - and I don't know why it's sort of stuttering as we watch it, as if every other shot is missing. Your animatic needs to be an exercise in 'no ambiguity' - it needs to represent your vision clearly; it still feels as if you're making an animatic 'for you' (the director who is filling in all the blanks and knows the story very well) as opposed 'for me' - who doesn't have that privilege. If it's a smooth, continuous tracking shot - then make it a smooth, continuous tracking shot.
I've watched this animatic a few times and I still can't follow the action. I'm not being purposefully difficult, I promise - I just don't know what she's seeing, or what she's thinking, or how everything is coming together.
An example of a sequencing problem: when we cut back to the girl at the window, we next see tracking shots across the images in her room, and then we cut back to her at the window... but who does that tracking shot belong to? What is motivating it? Isn't it more obviously logical to 'attach' these shots to the girl, so we're seeing her room for the first time only when *she's* looking at it? So, we see her standing at the window, looking down at the world she wants to join, but can't - we see her turn away from the window to look at the walls of her room: we see an establishing shot of her bedroom from her pov; we cut back to her, we're closer now; we see her face, and her eyes begin to move - which then anticipates the next shot - the tracking shot across the girl's hopes and dreams as laid out on the wall...
I want you to consider more carefully the relationship between the shots; how and why we move from one set-up to the next and what we're meant to think about it. I want you to consider too how close-ups of character's faces encourage us to enter their heads and see their thoughts; how close-ups invite intimacy - and how different shots can help narrate your story for you. Personally, I don't much like what appears to be some of the more 'showy' 'evil' house stuff - eyes in windows, black smoke - because the changes in the architecture of the room itself is strident enough in terms of conveying her anxiety; otherwise it gets a bit Scooby-Doo for me.
I'm just really keen for you to nail this, Ant - because I think it could be highly effective - but bluntly, if your animatic isn't communicating without sound, then sound isn't going to help it. You need to think of it just like those paragraphs in your dissertation: shot one opens up shot two / shot two opens up shot three - think about what I need to be shown, not what you already know about what's going on.
In short - your animatic has to *BE* your film not be something *Like* your film - otherwise you'll get feedback on elements of it that you know aren't representative of how it's going to be (but we don't) and that's a waste of time. This job is exactly like your other 'structuring' task (dissertation planning) - it has to flow now and be right now, or it won't flow later and it won't be right later - regardless of how much work you go on to do on it. You probably want to get on with design - and you should be doing that too - but this job is really important and I think you need to take things a little slower and think really hard about the best way to get all your ducks in a row. It will be worth it when it flows effortlessly and finds it's most perfect shape :)