Critical analysis of the animatic process
- 1. { Critical analysis of the animatic process MEGAN GRIFFITHS
- 2. An animatic is process which includes a chronologically ordered collection of still photos, representing the story which will be featured for the filmed task of the trailer. It is the preliminary version of a film trailer, based off a storyboard. An animatic is a guide to help when filming for the trailer by planning the coverage such as all the angles you will shoot of a scene. When filming the trailer, it ensures that you won’t forget any scenes and helps to piece together the film trailer according to vision. This process allows the filmmaker to set a time for how long each shot will be displayed for and the timings/introduction of sound. The use of sounds brings the story to life which a storyboard can’t, sparking ideas and changes that may be made for filming the trailer. An animatic is used to discover what to expect for the filming task by highlighting difficulties that you may not have initially thought about. It is also a chance to practice using a camera for camera angles and positioning, editing software such as Adobe Premiere to place the shots in order, time the duration of the shot shown on screen and include sound. Ultimately, an animatic gives a better indication of the narrative than the storyboard because it’s a practical task, unravelling the realisticness of each shot, it highlights the issues with editing, camera angles, recording of sound and timing problems that might have not been obvious with the storyboard. All of this is taken in account when analysing the narrative just in case changes the story have to be made e.g. If a character doesn’t turn up for a shoot, the filmmaker may have to change the character to a boy that may be more reliable, but change the story slightly. Question One
- 3. Question Two and three Instead of jumping straight to the filming task for the trailer, there are a few steps beforehand to help prepare for this. Firstly, the storyboard is a starting point to put creative thinking onto paper. It is especially a great way, I found, to talk in a group and explain my own ideas. We added dialogue to the storyboard to express how we wanted the characters to feel. Storyboards made things easier for the group, allowing us to change shots around and key scenes etc so that we didn’t change our minds later on, during the animatic process which saves time. An example of a shot we changed was an over the shoulder shot of a character (Sarah) looking at a laptop screen. We quickly realized that if we were to do this shot, the audience would need a clear view of the screen to know how the storyline. Therefore, we changed this shot to a screen view shot so that we could avoid this. Another example of a change we made was moving different shots around so that the storyline wasn’t completely told. Instead, we made sure hints were made but the storyline wasn’t exposed. This made it more exciting and tense for the audience. I found creating a storyboard a good way of showing it to my target audience and gathering feedback so that it works closely with the audience.
- 4. After organizing shots, changing camera angles etc the next step was to design character profiles, explaining personality traits, clothing style and how it represents their character. For example, the character ‘Jake’ is a popular and handsome male who is in-trend and captures the eyes of girls at his college. His clothes, jeans, trainers and a jumper I think is representative of many males that are popular. When I was designing his costume, I took inspiration from the artist of Justin Bieber to give ‘Jake’ the current style and look that I was hoping to create. Next, I began to consider the locations of filming. Looking at the storyboard, a lot of shots were on ‘Oovoo’, which is a group call similar to ‘Facetime’. Therefore, it wasn’t necessary to re-locate in different houses for each of the four characters. Instead, I decided to use one house and use different locations within that house to give a different background for each character on the ‘Oovoo’ call. During the shoots for the animatic process, we decided rather than using diegetic dialogue that we wrote on the storyboard, we wanted to use facial expressions to express the dialogue instead. We felt practicing angry, shocked and confused facial expressions on camera will help us to remember during the filming process that the diegetic dialogue is to be said in that manner.
- 5. Question Four During the making of the animatic, we had a total of 4 shoots. When we arranged shoot times/schedules, we made sure we met up when everyone was free, had the correct equipment, props and costumes/make-up for the characters. To make it easier, we used the storyboard to group shots together ie.g. In the first shoot, we took all of the ‘Oovoo’ shots, even though they were placed in various sections of the storyboard. We then took shots involving the characters available at the time e.g. the shots involving ‘Katie’ and ‘Sarah’ etc. For the shoots, I decided to play the character of ‘Katie’ as I am reliable and I wanted to improve my confidence ready for the final filming task. I also fit in with the profile of Katie, being a female teenager with a relaxed sense of style. Being photographed pulling various facial expressions improved my comfortability behind the camera. I also practiced using the camera by taking some shots myself, such as the shot involving Sarah and Jake etc. The two different locations we used was the school and a house. Character availability meant that some camera shots were taken in school, however, we took advantage of the stairs in school for the shot we wanted to use stairs for from our storyboard. I continued to take advantage developing my skills by using the camera. I experimented with lighting (flash) and practiced using different camera angles and comparing them to other angles to see what looked best. An example of this was ‘Sarah’ and ‘Jake’ taking a seflie. I used over the shoulder shot which I thought looked better than the shot before which was a medium two shot. I felt it looked better as the medium two shot cut out the characters faces as they had a mobile phone in front of their face to take a selfie.
- 6. Props we used during the process of filming was social media accounts such as ‘Oovoo’, for group calls, a laptop which was used by the character ‘Sarah’, a mobile phone which ‘Noah’ used to scroll through his Facebook. We also created each characters ‘Facebook’ accounts so that we were able to take print screens of their chat. I also liked pages on ‘Katie’s’ account to make it look more active. Keeping it representative of their age group, pages such as ‘Radio One’ and ‘Justin Bieber’ were liked so that news about the pages would appear on their news feed. Together with this, I reacted to posts on each characters accounts on ‘Facebook’, ‘loving’ ‘Sarah’s’ photo on ‘Jake’s’ account to make it look more realistic. Social media was a large part of the animatic, therefore, we wanted to make sure it was mainly based around it when taking the shots. The social media accounts that we created, we made sure were up to a good standard to be able to use it in the filming for the film trailer. We chose our characters based on who they represented and how they’d be able to reflect that on camera. The character of Katie is pale and ginger, reflecting a very feminine and sweet side through her clothing style of dresses and floral designs along with minimal makeup. The character of Sarah looks to have taken more of a laid back approach, with her style including black jeans and her hair tied back, presenting her careless side. Jake is a handsome and stylish male, who is popular in school. We chose the people for each character critically as we wanted to make sure they fit the role with both their looks and style.
- 7. Revisions we had made during our shoots were mainly changed camera angles. A medium two shot involving Sarah and Jake taking a selfie sparked a discussion after the shoot to change it to an over the shoulder shot, due to not being able to see their faces fully when we took the first shot as Sarah’s phone was in the way. When compromising and discussing what we could change, we felt the over the shoulder shot of Sarah looking at the computer screen could be improved as we were not able to see the computer screen properly. To overcome this, we decided to use two shots. A print screen of the messages on the screen, then a cut to a medium close up of Sarah’s shocked reaction. We were able to complete all the shots we needed, however timing and character availability meant some shots were taken on different shoots when the characters were available. But, when characters weren’t available, we used that time to set up the social media aspect of the animatic, which was creating their social media accounts and making it look more active. When we took the shots, we more or less kept to the storyboard. But, small changes were made, such as the change in camera angles and change in lighting etc. Whilst taking the images, we used lighting to represent the mood of the characters. An example of this was the shot of Sarah watching memories on her laptop. There is a beam of light from the laptop, but Sarah is left in the dark, representing that her happy times are now over and the darkness begins.
- 8. During the editing process, I constructed the animatic by ordering the shots in the same order as the storyboard on ‘Adobe Premiere’, an editing software. Before this task, I had never used an editing software. When editing, I learnt how to construct the animatic using transitions, sounds and changing the time duration for each shot to coincide nicely with the sounds. I took responsibility for the sounds on the animatic. I researched into different styles of music, watching film trailers such as ‘Nerve’, ‘Unfriended’ and ‘Mean Girls’. These have similar target audiences and idolize social media. The soundtracks used in these trailers I found were similar to each other, so I wanted to fit in with these conventions and find a soundtrack that reflected songs that my target audience would listen to. The sounds normally used were more POP songs which are up-beat and jolly. I used this type of genre song for the opening section of the trailer when Sarah is viewing happy memories of her and her 3 other friends. The POP song represents a song she and her friends may have listened to, so the target audience feel that connection too. For the sound effects, I downloaded the official non-diegetic Facebook notification sound for the shots when messages pop-up on screen, a mouse computer click sound when Sarah clicks on her messages and the ‘Oovoo’ call sound. Question Five
- 9. In order for these sounds to match the shots on the animatic, I shortened/cut the irrelevant parts of the soundtrack out. To help me with this, I used ‘Google’ and ‘Youtube’ tutorials to learn how to open the sounds into the software and how to trim the duration of the sound so I was left with the relevant part of the soundtrack. I also included the billing block that I designed for the animatic. For this I looked at different film posters and gathered what key parts I liked. I researched into what fonts were most used and on what software I could make it. I found that the font styles most used were bold and stretched. The software I used to create that is ‘InDesign’ which allowed me to create individual text boxes to line up next to the names which were in a larger font.
- 10. The film title, ‘Disconnected’ was thought of to represent social media. When researching into different words surrounding social media, ‘Connected’ was one we had found. We liked the name connected as it meant connected as a group, connected on social media and connections that were frowned upon such as the character of Jake cheating on Sarah with her best friend, Katie. However, the friendship group doesn’t stay connected and we wanted a word to hint that for our title. We then added ‘dis’ in front of the word, summing up the group completely. The font style for ‘Disconnected’ is bold. The word ‘connect’ is in an italic font to highlight what the group once was, which was connected. The word ‘connect’ is also in the colour blue to reflect Facebook and social media as ultimately, it is social media that broke the group apart. The intertitles we used were ‘Friends’ ‘or’ ‘Frenemies’. Friendship is normally the focus of our target audience. So, we felt that adding in these intertitles would surprise the audience, and make them think about the worth of a friendship. Most school based films have a group that aren’t really friends, they just use each other. The word ‘Frenemies’ is a key word in our film trailer, revealing to the audience that they are not always friends. For the intertitle ‘Frenemies’, I came up with the idea of underlining the ‘enemies’ part of the word to make it obvious to the audience that this is the outcome. We used the colour blue for the font as it is the colour of Facebook, which is a social media platform that plays a key role to the film. Question Seven
- 11. Question Six Researching into film trailers, I found that the length of shots tend to be quick, gaining tension from the audience with a series of quick cuts. To replicate this, we mainly kept the duration of the shots at 0.7 seconds on screen. But the shots containing text, such as the shots of the friendship group’s messages, I decided to keep it on-screen for longer to give the audience chance to read it. Shots like these were on screen for 2-3 seconds. However, with the countdown from 5 to 1, each number sent by the user was sent very quickly, with the notification sounds being played every 0.2 seconds. I wanted the countdown to be quick to create fear for the audience and tension for the audience.
- 12. Question Eight During the construction of the animatic, I took the role of downloading and adding free sounds and music. At the beginning of the animatic, I added a typical soundtrack that represents/reflects the target audience. It is a genre that I feel is conventionally used by similar films such as ‘Unfriended’ to display happy memories first. Much like this film, a POP song that seems as though has meaning to the friendship group is played over happy memories of them as Sarah views all her past videos and images. The soundtrack makes the audience feel uplifted and cheerful because of the catchy soundtrack at first, however the mood changes when the notification sounds stop the music completely, drastically changing the mood of the trailer, making it appear more tense. However, as the animatic went on, I added sound effects to build up tension and for the audience to feel anxious. An example of this is when I added the sound of a Facebook notification for when the anonymous user sent a message into the chat. When the user sent ‘5’, ‘4’, ‘3’, ‘2’, ‘1’ in separate messages, I added the sound effect to make the audience feel on edge. This fastened the pace of the animatic, creating that build up of fear from the audience and anticipation of what is to happen next.
- 13. Question Nine To find out whether the animatic appeals to my target audience, I created a questionnaire to fill in after they had watched it. One of the questions was ‘Would you want to see this film?’ and 90% of people said they would. The one that didn’t said that he was not a fan of films that involved friendships and cheating. The people I asked to fill in the questionnaire, fit in with my target audience as they were 17-18. I also asked the question ‘How could it be improved?’. I had feedback such as making each shot flow into each other by using more transitions. One person said it could be improved by including more into it and to mix up the story slightly so that it isn’t revealed as much. However, when I asked the question ‘What did you like about the animatic?’, two people liked the intertitles as they thought it looked professional. They also commented on the billing block, writing that they thought it looked professional also. One person said that they particularly liked the beginning of the trailer, revealing that they were keen on the soundtrack and liked the past aspect of it.
- 14. During my experience of making the animatic, I have learnt how to analyse and make improvements when I felt I needed to. For example, I took an over the shoulder shot of the character of ‘Sarah’ looking at her laptop screen. Due to the beam of light coming off the laptop, I wasn’t fully able to see the content displayed, therefore, I took the decision to retake the shot in order to improve the animatic. For the trailer, I would improve upon my judgement of the length of shots. On one shot, the length of the shot was 0.5 seconds, too quick for the Facebook notification sound effect to play fully. This is something I recognised during the editing process and wanted to improve on before I start the trailer. The order of the shots is something I’d work on also. From the feedback I took into account from my questionnaire, one person wrote that I needed to reveal less of the storyline, making it obvious to the audience the predictability of the trailer. During the making of the animatic, I am more aware of the mise-en-scene of each shot. Some shots for the animatic were taken at school e.g. the shot of ‘Sarah’ and ‘Jake’ taking a selfie. This is something I am going to improve on and make sure that I have thought about the location beforehand. I feel the mise-en-scene of each shot tells a story in itself, such as images on a wall of someone’s bedroom highlighting their memories, or even the lighting etc. Question Ten
- 15. Question Twelve I have contributed to the making of the animatic in many ways. I became a character in the shots involving ‘Katie’ and had chance to take the shots myself using a camera. I developed my skills by doing so from last year, attempting to capture props in the background e.g. a laptop. During the editing process, I researched into different sound effects and soundtracks that would mold well the animatic. I also used a software I haven’t previously used, ‘Adobe Premiere’, and explored the different options featured e.g. experimenting with transitions and learning how to trim sounds and move them across the timeline etc. I have also created a billing block for ‘Disconnected’ the film and used advanced skills on ‘Adobe InDesign’ to create it to feature at the end of the animatic. With the experience I have had during the animatic process, I am going to make sure I am organized enough to focus on improving and perfecting any shots I take, any billing blocks I create and any acting I participate in.