Analysis of Animatic

Analysis of my Animatic

The animatic acts as a mock-up piece for my final movie trailer. It features a sequence of images constructed by myself that are similar to the moving shots that will be captured when creating the final product. Its function is to allow me to visualise the trailer before constructing it with movie pictures. This can help me identify any shots that may be too hard to recreate. The animatic can also feature animation and sound effects to emphasise the mood or genre of the movie. A soundtrack can also be added to accompany the pace of the trailer.

My group and I went to various locations to capture our shots, differentiating times and location to establish the different scenes.

Initially, the plot developed from my personal plot, focusing on a group of teens that venture into the woods on spring break. When we were designated groups within the class, our ideas were similar and we began to interpret our ideas to achieve a group decision and ultimately, a new plot.

The narrative to our animatic isn’t as clear as I hoped it to be, as we seem to be missing a few shots. These shots happened to be the more iconic shots, showing the antagonist of the plot, and revealing the action and excitement within the story.

Within the making of our animatic, we encountered a few problems: one of them being the amount of time we had outside of lessons that we could all get together. This was a huge problem at first, as we didn’t have a date where we were all free at the same time. We ended up completing different parts of the animatic, designating different roles for each member of the group.

We used the storyboard we created to visualise the images we would later take. We split the story board into groups of shots that could be captured all at once, regarding location, time of day and actors. Altogether, there were around 5 different shoots that we went on, to achieve the shots we needed. This included 3 different locations and a number of props such as tents, cars etc. Each shoot was tweaked in ways that would make the experience easier for us all: for example, we initially wanted it to be filmed in the evening, when it would be fairly dark but this would generate a lot of problems: one being that the quality of the film would be distort.

The cast of our film are diverse in many ways, allowing them to be easily identified. We simply matched up the personalities and looks to the characters in the trailer. The characters we created by interpreting our own ideas and from analysing other existing media.

During the editing process of the animatic, we used the media suite in the school premises. We used Adobe Premiere Elements 12 to edit the clips and merge them together. The timing of the shots was chosen to accompany the type of soundtrack that would be used – to maintain pace with the soundtrack. We also, looked at existing products to see how they were created.

The intertitles were created by myself, using Adobe Photoshop 12. I chose an appropriate font, reflecting on the genre and location, being Celtic Wales. They include dark colour schemes and simple but effective animation that make them unique. This was done is Adobe Flash Professional.

The soundtrack we decided to go for was tricky to interpret into the pace of the trailer. It had no solid beat and just consisted of monk chants. Although it was relevant to the style of the film, it needed a more clean beat to work with. I ended up choosing one that sounded better but didn’t include any chants. For the final product, I will combine the two tracks to create a better soundtrack.

It’s hard to say how my completed animatic appeals to my target audience as its not yet complete. However, what we have done reflects on the horror genre – mainly shown in the soundtrack and the intertitles. Although I am satisfied with what we’ve done, if I were to recreate the animatic I would most certainly change a lot of things: The length of the shots could be increased as it’s hard to visualise what is happening, leaving the viewer confused as to what’s happening. This could be hard to match the pace of the soundtrack and to keep it with the beat. On that note, I would also alter the soundtrack, to the actual pace of the plot.

Also, the locations we visited to take the photos were ideal for the plot and added to the mise-en-scene, but we found that we needed go somewhere more local. This would make it easier to get the whole group together

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During the creation of the animatic, we encountered a few problems with getting the whole group together to film. This was due to absences in school or clashes within our timetables, giving us less time to work and, ultimately, time to edit the clips. In my opinion, the animatic isn’t as good as I imagined. There could be a lot of improvements. Also, we didn’t manage to get it onto a memory stick, due to technical difficulties in the media suite. As a result of this problem, I created my own animatic, and sent it to the group via social media over the holidays. It included the images we had already captured but wasn’t fully complete as I worked on it on my own.

My role within the process of creating the animatic was to produce the intertitles – focusing on the font, style, colour schemes, and creating the branding for the movie trailer (logo design etc.) I also took matters into my own hands, to produce the second animatic as we encountered a few problems with obtaining the first. When we come to creating the official trailer, I will be sure to get the team organised so we can get the filming done as soon as possible as I felt we slacked a bit on the animatic.

List of Improvements:

·         Make a start with the filming sooner to allow us more time to film and edit etc.

·         Organise time better – maybe create a schedule

·         Get the group together better, allowing us to perform more shoots

·         Divide time for editing and filming – allowing us to keep up to date on both techniques

·         Designate different roles for each member to allow us to work faster