#11 First Film Animatics – BAD NEWS
Our first film animatic activity was an eye-opening experience for me. In terms of creating a storyboard, I was always imagining sketches but never still photos. Taking screenshots of the subject in the setting and camera angle rather than drawing a sketch makes it even easier to visualise what the scene would look like. Doing the film animatic helped us visualise better with the setting that we were going to film later on.
Being able to experiment and discuss with my partner about trying different angles to create various small narratives or intentions in the scene helped developed us to be better filmmakers by expanding our horizons. Furthermore, this assisted me and made my work rate more effective when it comes to shooting time because we would already have a clear plan of what angles we want to film from what we visualised in the animatics. Not only did I do this activity in class, but I also started utilising animatics in my own personal work. Using the animatic as my storyboard when creating my short skits or my Instagram Reels, I realised that I feel more organised and in control of what I want to produce rather than having that feeling of panic of not getting the shot right, or when I forget to record a shot because I didn’t write it down or I accidentally skipped it.
Moreover, with using stills, I was encouraged to use sound effects, music and recorded dialogue to pair with the screenshots when constructing the scene. In doing so, this has made me more confident in trying out FOLEY. Adding effects to the music to create an environment of a teenage bedroom with music coming out of the speakers (for BAD NEWS) helped evolved our silent screenshots, to a moving storyboard… an animatic! Throughout this activity, I understood that using the right sound plays a vital role in the scene. This activity has made me more intricate to what shots and sound I would use to create what kind of mood/intention of the scene.
#14 Next Stage Shooting Exercise – BAD NEWS
For this exercise, the key was collaboration and patience. While creating the marked up script & animatic was a 2-person task, being able to share ideas and work as a 4-person group was definitely a positive shift. With more members, we were able to collaboratively input our thoughts and more ideas amongst each other and decide which would be used. Although we were in lockdown, it pushed us to work around the constraints that we faced by producing the best piece we could create over Zoom that we were proud of. By working over Zoom, it helped us to be adaptive, for example by doing a virtual location scout with our members to identify the best locations for the piece.
Although we’ve learnt about the camera angles, head space and eye-lines, Paul’s advice of “don’t roll the camera until you tear up” really stuck to us when doing the exercise. During the activity, we were directing and experimenting with every angle possible that we could think of but not rolling the cameras yet. I’d say that it’d take us a good minute or two before we decide which shot we would want to roll with, and it would involve lots of back-and-forth discussions between the group. We were rather picky with our shots, and that really made us appreciate each shot that went into the piece; rather than filming for the sake of filming, we treated the shots as “masterpieces”.
In addition, having to shoot more deliberately made me step back and brainstorm more carefully with the shots we were going to do, as well as its purpose. Rather than cutting a shot for cutting, I was more meticulous this time with each cut by having that thought of “why cut here” mentality and what could it add to the mood or purpose of the scene. It made us open our eyes and look around our surroundings to see what we could incorporate.