– Above: An animation mentioned as possible inspiration by Dylan Murphy.

Recently, I presented my work-in-progress project to the class and panelists Stayci Taylor, Smiljana Glisovic and Dylan Murphy.

Smiljana suggested that it might be interesting to look more deeply into what the affordances of animation as a medium actually would allow me to do with the screenplay, which I thought was helpful feedback.

So I decided to look into the differences between screenwriting for animation and live-action into a bit more detail to see if I can better take these points of difference and create interesting audiovisual sequences in my screenplay.

Animation is a more uniquely visual medium than live-action, for sure. To borrow an example from Jeffrey Scott, in a live-action script you can just say ‘and then the car crashes’ but in an animation script this requires more description, it needs to provide a “complete visual image” with less room for interpretation. Scott writes that the animation screenplay writer serves even more so as the director, due to this precision required. In screenwriting for feature films the writer also serves as the director in a lot of ways, by dictating tone and world and character, so I’m not sure I agree with this.

I hadn’t considered that an animation script might actually require more detail, yet I wonder if, like an director writing his own script, this detail is required as much if I am also creating the storyboards myself.

Another point I learned was that one page of an animation script is often 40 seconds of screen time rather than one minute, because of these more detailed descriptions, which is something I hadn’t considered before.

Also, generally an animation script takes much longer to complete than a live-action script, often years, and is a back and forth progress between storyboards and character designs, etc. But for this project, I will have a limited amount of time to nut out the specifics of the screenplay.

One way I could use this new knowledge, of adding more detail in the screenplay, is considering describing more carefully how the characters or objects move and exist in the fictional world. Animation is dictated by the principles of squash and stretch, and these can really enhance how the character is emoting. Exaggerating is also a good tool to use. But I want to be careful not to overdo this, as not to step away from the mature tone I want to exist in the project.

The feedback is a good reminded to make sure that I am making the most of the affordances of my chosen medium.

References:

https://www.awn.com/blog/difference-between-live-action-and-animation-writing