9)
Watched an awesome tutorial type video…Glenn Keane…space version of the little mermaid. The guy drew different beats of the story, the most important moments. He made it up as he went. Kind of like our pre-production assignment…we had the initial story, but then fleshed it out through discussion and little sketches. We had a lot of ideas that we discarded but a couple stuck and so far, it’s working. This whole course makes me wonder who is actually responsible for the images in features. For example, Disney’s Atlantis has a whoooooooooole bunch o reoccuring designs…that basically identify a culture. There are artifects all over the place, must have been a bitch to try and unify the design. But while these artifects are story elements, that is, they would have been described in the script, their function is so visual that a concept artist’s idea of what it looked like would effect the story due to that design’s particular functionality. There are these ancient lying machines in Atlantis. Where to start? They ended up being metallic fish that hovered and flew kind of like a jetski. But who could write that and get what they envisioned?
Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration.
Sand animation please…….

I just can’t keep my eyes open in the photoshop tutorials, the ones where the gu painting is sped up……I think its so boring because the guy is talking and telling you what he’s doing when we can see exactly what he’s doing. It’s like watching an entire movie where everything you see is narrated exactly as you see it. That kind of exposition is PAINFUL.

Also I’m not very experienced with photoshop. I find I learn better when I just play around with it, because I can’t see what tools or buttons or what purpose each of them has from the video. I’m still crap at photoshop but I’ve been playing around for concept design and it’s alright for getting some overall sense……you can tell what I MEANT to draw, haha.

Pretty sure I am going to end up a broke independent filmmaker...following the rules and plans annoys me. Can I take your order please?

Working in groups is hard. I don’t like being responsible for someone else’s mark. But then, I guess, in the industry, you’re responsible for thousands in investments…..? Better come up with a good story folks, and quick. I am good with coming up with decent stuff quickly. But I want to be able to come up with great stuff in collaboration and with planning and structure……….aaaaaaah structure! At least I am good at having-no-sleep.

Animatic: I’m having trouble trying to picture the geograhy of the area in my head? I know the general landscape features of Colorado to work with, but the script is confusing me as to how the different locations are placed in regards to each other. I can’t figure out how far away the quarry is, and whether the hill Jimy’s dad disappears behind is the same hill that the house is at the bottom of. They’re looking at the hill when they’re out on the porch – if it was the same hill then their house would be facing the bottom of a hill which doesn’t make sense. The script just keeps calling it the ‘hill’…….it needs a name. “Extra-terrestrial territory”….lame.

Re-read the script for our animatic. Found some essential details I’d missed/forgotten and made notes. It’s set in Colorado so I searched up the Colorado mountains on Google image search. No wonder they were so specific about which moutains – they’re very unique. The snow falls n a certain way and there are millions of this one type of tree that turns yellow/orange and breaks up the whole landscape. I’m going to try and capture that in my storyboards, intead of sticking with the boring cliché idea in my head of what ‘mountains’ look like. Most things don’t look how you think they do.

when falling – walking or running, constant falling

PRE-PRODUCTION
script is up

-scissors
-magic tape
-pencil
-green, red, blue, purple pencil
purple=shadows
green=same as
blue=roughs
red=re-used

FIELD GUIDES help with final line quality
LAYOUT OUTS- separate layers
-character layout
-BG layout-overlaying/underlying

Held cell- objects which will eventually move but are still atm
Match lines=
-eye direction
-give character room to move
-screen space in the direction of the eye
-need it clear-in a close up, you wan to keep looking at the characters eyes
BEWARE CONVERGING LINES
try not to have background lines touching character
ESPECIALLY do not have background line through the eyes. draws attention away from eyes


CONTINUITY
-hook up/ match cuts
-LAYOUT ROUGHS-blue

Re-pegging
CLEAN UP SECRET
-look further ahead than actually drawing
-eye leads pencil

Lecture

Magic Window – black around panel
SCAN- drift in

Lower Horizon Line for power
Transitions
Two ways – editing (cross dissolves)
- design hook up
Associate shots with each other eg
(cut to bart) vs (bart in scene hook up)
use for cutting on actioneg cutting and out
cutsare a violent act
transitions- physical location of sets eg
bart looks throuhwindow attreehouse then out to treehouse interior

FOCUS
in shots, what is the real purpose?
eg loneliness


COMPOSITION
-making shots more dynamic and less boring
Repetition eg telephhone pols
foreground/midground/background/depth
repetition of same size shapes in distance relation

ANGLES
BIPAK background
lower horizon line

notes

Pre-production learning journal

Script breakdown

1) Read Script, director pitch
2) Marking up script – Prop breakdown (colour coding system)
better to underline than to highlight
colour code the script elements then complete the breakdown
CAST=Red (speaking parts)
EXTRAS=Yellow (silent bits)
EXTRAS=Green (atmosphere)
STUNTS=Orange
SPECIAL EFFECTS=Blue
SOUND EFFECTS=Brown
VEHICLES/ANIMALS=Pink
PROPS=Purple
WARDROBE=Circled
MAKE UP & HAIR=Asterix*
PRODUCTION NOTES=Underline

Sound effects are important! EG monster design depends on the sound it would make – eg a big roar may need a big mouth to create it.
3) Script Breakdown

Information from each scene on different page for concept artist
Standard:
YELLOW- Exterior Day
WHITE – Interior Day
GREEN – Exterior Night
BLUE – Interior Night

Breakdown Stationary
Header>>
1 Date prepared
2 Production name
3 Scene/sequence no.
4 Scene/sequence name
5 What is to be designe or storyboarded
6 Description of main action
7 Breakdown/page no.
8 INT or EXT
9 DAY or NIGHT

Shot Breakdown>> essntial to expansion on desciption

www.blogger.com
conceptart.org – satori fx
www.imsdb.com
Framing…use figures to balance composition

DVD – Techniques of Dusso
Perspective-pointers
Priary Pointers – basic framework
Secondry point
push eye into picture
Maurice nobel

Week 7

Hello hello.
Due to having no internet at home, my last what, 5? posts are on paper floating around in my room somewhere. They will reammerge soon and be posted up here.....eventually everything in my room reammerges.

Right now I'm re-reading the script for the animatic. It's weird how sometimes, when you read a script over. you notice so much more. (Sometimes, it all blurs into a mush.) Just taking notes.

I'm excited about the next assignment, because it's fine art woohoo!!! I'm imagining this amazing book at the end, glossy and coloured and spiral bound....beautiful. we still need to pick a tale. It will be easier once this next week is over. How does it get so busy???
It will be interesting working in a group 1) as no one has any time, let alone meeting-up time 2) we'll have to listen to other people 3) we'll not only be responsible for ourselves. This kind of thing makes me feel like being an experimental animator, haha...I am not a very organised person, and this screams
"ORGANISE!!!!"

The storyboards for the animatic.....when i look over them, you have to think about the overall flow of the sequence, every action, every scene, every panel, and then every background layout and movement within the frame that will need to be taken into account with layout...every specific effects the whole. If something is off, then even if an audience member can't articulate exactly whats wrong with the composition, it will look wrong and feel wrong and distance the audience. This is not brechtian theatre....that is a bad thing.

I was talking about colour value at midnight with my housemate (who's doing the film course). The fact that you don't need to percieve a particular colour, only value, to understand a form doesn't devalue colour to me at all. Black and white pictures are sometimes even clearer than a colour version. But it is interesting to me because that means value's purpose is to dictate form and communicate physical features......which means colour has an entirely different purpose, an entirely different perception. Colour dictates MEANING. Poisonous animals are brightly coloured. Evil guys wear dark suits. I was watching the movie Garage Days last week, and in one long shot, you see the character Kate standing in front of her bathroom mirror, leaning on the sink, looking at herself in the mirror. In the film, you could say it's showing her being introverted or thinking deeply.....but about what? The shot by itself has no particular meaning. But as I watched the camera truck out, I keep thinking "What's with the long red skirt?"
It wasn't out of place or strange......but I knew it meant something. a scene or two later you find out she's pregnant. If that skirt had been green, or blue, it would not have made any sense....we would believe she's pregnant because the film stated it, but it wouldn't feel right...it would seem out of the blue (haha).
I love this film grammar stuff.
Animation fun.

Week 2 learning journal :)