Animatic Research
This week, the group and myself have been working on our animatic. An animatic is basically the storyboard in motion with a soundtrack, foley noises and key edits (symbolising camera movements) added in to create a rough drawn version of what our film would look like once completed. This is applied in the modern world of film media by helping producers know what their film will look like before going to the trouble to create it, so they can alter their ideas if they so choose.
The creation of animatics started out in a very basic way, and were made by taping or filming the storyboards from which a sound editor* would come into play and create an audio track over the video footage. Many companies have shifted onto using paper drawn animatics, whereas some still use the older ways. Others have started creating their own software to make their animatics with, like a three-dimensional picture program, making things with cvolour that look a lot like comic book drawings. They make it possible to do real pans and arcs, as they are in-depth and three-dimensional.
*I have explained about the role of a sound editor somewhere in my blog!
Animatics can be tested for quality using photographs that may have been shot for something else. An animatic that's based on photography is called a photomatic, and an animatic based upon a video is called a videomatic.
However, as the companies increase their storyboard and animatic producing ways, the tests aren't as useful. The three-dimensional methods made it so photographic testing isn't used as much, as the models are hard to test with a flat two-dimensional picture.
This is an embedded example of an animatic for The World's End!
Animatic process:
In a real film production company, they wouldn't always just leave the animatic as basic drawings like our production team have had to; they often colour and computerise their images to make them look more understandable. Here is the process my group and I took to create our animatic:
- Firstly, we produced a series of simple artwork to show the composition of a scene, describing easily what happens and where etc, to give us an idea of what we're shooting.
- The same artwork is either copied or re-drawn onto a storyboard, which is a series of pictures which are all numbered and annotated. I have spoken about these in a separate post on my blog!
- Once done, the storyboard images would be put onto some sort of editing computer program (such as Final Cut) to enable the editing of the shots; such as lengthening or shortening some and to add key edits, which represent camera movements like panning.
- Then, the audio would be added over the top. We exported our animatic from Final Cut and imported it into SoundTrack Pro to make the sounds match the video. After this was complete, we then exported it our of SoundTrack Pro and imported the sound into Final Cut, putting it over the video. When the final checks were made, we then finally saved it as a completed animatic. Success!
- Once the animatic is completed, you need to make sure it all works well alongside the animatic. A good way to test this out is to get it assessed by somebody and receive feedback on what to do better or what works well and act upon it.
JARLINC's Completed Film Animatic
My group and I have been working solidly on completing our animatic, and it has took an entire week. But, now, we're finally done, and below this introduction is our completed animatic.
Our completed animatic!
Feedback:
In order to get the required feedback that we needed, we had to ask the right questions. Here are the questions we had to ask:
1) Is the narrative clear?
2) Have group framed images appropriately?
3) Have group chosen most effective shot types?
4) Is the film opening around 2 minutes in length?
5) Have the group included appropriate ident & titles?
6) Does the soundtrack effectively support/go with the images?
7) Does the animatic suggest that the group is ready for shooting pase of production?
8) Anything need to be changed or reconsidered?
Here are the responses we got back:
1) The fast paced editing and key edits was the only thing that let our animatic down, as it confused some of the viewers and made the narrative hard to follow.
2+3) The fast editing went along with the thriller genre conventions. However, the speed also makes it hard to follow.
4) The animatic is only 1:26 minutes long, however we will be adding in our production company ident, which will add on 10-15 seconds more and we hope to throw in some extra scenes or lengthen some shots to reach our goal of two minutes.
5) The opening credits need the jobs included to make it look more professional and realistic.
6) The feedback for a soundtrack was positive. They liked how it built tension up and got you right into the animatic, and we hope to take the jump-scare further and increase the effectiveness of it in our two minute film.
7) Feedback suggested we are, we just need to work on the length of our film and hit the two minute mark.
8) Lengthen the film to reach two minutes and add in jobs in opening titles.
