An animatic is a preliminary version of a film, or in my
case, a film trailer. This is done through shooting scenes from a storyboard,
and adding the soundtrack to make it visual. It could be considered a template
for the film or film trailer.
The process of an animatic is relatively simple. I started off with a storyboard for my product. Our storyboard was 5 sheets of A3
paper, which we eventually had to cut down to 3 as we had too much. As we went through our work and did revisions on what we
needed and what we didn't, as some of our work we had too much of.
After the storyboard is complete, and revisions have been made, you must put paper ideas to visual structure. You must do this by making a shooting schedule, where you take shots of your storyboard in person. This is an example of us using our storyboard and putting it into animatic.
This is a picture of a scene where Cecilia gives the baby to her father as she goes away to a Catholic school.
This is an example of putting our storyboard into animatic, ready for our final product.
The final part of the animatic is adding a soundtrack and editing it. We edited it by showing any flashbacks for the film trailer in black and white, and present day in colour. We also added non-diegetic music over it, with three different soundtracks to enhance a creepy feeling. We then added diegetic sound to our product so we could visualise it ready for our trailer, and see if it worked ready for final product. We decided what we were going to say after we made our own script:
This is part of it.
Our narrative relatively stayed the same as we decided from the beginning, with very few changes. However, we did want to take out certain parts in the storyboard. This is for different reasons such as it was either too much time being taken up, or it was too structured. this is a list of our revisions.
- We found that our storyboard was relatively long, so we all went through it and took certain scenes out of the animatic, so we could then follow the animatic trailer from the storyboard.
- We took out the scene of the doctor going to work and speaking to his wife about his new job. We felt it was too structured and time consuming.
- We took out scenes of a patient being injected with a needle after an episode he has. We did this as it was time consuming and we thought of other ideas to show the insanity in the asylum with less timing. We also found it could be a health and safety issue.
- We also took out any visual scenes or implications of killings, and instead used another patient being dragged down a corridor, and the doctor being taken by the boy in a mask when he wasn't looking. We did this because we didn't want to show too much blood or gore as it may imply that the film was a horror genre instead of a psychological thriller.
We used our storyboard as a process of creating our shooting schedule. We did this by first of all figuring out what characters we needed together on specific days. We found some difficulties in the animatic process however, as when we were planning to shoot, one of our lead characters wasn't well enough to shoot. We then had to use another character as the boy, but it wasn't too hard as we were using a mask for these shots. Another problem we had was the original actor for Cecilia didn't come in for another shooting day at the train station, but we decided to use Jess from our group to do that part for the animatic. Other than this, however, our shooting schedule was organised well and we completed everything we needed to.
We had five different days for shooting, and altogether it took eight hours to finish all the shots we needed. We did not expect it to take so long, so now we are prepared for our shooting schedule for our final film trailer product.
We used two different locations: the asylum, and the train station.
Our main shots were in the asylum, and we used the train station for Cecilia to give the baby over to her father.
We used a set of props also:
Tray with bottles on it [for medicinal scene]
Shirt and tie for doctor's part; white shirt and black skirt with nurse hat for Cecilia's part; nun's outfit for Cecilia's part; white shirt and black trousers for boys part
Paper documents for the scenes where Cecilia's father/Head of the Asylum throws it off the table, and then the doctor finds it
Cross necklace to show the father giving it to Cecilia to represent the religious side
Baby doll for the scene where Cecilia gives her baby over to her father
Blade for the cutting scene
Saw for the part where the boy drags a patient down the hallway
We discussed our possible actors by how we wanted to represent them. We wanted Cecilia to be blonde and look innocent.
We wanted the boy to have a baby-ish look to him, whilst still looking sinister when he could.
We wanted the father to look assertive but also be able to have an angry streak him in for the argument scene.
The doctor we then wanted someone who looked smart.
There weren't too many revisions as we knew what we had to do after making revisions of our storyboard. However, we did add a jumpy scene, where the doctor gets taken, and an creepy scene where the boy drags the patient down the hall. There were no shots we were unable to do, as we improvised with whatwe had for our animatic. We were unable, however, to show the scene where the nun Cecilia is smuggled in by the doctor. This was because we were under a strict time frame and we were unable to do it in time. However, we feel this is a key scene and we definitely want to include it within our film trailer product.
The scenes we added with the jumpy scene and scary scene were creatively added, as we explored the location a bit further and found extra rooms, so we decided to use these to our advantage. This is such as using the Head of the Asylum in front of the stained glass window to represent the religious context and the father's anger towards the psychiatrist.
During the editing process we constructed our animatic by making some of the storyline structured so it was not too difficult to understand, but we then mixed a lot of the scenes up so the narrative was not in a linear order so it would leave more questions in the code of enigma. We then got our photos in order, and added our soundtrack on that we got for free from a free website. Once that was structured, we added transitions in and our intertitles. Then, we added our voice overs.
We chose the length of shots and transitions by watching it repeatedly to see which transitions fitted best, and how long the shots should last according to our script, and then by how long it looked best fitted. We found we used a lot of fading out transition as it created the questions of what is going to happen next in that scene? Our trailer lasted 2 minutes 22 seconds. We felt this was a good timing for our trailer as it is a typical timing for a psychological thriller to last. We also found some shots lasted than we predicted. This was particularly because we left out our key scene of the doctor smuggling the nun back into the asylum, so we extended the shots. However, when it comes to our real product we will change the amount of time for these shots.
We came up with our "Enclosed" title to suggest that the asylum "enclosed" mysterious secrets and an evil past. This was clearly shown with the minimum of locations we used, to show the title referred to the asylum. The font we chose for this title was used as it was quite sketchy, which described the film and the asylum as a whole. We used this same font for our production name "CutThroat Pictures", which represented the genre of our film. We gave this font a blood red colour also on a black background, to show it was a threatening and scary film. We also had the intertitles of "When your home is an asylum..." which left the viewers on a cliff hanger to carry on watching, and then added on "Who do you trust?". This was done to show nobody could be trusted in this building, and trust is scarce whilst being in this asylum. We also found this gave a code of enigma too, which is "what secrets will be uncovered?" or "what secrets are enclosed in this asylum?"
We were really pleased with our choice of soundtrack for both animatic and our film trailer final product. It started off slow and creepy, which we found most psychological thrillers do. Then, when our disruption of equilibrium happens with the rape scene, the music is fast paced with violins and joined by a guitar, which makes the film trailer tense and worrying. This sets a faster pace of our editing.
Whilst making our final product, I will improve on a lot of things. These consist of:
Time frame
- I will work on this so there is more time planned if needed, and also for any disruptions, such as actors being off ill. I will do this by organising better schedules with specific scenes that need to be done on that day, making our schedule more organised and structured.
Structure
- I will try to make more questions for the audience in our film trailer, enhancing the codes of enigma. I will do this so I can raise questions where they have to think "What just happened in that trailer?" and "What's going to happen now?" so the audience doesn't understand the film trailer and what's going on in it, making them want to find out and watch it.
Key Images:
1) This is a key image for our animatic as it is the assault scene. This is a key image as we had to deal with this part of the trailer in a very delicate and sensitive way, so we didn't show any details, but only implied it. This meets our target audience as we wanted our audience to be able to have sympathy for Cecilia in the trailer, and throughout the trailer want our audience to feel that things are bad in this asylum, also being able to represent the state of asylum's in earlier years, showing they can not be nice places. This is part of the flashback.
2) This is another part of a flashback. I felt this is a key image as it shows the film has a religious background, which is usually linked with supernatural happenings. This shows us breaking the stereotype of religion being used in a good way, but instead we have used it in a sinister way, by showing the father has used religion to his power and his wants, rather than in a good and helpful way, which religion is represented as. We have also shown the stereotype of men overpowering women, as the father's hand is raised above Cecilia's, which we wanted to represent the idea of the father thinking he was "above" her, as he hands her the religious necklace. This would reach our target audience as we wanted both a female and male audience, and the connection between both genders is a main topic within our story, as we wanted to represent stereotypes of genders, making both genders in the audience understand the stereotype.
3) This is a key image as it is of present day, and represents the Head of the Asylum being angry and shouting. We wanted to have this key image as we wanted to show the audience that the asylum was under control of someone aggressive and with a temper. We did this to appeal to an audience so they could relate to a possible over-protective father at the age range we were targeting.
4) This is a key image as it is one of the images at the beginning of the trailer where the doctor knocks the door to enter the asylum, and then as the trailer ends it zooms out of the asylum with the door shutting. We did this to target an audience who like psychological thrillers, as the closing of the door represents our idea of secrets being locked away in an asylum, and it dares the audience to come and find out what secrets are enclosed.
5) This is the final key image. This is because it is part of the jumpy scene at the end, and it represents our psychological thriller, as one of our main protagonists is being taken by someone in a mask, which raises the audience's question of who is behind the mask? It reaches to our audience also as the doctor is presented as a young doctor of 20-23, which is part of our age range target audience.
In the group we all participated in similar tasks, but took control of other tasks. We all took part in the shooting schedules, and taking the pictures, and having some kind of acting part within the film, even if it was a little or big scene. However, we all took responsibility of other tasks. I have a big role in organising the script, and sorting out intertitles which I have produced on PowerPoint ready for our last finished product. I also kept track of our revisions and our shooting schedule timings, showing an organiser of our schedule. Harri had a big role in creating the storyboard, and did a lot of the editing, as he is artistic. Jess then had a the role of casting, organising the shooting schedule with actors, and came up with the narrative of the story, as she is creative. With all of us being able to contribute to different parts of the film animatic, we were able to complete a successful animatic product. If we had done everything together, however, we would have struggled to make enough time to complete it all, so we had certain roles. We will continue to use these roles to our advantage for our cinematic version, whilst having individual roles along with group interaction roles, such as taking pictures and organising the rooms to fit our needs.
