Animatic

importance of storboarding

storyboarding is a major part of filming it gives the director a platform to start to put his idea into a feature film, in this process the director usually sits down with a sortyboard editor and mocks up the whole film to create a rough look which develpoes into a more develpoed look in the form of an animatic which is the storyboard that moves and has sound and music much like the final film will. Some directors will not take so much time on storyboarding which when it comes to filming a director will spend time trying to get a shot right and when things go wrong there is no back up which is an exspensive thing to do when the actors are getting paid waiting for the director to find his next shot. the main thing about storyboarding is preporation it gives a plan to go out and film and acts as a backup when things dont go to plan, another use of storyboarding is it gives the crew a chance to think about what locations will there be ,what props ,what times, when to shoot e.c.t and most importantly it gives the director that rare chance to sit in the audiences seats and witness what the movie comes across like.
A director that takes the time to produce storyboards and finds them very usefull is M.Night Shyamalan director of film like "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs" he referce to storyboarding as "making the film before making the film" it shows that point of being the audience and giving a plan for filming to be true and shows how important stoyboards are to any film or television programe even adverts.

continuity task

this is my continuity task in tilted "oh my god a goat"
the main idea of this short sequence was to create and film a discussion between two people showing a person walking in and a person leaving after saying a few lines of dialog. to achieve a good graded level 2 sequence it must flow and have continuity.
this project gave us an opportunity to see what our filming skills were like and start on some practical however by doing this it meant we could improve our skills by getting feedback and when it comes to filming our final piece we would be at a higher standard of ability to produce a good quality final piece.

improvement i could make that i picked up myself was that i did brake the 180 degrees rule after the tracking of the feet shot the camera switch to open on completely different door which broke continuity, but a positive from my work is that i thought the tracking shot of the feet worked well and also gave my sequence a shot that others did not have. as well as i tyred to

 make mine slightly funny with repetition and a few random ideas which talking to the class i think went down well, as a group things didn't go to plan and people were of ill as well as having some difficulties however we did produce a piece of work and did film some good stuff which showed we could push through and create some sort of work. incidentally the group has changed and we work much better creating new ideas and producing much better work.

feedback from the class and teacher. improvements i could make is adjust my framing making sure i keep the whole body in frame from start to finish as well as i must plan ahead in more detail taking into account time script and locations because location is key to sound a quite room is needed not one with lots of background noise.

overall i got a level 2 grade which was average and achieved this grade with the majority of the groupes in the class.

final storyboard

this is my final storyboard for our short opening of our thriller film titled "marked", first we mocked up a few rough shots which developed into this final draft, in our shots we wanted a slow paced dark unique look and style much like a "sin city" opening or a "watchmen" type composition. to create this effect we have a continuous slow but happy song ,acting as a sound bridge, which is the opposite of what is in the shot such as an abduction would not usually have a happy swing type track behind it, this hopefully would create there atmosphere to be even more UN nerving to the audience.

in the first shot we have our establishing shot this shows how the house is our main location and as the shot is played a dark red card floats through the letter box symbolising the moment of the house and family being "marked" by our antagonist of our film the villain. to try and portray this theme of "marked" we Incorporated symeolidgy in the form of colour as the dark red connotes a sinister and evil perception.

next we have the abduction shots of the son being taken, in this scene we had a clear vision of what we wanted the shots to look like and it was all about exciting the idea with quality drawings and filming, at the start of the scene you see a long shot tracking behind the boy walking home down a lonely road as he walks were only have diagetic music of his foot steps and the struggle as he turns to look behind him in shock this is were a non diagetic music kicks in and we move into the very slow motioned struggle of the abduction we as a group had a clear view on that the abduction must be slow and in close up shots to try and bring the audience closer and give the verisimilitude and intensity we set out to achieve in the first sketches of our idea.

next we see a ipod falling through the air in slow motion signifying the destruction of the person who has targeted this particular family this shot is repeated to give a sense of time as the ipod shows past and the shots in between our in the present time.

after the ipod we have a seres of shots showing the present time effects of this abduction on the family which gives the film depth as that the narrative has many roads to go down which is key to the opening in that we as the makers of this film can not fall into the trap of trying to show lots of action and story as it is only the first 2 minutes not a short film. so in these shots we have the mother, in a spot light shot, in a police interrogation room saying " i just wont my kids back" this shows how it is effecting the family.

the next shot is a long shot, the camera situated behind some clothing looking out in a dark field while lights flash past acting as the police looking for the teenager. a fade cut is added in each transition of every shot which keeps the pace slow and constant, after the fade cut we next see a tacking shot moving past a door way were we see the deeply effected family barley eating dinner after the abduction. at this point we decided looking back that the extract is to short and with more shots which will be the dad slamming his hand down in anger which is then cut to the ipod hitting the ground which putting the two shots together creates a graphic match and bring the extract to an end. by adding these shots it would give the scene more meaning as well as extending the time length.

finally we have our end shot of the ipod hitting the ground which then is held until rain drops hit the screen and a slight zoom is used to bring the object into a focus and then faded out to end the opening and also bring the past and present shots into one and a end.

inital ideas and final idea

as a grope we came up with a variety of ideas, the first main storyline we had was a action thriller "abduction" its main plot was two teenage friends walking home as night begins to fall a serious of pans and tracking shots would start the sequence and then build into a fast paced edit in the middle of our opening a key convention to a action thriller sub genre. As the characters were walking home in the distance possible a dark wood there would be shady characters floating about, and as the characters start to run out of options they begin to run home which ends up in a fast anti climax where they run into a ordinary man and women, this idea is a fairly good idea it has conventions of an iconic thriller but we felt it could fall into a cliche student type film so we wanted to push a more original idea which finally came to be our final idea.
our final idea is a more original complex idea with a strong narrative behind it, it is a major improvement to our last idea and a key thing we found is to create a strong storyline it is key to producing a good opening sequence so therefore we planned out a short draft narrative to give our film depth, the main plot is how a family is "Marked" ,the films title, and the plot revolves around a sociopaths obsession with this family, it starts with a son being abducted and then moves on to a montage of how it effects the family which is the main subject, how the family becomes torn apart and broken which turnes the home life very dangerous and scary. with this idea we could come up with a rough storyboard to get a further developed outline to visualise.
here is our rough draft of our first storyboard:

as you can see we planned a few shots out put them in a order and started to make some ideas,our next thought was flashbacks we thought that flash backs to present and past the present being the family's reaction and feelings and the police's involvement and the past being the abduction and this ipod falling throughout and en between the flashbacks to give it a fluent sequence, to create a sound bridge we wanted a completely contrasting song to whats going on in the shots so a happy song but not to upbeat something similar to "The Watchmen" by Zack Snyder, and the end shot of the ipod hitting the floor as the rain hits the dimming screen.

to evaluate this task i would say our group worked really well we all came up with ideas and helped create this rough storyboard, everyone had input and well all got along. i am happy with our idea i think its original and an idea with depth to it and doesn't fall into the category of cliche thriller opening however it is a physiological thriller which is a common genre of film and can be executed wrong but i feel we can do it well and create a good opening.