Film Studies and Cinematography - Project 1
Mac 28th, 2022 - Jul 4th, 2022 (Week 1 - Week 14)
Rusydina Fazlin Athirah Binti Fauzi
Film Studies and Cinematography
Week 1 [March 29th, 2022]
Lectures / Exercises & Project 1
INSTRUCTIONS
Lectures
Week 1 - Films studies and Cinematography Briefing
March 28th, 2022
What animator are you?
Are you a story based-animator or an idea/styled one, maybe an animator that illustrates their animations through mood and emotion?
Mr. Martin introduced the class to the different styles that animation had to offer. It was intriguing enough that he had some of the students introduce themselves and elaborate on their liking behind choosing a specialization as big as animation and visual effects and the answers given by the students completely gave me insights into how there are different approaches to animation and it's different animation styles.
The way I put myself into an animation style of choice is mostly to execute most of the fictional stories I'd write or at times re-write and turn them into an animation.
Moreover, Mr. Martin showed us a few visual examples of the mentioned animation styles;
Story-based animation
The cap it all off, the story had a surprising but touching twist to it.
The first noticeable element of this animation was the style, it had a very scratchy, ominous, and dark start to it. But it also told a story, in ways where there could be multiple interpretations of it; war was also a noticeable fundamental in the visual. There was an emotion, it took thinking when watching the video, I'd say it was a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions in attempts to understand what the animator wanted to tell in their animation and at the end of it was just a 'click' that went off in mind.
Idea/style based animation
Understanding and interpreting the character was at war with a being that was similar to them.
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Exercise 1
Mood/emotion-based animation
The Song for Rain (2012), created by Zheng Yawen
Finally, emotions and a mood in animation, in my opinion, would be such important elements to it. Why? Because it really pulls and attracts a viewer into what they're about to watch, it really makes you invested in even a simple 2D animation. As seen above, the animation has an innocence to it, with a boy out on a rainy day jumping into puddles and having an umbrella in one hand. He stumbles upon a fox in a human world, since it was heavily pouring, this fox was trying to collect water in a small plastic bag that had a small hole at the bottom of it. These set off on an adventure and a bond in attempts to wait for the rainwater to fill up in an umbrella that was turned upside down. Through it all, the boy bid his farewell to the fox that returned home to water his dying flowers. The next day, the boy went to visit his new friend he was not there and so it made him upset until he returned home to see his umbrella and a beautiful yellow flower.
The story definitely had emotion to it, at the end it would make a viewer feel warm or may be touched. Because it definitely made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and the story had such a way to portray innocence or maybe imagination, something a person can relate to; memories they've maybe had when they were much younger.
The types of "Animation Styles" as careers?
When it comes to jobs in animation, Mr. Martin made sure to let us know there there are many known careers that consist of animation and animators like;
- Motion Graphic
- Games/game developments
- Virtual Reality
... and many more you can imagine or be explored soon.
Well-Known Animators
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| 'Your Name Movie Poster' by Makoto Shinkai |
In regards to animation being a career and would there be hope for it? Makoto Shinkai is known for its Japanese film written and directed film titled 'Your Name' that even won the best screenplay and best animation. It is the highest-grossing Japanese film globally of all time. The animator studied Japanese literature and got a degree in the following course, he later then worked for a game company and made his debut animation short: "She & her cat".
She & her cat by Makoto Shinkai
Even with a simple story-based visual, that was done by Shinkai himself he managed to make himself known.
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| 'Distant Star' by Mikoto Shinkai |
Shinkai then moved on to another film titled 'Distant Star' after his debut, spending 7 months single-handedly working on 25 minutes of sci-fi animation. Since then Shinkai was known as "The New Miyazaki."
So in all understanding, when it comes to animation and however we want to foresee it with our ideas there is certainly hope in a career with this kind of specialization.
Cinematography within animation
What was interesting is how the animation would cut back to cinematography in certain visual entertainment projects. From what Mr. Martin elaborated animation can always be in its simplest form and yet it can still pull people into what is being displayed on the screen.
A good prime example is a short animation that was shared during class today titled 'Car park' by birdbox studio:
The animation didn't even have to have a morally or deep message to it. It was a funny, short, entertaining visual that pulled me in as a viewer to see what would even happen next.
In simpler words:
"In conjunction with animation fundamentals, the module enhances/strengthens students’ knowledge of the relationship between story and theme, composition and emotion; to produce better animation works."
and to the statement above the animation below could potray exaggerations of our mentality and emotions towards a particular situation or event:
COFFIN - Animation Short Film 2020 - GOBELINS
Conceptual to Art Direction (Projects)
Next up we moved into a brief of our projects that will teach us all about the conceptual to Art Direction!
The first project (idea development) consisted of students to:
- develop short original animation stories with Pixar story development methodology.
- processes are to be blogged with reflections.
We'd begin with developing those short original animated stories with:
- verbal personal memories of our own
- write a synopsis that emphasizes the theme
- story structure
- character design
Cutting into the second project (pitch bible) which regards the first project, where we'll start producing a pitch bible of our original short animation story according to a generic format.
Lastly, the final project (20-second animation trailer) begins within the 9th week of this course, where the students present the animatic of their stories with their selected shots.
The animation should be:
- maximum 20 seconds long
- fully animated
- emphasizes the character movements
- mise en scene
- art direction
All the projects that we'll be doing along the course of 14 weeks will give us insights into the conceptual to art direction.
The genre and style of animation are of course the important elements of it, different choices of the genre will most likely affect the:
- character design
- world design
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| Figure 1.1 - Elements of Film Theory |
In other words, when it comes to genres in animation it's limitless. Any form in character design whether an original or even a former character designed by other artists can have its own genre or style to it.
Week 2 - Animation: Idea to Production
April 5th, 2022
An introduction to storytelling
Storytellers! I am a storyteller, we all are storytellers in our own ways.
-and that's what we got up to in this week's class, from Pixar's way of storytelling lessons to elaborating our favorite animation stories which I'll get into in a moment but first allow me to convey my understanding of this week's lesson.
Firstly we indulged in animation and its pre-production phases which are:
- Idea Development
- Script & Storyboarding
- Character Design
- Production Design
The points stated above are the fundamentals of pre-production phases and how much they play a significant role in animation and telling a story in that animation.
Moving into the first point:
1. Idea Development
There are many different ways to develop ideas in many different aspects of storytelling, executing a project, drawings,... anything you name it always has an idea behind it. But in today's lesson, Mr. Martin narrowed it down to Pixar's way of storytelling in regards to ideating.
Pixar’s idea development:
"Begins with personal experience, and develops into a story that is universal."
2. Script & Storyboarding
Secondly, we start to revel in the works of 'script and storyboarding'. All it honestly is is a written story or a transcript turned into a visual to start and make animating processes much more convenient.
I found a few storyboards and scripts to potray as visual prime examples seen below:
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| Pixar's 'Up' storyboard |
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| Disney's 'Mulan' storyboard |
As you can see, storyboards don't exactly have to be a perfect drawing as long as the written story or a script tells the story visually it can develop from then on.
3. Character Design
Character design is one of the most fun design activities to do, whether it'd be for a story or just to have a character to visually look up to. I'd say I've designed a few characters here and there and it plays an important role in a story, without a character what story is there to tell.
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| Disney's Aladdin's Jasmin Character Design |
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| Character Design to production |
There are of course other character design references other than the ones I picked above, of course. When it comes to character design, many artists approach it in their own convenient way. Although there is still hope for beginners to start out character design in these general points:
- Begin from shape
- Sketch thumbnail
- Mark the best ones
- Draw them larger
- Create variants
(gain more insight on CD//Link provided by Mr. Martin)
4. Production Design
Lastly, let's take a look at production design. The production design is a complete visual or "look" to your animation.
It has all the elements stated and elaborated above into one whole complete story, along with its characters, world design, and the overall story that you will tell in a form of animation.
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| Disney's Cinderella (1950) storyboard + production design |
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| Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation by Hans Bacher (book cover) |
Pointing my understanding of the 4 sub-topics of pre-production phases, they would be the core element in developing further processes of what animation could be and will be.
Animation: Production phrases
Moving into the production aspect of animation, after the core elements of starting out an animation. Production is set into motion and they have their phrases:
- Pilot in the making
- Full production mode
1. Pilot
A 'pilot' in animation is a way to kickstart an animation series, it's actually a way to start out any kind of series in the world of cinematography.
"Pilots are where the funny character described in the pitch bible must actually prove to be funny."
One of the many known animation series called 'The Amazing World of Gumball' distributed by Cartoon Network and created by Benjamin Bocquelet, had its pilot episode too. I stumbled upon the pilot episode when I was just scrolling through my youtube feed probably years ago.
-And the animation style that 'TAWOG' is known to have now still had its similarity and of course, its significance to the series today.
Gumball 1min animation test by Benjamin Bocquelet
It was really mind-blowing to see a test animation seen above by the creator of an all-time popular series to this day. The differences of course changed a lot over the years even though the release of series when was first released.
2. Full production
I'd like to believe that full production is the completed and full release of an animation/animation series. In regards to my last example on the animated series 'The Amazing World of Gumball', the distributors' Cartoon Network released the trailer for the series, seen below:
Comparing the test-out animation to the released trailer, it was clear that there was a whole team that worked and developed the style into its completion.
Pixar's Storytelling Lessons
Let's take a look now at the next topic that we dived into for this week, most of the lessons were thought through videos that Mr. Martin shared with the class.
1. We are Storytellers
In the video seen above, we learned that everyone is a storyteller even if you think you won't have original ideas about what a story or what your story could be.
- "Animation storyteller: They DRAW"
- "Most of their stories original from their own"
- "Only you see the world this way"
I learned and understood that a story to tell can always come from memory as boring as you feel it can be, that's when ideas of making it extravagant with as much exaggeration you want to put into it as long as it doesn't stray from its roots.
2. Your favorite stories
The second lesson in storytelling is to bring up a favorite story that really makes us reflect on things, it gives off the same relation when it comes to memories or an event that happens. Every single event that happens will be a memory and we reflect on it; leading to a story to tell, something that could reflect universally too.
- "A good story grabs the audience’s emotion, engages your mind"
- "Take you somewhere else"
- "Audiences reflect on their life"
3. What if
Ah, yes. In the world of "what if's", Pixar's 3rd lesson into story lesson gave insights on a story or memory that we have in mind but to alter it imagination wise.
- "The story begins with a simple idea"
- "World with characters"
- "Drive the imagination, shut down the logic part of the brain."
- "What you wanted to say"
Just like what I stated above, a simple idea to a story but telling it in a way where there's excitement, suspension something that you can least expect but to of course not go astray from the idea of what the plot of the story is.
4. Advice for storytellers
Lastly, Pixar's lessons on storytelling capped it off with a few pieces of advice for storytellers to turn their ideas into visuals one day:
- "Identify something emotionally"
- "Keep working on it, changing it"
- "Remember the initial feeling/idea"
What are your favorite stories?
Now with all the lessons out the way, time to diverse into an animation movie that really had me reflect on my emotions towards it. Before it was my turn, my classmates shared their insights on their chosen or favorite animated movie/story/short and again it was such an interesting enlightening moment to know everyone's perspectives on how animations made them feel and think.
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| DreamWorks How to Train Your Dragon 1,2 & 3 movie posters |
How to Train your Dragon is a film that came out in 2010 by one of its well-known distributes DreamWorks, Universal Pictures, and Paramount. Which turned out to become a trilogy in the early year of 2019, with its flourishing animation style, beautiful and breath-taking scenarios, and world design, of course, but the characters that developed their characteristics and personality throughout the last two films were something that definitely made me feel like I grew up with them.
But! That's beside the point, I'm here to elaborate on the heavy emotion or some kind of reflection that I felt when I first diverse myself into the world of Vikings and dragons: How to Train Your Dragon (2010).
I had the opportunity to watch this film on the big screens when it first came out in theaters and it was one of the most vivid memories that I had, I was beyond immersed with its animation, storytelling, the characters, and the whole concept of living with DRAGONS!?
The story tells a tale of a Viking boy that lived in a village that despised dragons, but he was different from his other vicious townspeople he felt sympathy for those scaley creatures that he didn't even know he had until he befriended one. Being that he felt left out by his townspeople and even his father that kills dragons, he couldn't have the heart to do it. When he managed to catch a dragon on the night of the dragon's raid, unknowingly and coming to a realization that the dragon he had captured fell into what seemed like a pit in the woods he learned that the dragon was injured, he wanted to kill it but decided to let the dragon go and dragons being dragons their first instinct would be to kill their enemies, but it did not. These two characters, a boy and a dragon had no reason to kill one another even if enemies.
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| Hiccup earning Toothless' trust |
The boy learned that this dragon was injured, preventing it from flying away. Hiccup the name of this protagonist, spends his time on many contraptions to help his townspeople fight off the dragons much conveniently but would always be turned down. So he decided to build a prosthetic wing to help this dragon out. There were many touching and silly moments where these two characters would have to work with one another to meet their desires, soon enough they gained each other's trust.
I'd say one of the most breathtaking scenes in the movie was when these two characters needed one another and it really shows, with the contraption that Hiccup built to help Toothless fly that can only be functional when Hiccup is over the dragon.
The theme that played in the background of this scene made it even more magical! The suspense that is held within this one scene and the celebration whenever the characters exclaimed their success in flying this dragon with his own contraptions, it really made me feel as if I was flying in the sky on a dragon! There were rollercoasters of emotions, it never fails to put a smile on my face and give me excitement and adrenaline whenever this scene comes on.
To cap this all off, this movie had its morals in many different interpretations. To me, there was a sense of growing up, making your own decisions, not being afraid to stand apart from the crowd, and heart-warming dynamics in a friendship between two beings that aren't even the same species but emotionally they were the same.
Week 3 - Ideation
April 12th, 2022
Refine and clarify the central idea
When it comes to planning out a story an idea to progress your story is one of the most important parts. Regarding the previous lessons, we've had 2 weeks ago. Mr. Martin had the class take a deeper look into 'Ideation'.
The first thing that Mr. Martin had us indulge in before an in-depth lesson and elaboration into ideation was the definition of what a 'concept statement' is and how writing it would go about. Explaining what the project was about and exploring a working title for it.
Alternatively what I understood from what a concept statement can support the story is, is that starting it off in an abstract manner can lead to interpretations.
A prime example is a song that Mr. Martin had the class listen to:
"While John Lennon wrote the song SUN KING on Abbey road, he wanted it to sound 'refreshing and zesty and thirst-quenching - you know, like an Orange'."
Refine and clarify the central idea
Next, we moved into the story concepts and story premises. The purpose behind these two key sentences is a way for unique identification of a story idea and a way to focus on a part of the idea to later form a much more detailed premise.
In simpler words, there wasn't any kind of plot to a story you came up with or thought about of your own. It was only the idea, that is what your story concept is. There are many ways of looking into this specific topic and many to cover for better understanding. (A link that was provided by Mr. Martin during his lecture on story concepts can be found here.)
Theory: 3-act structure
Moving into the theory of stories where the 3-act structure could benefit in telling a tale. From my outlook on it, I had no clue that this structure existed until a previous study on narratives I had back in an early year of learning narratives. I was quite intrigued and blown away that this structure could actually assist me in my many story writing, although I'd always had this instinct in understanding that there's always an introduction to a story and then there's its conflict or climax later the ending it either with suspense or one that's happy.
I mean it wasn't wrong for me to begin my works of a story that way, but looking into it now with guidance there could be potential for better writing on my end with my stories.
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| Figure 1.2 - Theory of 3-act structure in stories/plots |
The figure above supports a person's understanding of a story's flow, visually. An action with an event happens throughout the story, which makes it a story. Plot on the other hand is what happened throughout that story being told and how it happened.
Referring back to a short-animated film that Mr. Martin had the class watch back in week 1.
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| Figure 1.3 - The Song for Rain (2012), created by Zheng Yawen, wide shot scene |
The story above of one of the scenes displayed in the animated short is a prime example of a reference to use when pointing out the story and plot.
Mr.Martin thought us in plotting what happened through the animation, which leads to the plot and the story being the idea of this beautiful animated short film.
STORY: AND THEN
- Rainy day
- Boy meets fox
- Fox collecting rainwater with leaking plastic
- Tries to buy a jar but got turned down, due to the lack of money to buy the jar
- Travel the town collect rainwater with an umbrella
- Plays hopscotch
- Fox goes home
- Watering dying flowers
- The boy looks for the fox the next day
- Goes home disappointed
- Find paw’s print on the ground
- Find his umbrella and flower
From the points that stated the IDEA of the animated film's story, it inter-relates itself to the plot.
PLOT: BECAUSE OF THAT
Boy finds fox’s plastic bag leaking, because of that
He tries to buy a jar but fails, because of that:
Fox discovers the use of an upside-down umbrella to collect rainwater, because of that:
They are bonded by traveling around the town, because of that (the following past events):
They play hopscotch.
They collect enough water, because of that:
Fox goes home to water its dying flowers.
The boy looks for the fox the next day but goes home disappointed, because of that:
The boy is so happy to find out the fox has visited.
Each idea from a story leads to a reason as to what started it, and it continues to flow from an idea throughout the story, hence the plot.
Something that Mr. Martin acknowledge about story ideas and plots when it came to short and long films is how.
- A short story can be impactful without a strong plot, with fewer characters.
- A long story relies heavily on a well-thought-out plotline.
-with all the idea of a story and determining the plot as it goes and flows down a path, visual storytelling was our next input in this week's lesson.
Visual storytelling
Starting off a story and telling it visually adds the whole magic into play, what way to tell a story with really well-thought-out and beautifully designed visuals. But other than pretty visuals visual storytelling acts as a way to communicate information with the support of visual content.
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| Figure 1.4 - 3-act structure in a form of an appealing visual |
The 3 act structure seen above portrays my way of understanding the 3-act structure way better since different people learn and gain their insights differently, some are visual learners and some maybe find it easy to learn through their interpretations amongst these ways of learning there are many more out there.
-but coming back to visual storytelling, supposedly the best way to put it is to:
- REMOVE explanatory texts.
- FRAME the story like a Camera.
Since our lessons that Mr. Martin has been giving us for the past few weeks on everything that is to know about storytelling if Pixar wasn't mentioned it wouldn't be a complete lesson, and from Mt. Maartin's interpretation of these topics Pixar has theirs too.
The video below elaborates on Pixar's interpretation of how the structure of a story to a plot foregoes.
From the video that we all watched in class, a few highlights the videos based on my understanding were initially looked upon. it only started from a joke, a joke with structure and making sure to end it off with its punchline. In a way, it structures a joke or a story up until its conclusion, tying up each part or stage or acts throughout a telling of a tale.
Another thing I noticed was how an idea from a story that Pixar distributed: Finding Dory is how much planning and re-planning went into the production. Scenes were re-implemented and rearranged to appeal to audiences more. This leads to our following lesson of this week.
Story Beats
Before even mentioning 'story beats', we were introduced to what a story spine is by doing story spine, story beats are created. Story beats assist stories in inflowing into their important parts.
- Story beat: Most important moment of the story.
- Story beats show WHAT is happening.
My understanding of what a story beat provides for a story is how it helps an idea flow into another idea, one happening leads to another and they all connect to each other which adds understanding and interpretation to a story.
The Perfect Human (1967) by Jorgen
Our final lesson for this week was to indulge in a short film titled 'the perfect human' by Jorgen Leth. The purpose of this movie review conducted by Mr. Martin was to tie the teachings for our ideation progress in our first project. The movie above was self-explanatory, it describes what a human is b the end of the movie, Mr. Martin had each student work on abstract art and point out keywords from the movie in a form of a mind map.
The perfect human by John Leth, My abstract art:
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After reviewing the short film above, my abstract art elaborated on the emotions throughout the film. There were actions being displayed in the scene of what humans are capable of, but other than humans moving about they too feel emotions. Therefore results in my abstract art above, portraying happiness that forms in swirls indicating how it can melt into another emotion whether it'd be sadness or anger, or even disgust which is represented by green spikes and the yellow and blue gradient in the background.
The spikes of green and blue portray a sudden sadness that forms after happiness starts to fade and the black and gray circles are a form of depression that forms of floats around within a human. The blue and pink lines that stretch across the canvas refer to the characters in the film; one man and one woman. Finally, the hexagons colored in shades of pink portray the love between two human beings.
It was an interesting sub-topic to indulge in, we learned a lot about interpretations and a human's emotion and how many of my classmates perceive their interpretation of abstract art towards the film.
Other than abstract art, Mr. Martin assigned us to work on pointing out the keywords that were mentioned in the film. The mind map below were my findings of keywords and phrases that I remembered and was intrigued with throughout the film.
Perfect Human (mind map):
As you can see, the keywords above are the topics that humans associate with and the phrases that I picked up were one the only things that pried open my interest in this film, it talked about how a human felt in the end. How a joy in a human can pass by so quickly, how our emotions take longer than we expect to understand. This correlates to our first project, ideation and ideating integrating our strong feelings to tell a story of our own through our animated 20-second trailer.
Week 4 - Consultation Week
April 19th, 2022
There were no lectures other than a consultation regarding our story beats and thumbnail sketches exercise for project 1.
Week 5 - Pitch Bible
[All of Week 5's lectures can be referred to in the 2nd project blog post.]
Exercises
Exercise 1
March 29th, 2022
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Tasks for week 1:
- watch the first season of 'Love, Death & Robots' to discuss 3 of your personal favorites of the episodes in terms:
- genre
- style
- art direction
- etc
- expressing memories
- 1A: think of a memory that you remember vividly. It should be a memory that comes easily to you.
- 1B: why do you think you remember this so well? Try connecting one or more emotions to this memory.
- 1C: next we have to try and express our memory and emotion in some way. The goal is to get it out of your head.
- In conclusion: Verbally explaining a memory to a person we know or are close to, can make you feel that certain emotion.
Thoughts and analysis on the animation 'Love, Death & Robots'.
My thoughts on the recommended animation series by Mr. Martin were actually quite intrigued in most of the episodes in that one season. What I do have to acknowledge for the sake of other people's judgment IS that the content of entertainment contains profanity and is most possibly rated (18+). So viewer discretion is advised.
Other than that, the purpose that Mr. Martin had us watch the series is to analyze how there are multiple animation styles that range from 3D animation to 2D animation and even a hybrid of 2D and 3D animation.
My opinion on the storylines in some of the animation episodes was intriguing and at times would pull me in. They definitely had many interpretations to them but at times some of the animations and storylines that play out, in my opinion, do not fit in with the animation.
Overall, I think it was a fun little way for Mr. Martin to introduce storytelling and the variety of animation styles to us, students, for the first week in Film studies and Cinematography.
Expressing memories (exercise)
Next up on this week's exercise is to indulge in the memories that made me feel a certain way. I was meant to record it in a way where I was telling a story, the audio below is a story about how I learned
how to understand and accept that not many good things last forever and it's okay.
Exercise 2
April 5th, 2022
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Tasks for week 2:
- prepare material (verbal memories)
- 2 mood boards (characters & world design)
- analyze verbal memory
- fill out the ideation document provided by Mr. Martin
The ideation document is a guide to working on our upcoming project which is a pitch bible. But throughout the process of it, it kept my ideas for my short story animated trailer nice, organized, and neat. Since throughout this project's process, there were a few back and forth's since ideas tend to alter, but overall the requirements are met up with and concluded in the ideation document provided by Mr. Martin.
Tasks for week 3:
- Visual shots for 20 seconds trailer (write out/sketch up visuals of a short film from verbal memory)
- Decide shots for the final project 20 seconds teaser (5-7 shots)
- Thumbnail sketches with short descriptions. (submitted through; Google slides/doc. 1 or 2 shots per page)
- Story beats
- bullet points of events in chronological order (submitted through; Google docs)
Firstly, we'll look into the story beats and the chosen shots (thumbnail sketches) that I planned out for my short animated story. My initial idea for the short animated story was to base it completely on my verbal memory which can be referred to in the document below:
Story Beats (Draft):
Unfortunately, the drafted thumbnail sketches were replaced by newer sketches I sketched out. But the chosen shots of my previous sketches can be referred to in this google drive folder.
Tasks for week 4 (after consultation & discussion) [Final and refined]:
- To summarize story beats, the idea of one woman and one cat is to be implemented in memory idea. (an alteration)
- Rearrange and sketch a few new thumbnail sketches to match up refined and summarised story beats.
Materials preparation for Animation Trailer (Project 1)
Most of the materials and guides to help progress in the first project were all provided by Mr. Martin in a google document where we work on the:
- Title
- Theme
- Transcript (verbal recorded memory)
- Abstract Image
- Music (a music/song that compliments the Mood/theme)
- Identify the emotion felt, elaborate on the feeling
- Elaborate on the experience, state, and revelation/insight/epiphany
- Main Character (reference)
- 2 mind maps (1. characters emotion, 2. assumption/realization)
- 2 mood boards (1. character design, 2. world design)
- 2 sketches [1. character (with description) 2. the key moment of the memory (character in her/his world)]
- Concept statement
I plan to further explain each point above in a much more detailed elaboration of my chosen title, theme,... etc. Until Mr. Martin's feedback on my former decisions in the upcoming class, it shall remain.
April 19th, 2022
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After a consultation session with Mr. Martin, he gave quite a number of acknowledgments having to do with the way I presented my drafted story beats and thumbnail sketches. He mentioned how the story doesn't necessarily have to be similar to my verbal memory, at least that is the way I perceived my feedback, and right then and there, an idea sparked in my mind and I got onto it.
The document below will re-elaborate an altered version of my verbal memory:
To support my story beats, the thumbnail sketches below are the chosen shots that will be emphasized in the final project of this model which is the 20-second animated trailer to my short story.
Thumbnail sketches (altered version):
Tasks for week 5 (wrapping up project 1):
- wrap up project 1 (ideation document)
- rough sketches of the character with descriptions (how the character should be)
- rough sketches of the key moments (in the character's world)
- synopsis
- logline
The final few parts of filling up the ideation, the document were to add a synopsis and a logline which leads into our 5th lesson all about pitch bibles (that will be referred to in another blog post regarding project 2). The document below displays all the complete ideas that will be set into our final production of the 20-second animated trailer.
Completely ideation document:
Reflection
April 27th, 2022
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Throughout the experiences and lessons that were carried out during the first project in this module, I genuinely never thought I'd be enlightened when it came to filming studies and cinematography. It may seem only a few weeks into it, but it was still interesting to indulge in the lessons that were somewhat psychologically and emotionally driven.
What I was able to learn during our first project was the way ideation works behind storytelling, which transitions into how we want to tell our story through a visual or through many visuals. Thus it concludes itself into a 20-second animated trailer that would be the final project of this module. Other than that, the lessons and methods taught are beneficial in general, I'm a sucker for writing stories so a lot that was going on and learned throughout our first project definitely piqued my interest in it.
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