A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ANIMATIC PROCESS OF MY

GROUP’S FILM TRAILER.

1. Define what an animatic is and what its function is.An animatic is a preliminary version of a movie, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a soundtrack. Its function is to visually see if the plot works with the props, location camera shots etc. from this you are able to determine what doesn’t work and what needs to be changed before finalising it into a film trailer.

2. Explain the process of an animatic and how it works.You first begin by creating a storyboard this helps to show you how all your ideas look on paper, from this you can organise the shots together by changing the order and layout of each shot to make sure it has the right fluency to it. The next step was to organise our shooting schedule this is where we looked at all our free and came up with times that we could all go to our location and film together, we had to make sure that we had all our props, make-up and costumes ready for each shot that we needed so we were able to bunch together the shots that required those specific props etc. We then had to choose actors that we believed would fit our characters best and were reliable people. However our schedule didn’t always turn out the same as we couldn’t rely on the weather being good, we had to postpone a couple of shoots due to the rain, but when we were able to take photos we had to consider what camera angles would complement the shot best, we did this by taking numerous shots of the same picture from all different angles this was so that we had a variety to choose between. Our group did play around with the shots adding a couple where we think were necessary to add to the effect. The next stage was to put these shots into the editing suite, this was the first time we had seen the shots all put together and could determine how successful they looked together, we discussed the plot while editing, this was where we chose a soundtrack that highlighted our trailer best, this was also where we changed the majority of our plot as we moved the shots around and cut some out that weren’t needed. This made us become familiar with the equipment in the editing suite and we completed our finished animatic on Tuesday 11th December.

3. How did you create and develop the narrative of your animatic, post your original storyboard on your blog and discuss how you moved from deciding on this to making the animatic.Our group began by taking all three of our individual plots and merged them together, to complete one plot that we all had input in. The narrative first changed when we began taking photos as we noticed some of the shots didn’t make sense, this was where we cut some shots out as we believed it gave away too much of the plot and did not create a code of enigma which we wanted. The benefits of having a storyboard is that you have a structure to follow when you are taking the photos instead of getting lost with some shots as all our ideas would be jumbled up.

4. Evaluate your experience during the actual making of your animatic.We used our storyboard to organise our shots by looking at the camera angles to see what looked best with each shot, it also help to bunch all our shots that were in the same location together which helped a lot. Altogether we went on 11 different shoots at 3 different locations (classroom, woods, and lake) we had one costume change for the character Emily from being normal to the possessed version of her, we chose to film in those locations as we believed they would reflect our shots the best from our storyboard. To choose our characters we had to figure out what we wanted our characters to be perceived, we did this by giving each character a different personality, going by this we chose Amy to play the quite, vulnerable one who would be Garin girlfriend, Tom to play the loud, outgoing character, Garin to play the brave/heroic male(Jack) Lucy to play the little sister Emily as she would be able to switch the character quickly, we chose these specific actors/actresses as they all fit into the ages of our target audience and we believed they suitable as they had similar personalities to the characters. As we were taking the shots we decided to add a couple more shots of the 3 girls looking lonely as that would introduce a possible red-herring, we also revised the camera angles during each photo shoot, this helped to improve the timing of each shot taken, The only shot that we were unable to take was the one where Emily clambers out of the lake this was due to health and safety and the fact that it was too cold for her to be able to do it safely.

5. During the editing process how did you construct your animatic?

We constructed our animatic in the editing suite by cutting the shots that we thought were unnecessary and added transitions such as the fade to black and the flash effect where we decided looked best, by adding the inter titles and directing to shots into the correct places by doing this it helped to improve our overall skills and gave us an vision to know what looks best in a film trailer.

6. How did you choose the length of shots/transitions etc.

We chose the lengths of our shots and transitions by following the estimated timing made on our storyboard, although we did change a couple of the timings as when we were taking the shots we realised that the length of some were ridiculous, so we shortened a couple of scenes to make them more dramatic instead of dragging on.

7. Discuss your choice of titles and the use of font and style to create meaning.

We discussed what we thought should be included in our inter titles carefully as we wanted to give the audience enough information but still remain the code of enigma, when we were looking over our titles we realised that we had too many, we did this by comparing it to real film trailers, therefore we decided to take one out. We went online to download a free font as the fonts in the editing suite didn’t look as good as we hoped, so we downloaded a scratchy font instead and added it into our animatic as a jpeg image and we believe it would create more meaning and link our whole animatic together.

8. Evaluate your choice of soundtrack music, how does it affect the mood of your film trailer and the pace of your editing?

The choice we made for our soundtrack was pretty easy as we looked over our shots and researched psychological thriller looking at the soundtracks they used and reflected that into our animatic, keeping this in mind we decided to use a chilling, airy music mostly string instruments as it set the mood of our film well, leaving the audience feeling scared and nervous, the soundtrack affected the pace of editing as when the music hit its climax we would have to mirror the shots by making them quick, sharp cuts making it more dramatic.

9. How does your completed animatic appeal to your chosen target audience?

Our completed animatic appeals to our target audience (ages 17-30 mixed gender) as it’s about a group of friends who go camping to celebrate the end of summer, this tends to be when the majority of the teenagers go camping making the trailer more relatable to them, It appeals to females as it focuses on the romance between Amy and Jack attracting a wider range of viewers.

10. What would you change/ improve before you begin making your actual moving image trailer?

Before we begin making our actual moving trailer we are going to change a lot of our plot such as the location as we were originally going to set it in the woods whereas now we have decided to use a house instead as it’s easy to access and we thought that camping in the woods was very stereotypical for a thriller/horror. The basis of our plot is going to stay the same but now we are going to focus on the obsessive relationship Emily has with her brother and what happened in her past to make her become this way (abusive father, the brother stood up for her) We decided to change our trailer as it revealed to much of plot and wasn’t very imaginative with the story, we believe our new plot will work a lot better and fir in our genre of psychological thriller as it has the USP of the obsessive relationship which is peculiar for a sister to have towards her brother.

11. Choose 5 key images from your completed animatic to post on your blog and evaluate how they make meaning for your target audience.

I chose this particular shot as it shows that someone has been killed, but are left with the question of who it is. It makes the audience feel compassion for the victim who has been murdered as well as creating an intellectual puzzle for them to work out.

This shot makes the audience wonder how she has become this way and is she going to attack anyone, this will make them want to watch further to see what will unfold.

This shot was intentionally distorted to make the audience wonder it is, I believe that this is a particularly good shot as it not only makes the audience fearful of the character Emily but also questions who she is looking at and if that person will survive.

The meaning of this shot to the audience is that you must stay strong and stick together through everything. It also emphasises the love these to have for each other, the fact that they will be there for each other; this targets the females of the audience who like to watch romance.

This shot suggests that there has been conflict within the friendships; this will intrigue the audience to know why they have argued and what has happened to make them break such a strong friendship.

12. Consider your role during this process and how you will contribute to the moving image trailer.

My role during this process was to organise things such as when we were going to take shots, what props we will need and I had to drive to the locations. I believe this will come in handy when we are filming our moving trailer as we will need to ensure that our timing is correct so that we are able to produce and complete our trailer to a high standard, I will also contribute my ideas when we create our storyboard and plot again with the corrections we have made.