PROCESS OF STORYBOARDING TO CREATING AN ANIMATIC

Eleanor Binley

Creating the storyboard

After writing my individual plot synopsis and sharing ideas with my group we combined plots and created a solid plot for our film

trailer ‘Exposure’.

Purpose of a storyboard

A storyboard is a sequence of drawings that is used to help visualise the animation and to communicate ideas clearly. It details key events and scene changes in the animation, often

accompanied by text notes that describe what is occurring in the scene such as camera movements.

Purpose of a storyboard

A storyboard is the first opportunity for others to experience the real impression of the animation before it is furthered to the

production stage. The storyboard helps to finalise the development and the storyline is an essential stage of the

animation process. It’s also a visual reminder of the plan that is often referred back to by film makers during the film making

process to up level the scene.

Designing our storyboard

When designing our storyboard, at first we drew pictures for every part of the plot synopsis but after looking at trailers we

realised that they only show parts of the film leaving the audience and viewers in suspense and wanting to watch the film to see what happens. We then picked key and relevant moments in the plot that we thought were most important to show in the

trailer.

Is it realistic to film?

When reading through the plot synopsis we realised that we had over dramatized some parts that would not be realistic to film

e.g. the large Victorian windows, we had no access to Victorian windows and it would have been cost effective. By creating our

storyboard it allowed us to question if that scene would be realistic to create and film.

Locations in the storyboard

Due to our plot being a dark horror film we did not need a lot of locations to film in as we wanted dark backgrounds when filming to make the flash on the camera stand out more and be our only source of light, this was an advantage to creating our storyboard as we didn’t have to draw specific locations as we could decide this later on in the filming progress. Our main locations were: • A photo studio • A graveyard• A living room which at the beginning transformed into a house party

Sound within the storyboard

When creating the storyboard we weren’t able to add sound but it allowed us to start thinking about sound effects that would fit in best with that scene, for example this shot shows a set of

stairs and a door. As a group we decided that the best sound effect for this would be creaking stairs.

creaking stairs.m4a

Planning Our storyboard helped us to plan costume ideas, shot angles and locations.

Creating the animatic

We had 8 shoot schedules before completing the animatic. We each appointed one another roles during the shooting process of the animatic which made us organized as a group. My roles included; costume, make up and providing a camera and SD card.

Being organized Date/time What we need to shoot

November 26th 2016 SHOTS WITHIN THE STUDIO STORYBOARD NUMBERS 3,9,10,11, 13, 14

December 3rd 2016 SHOTS IN THE GRAVEYARDSTORYBOARD NUMBERS 5,7

December 10th 2016 SHOTS AT THE PARTY STORYBOARD NUMBERS 1,2

December 17th 2016 SHOTS WITHIN THE STUDIO STORYBOARD NUMBER 15,16,17,18,19,20,21

December 31st 2016 SHOTS WITHIN THE STUDIO STORYBOARD NUMBER 21-32

January 7th 2017 CHECKING THE SHOTS TAKEN AND PUT THEM INTO ORDER

January 14th 2017 CHECKING THE SHOTS TAKEN AND PUTTING THEM INTO ORDER

January 21st 2017 FINALISING THE SHOTS

Scheduled meetings

When planning the animatic we decided as a group that it would be important to have a regular meetings to keep each other updated on the filming progress and also to share any individual work that we had done to contribute to the group.

Audience feedback

After showing our final animatic to an audience we had positive results. They described the animatic as on edge and tense creating a fear for the main character in the trailer. We were also given positive criticism to help us improve the animatic to make our trailer more successful, this included the shot lengths being made shorter to speed up the tense atmosphere.