Production Blog #4

So, finally, I get to share my first animatic! As I was working on finishing the thumbnails and rough animatic stuff, I found this animation to the same song! It has the perfect vibe for what i'm going for, the fast pace, random shots and great movement when it is shown. It also has the same idea I wanted to incorporate, that being the symbolism of predator and prey. I also took the time to try and cut down the audio to save time and to keep the repetition of the song pretty low. It now consists of Kevin’s intro, Canterbury’s intro and then the fight. So roughly about 25%, 25% and 50%. This cut about 30 or 40 seconds of audio, so I may go back and cut more. 

I’ve found that the thing I struggle with right now is coming up with a shot idea or angle I want to use, only for me to not know where to put it. As I’ve mentioned in class, I hate wasting my time, so it’s hard for me to purposefully just draw stuff to get the idea down. I usually will just keep it in my brain and build on it before finally doodling it. It’s just kinda how I’ve always made art, from drawings to writing. I get so self-conscious about my sprouting ideas that I’d much rather keep them to myself until I’m forced to show them. Though, of course, I can’t do that here. Though, to get me and everyone else thinking, I decided to share the video I found. It’s probably the closest thing to what I want to make, so… yeah.

To stop stalling, here’s the animatic! I realized that for what I wanted to make, a more abstract piece, I would have to let some of the story go, along with large chunks of the song. This left me with a product much closer to my inner vision, but still flawed. It’s my first abstract film, so breaking out of the ordinary film shots and ways of story-telling is still new to me. Though, this is more closely visioned after what I want, so hopefully I will get some helpful critiques!

There are still a few things I would like to fix or edit, but I just didn’t have any ideas at the time to make them better. I especially want to pack more action into the ending and perhaps be more blunt with my imagery. I also want to make sure the ending kiss works as a shocking yet, semi-understandable thing? I’m not quite sure yet.

Here’s the half-completed clean-up of the animatic with two added shots of the characters together, experiencing a ‘high’ moment.