Over the past few weeks I have been putting together the first draft of the animatic for my final year film.
This process took me much longer than I thought (If you look at earlier blog posts you can see I was quite off with my predictions of how long this would take). For one this is due to some exhaustion I felt after the formative submissions, especially for the dissertation, and I also have been spending a lot of time working on the music video, which needs to be completed in less than a month.
But now the first draft is basically finished, and it is really helpful gathering it on a timeline because I can already see areas that I need to improve/change. For this first animatic I have been following my storyboard very closely.
I especially like the middle part, where the main character journeys through nature, encounters the moon and the trees; this part has also been very fun to draw and I look forward to animating it.
The beginning needs to be shortened and more focused, to bring across the feeling of city life being too much. Dan suggested it could be a montage of different occurrences that culminate in the shot of someone blowing smoke in the main character's face and the walls closing in on her. I like that idea, it will make it possible to play with timing more, building up suspense and hopefully making the message more clear (as well as shortening the overall length).
I will cut out the part where the main character lays down and falls asleep at the roots of the tree as it looks like she is dying...I'll think of another nice transition shot to transport her back to the bus.
There seems to be something missing in the end, as so far there is no clear resolution and it's making the point of the whole story unclear. I really like the shot of the main character remembering the 'dream', taking off her shoes and the plants growing from the street; but I think something needs to happen beforehand. Dan said that perhaps she has another 'negative city encounter', like in the beginning, but that this time she takes a deep breath, remembers the dream and actively pursues to enjoy the city nonetheless, so she takes off her shoes and plants start to sprout. I really like that idea as I think it would tie it all together nicely. I was a little bit unsure about it at first, because I didn't want this traditional story structure and for me personally the film has more than one main message, but I do understand that it might be confusing to a viewer and lose their attention if there are too many loose threads and no clear cause and effect. I hope that I manage to bring across a purposeful ending and an ambiguous one at the same time.
Dan further said that he does not think I need to include the scene with the 'eye-tree'. I agree that as it stands it is not actively adding to the narrative, but I also really do not want to cut it out. That scene basically inspired this whole film and I personally feel like the imagery of nature's eyes resting on the main character nicely contrasts the apathy of people looking only at their phones in the city. I'll need to think about a way I can tie this one in better with the narrative, so that I don't lose my audience there (although I do intent to make it so visually captivating that the audience will not even care if it actively serves the story ;D).