"The Deprived" | The Animatic w/ Analysis

"The Deprived" | The Animatic and it's Analysis

In this post you will find the final antimatic for my trailer of "The Deprived". Please do note some, I believe three, of the shots have mysteriously vanished from the display. So I would like to apologise for the bizarre shot absences. 

Also this is just the antimatic, it does not hold the final shots, the final mise-en-scene etc. The soundtrack although jolty will feature in some parts of the final piece. 

 



A Critical Analysis of the Animatic Process

The animatic is the most up to date and professional document after the actual trailer. It profiles every shot in order, with time, dialogue and soundtrack. It is created to help assist the filming process. The process of making the animatic can be a long and strenuous duration. It involves stills of the shots you would eventually wish to include in the trailer. They would only be draft images, but would give you the vague image of how it would eventually look. The animatic involves the still, the draft soundtrack, the intertitles and the dialogue.

Unlike the storyboard the animatic uses actual photos rather than just drawn pictures, this means more time and effort is required to ensure the right shot, angle, lighting etc is properly produced. The transition was slow at first in adapting from pictures to photos, it was hard because it required more time over every shot, making the whole process a lot longer and prepared. The storyboard it ensure we had a schedule, not in chronological, but in locational order. We shared the shoot in three major groups, each with different locational backdrops. This ensured we could get the bulk of the shooting done whilst saving valuable time, this meant our time management was used wisely. The various locations seen in the animatic don’t really depict the desolate nature that would be seen in the final product, this was to save time and maximise the time to edit, which we felt would be the most lengthy part of the procedure. In the animatic it depicted one major place of which we will be showing in the final product. It portrayed a desolate building with a mountain backdrop with a ruined wheat field. This was a setting that was fairly close and fairly easy to access, and was a place we immediately knew we wanted to incorporate. It mixes in with our mise-en-scene very well and will require very little fixing to eliminate anything that would interfere with the correct mise-en-scene. So this is the ideal shooting setting, which will eventually be colliding with the misty mountains of the Blorenge Mountain and desolate buildings and factories. We have checked for our health and safety authorisations and we are ready to shoot.

The props were often donated to the group via our peers, but they were chosen in consideration with our mise-en-scene. In the animatic we as a group made the decision early on to minimalise the focus on props as we believed it would limitise the time for editing. However in the final version of the trailer we would have focus on the bloodied watch, which would have stopped at 7:13 symbolising the religious and superstitious aspects and combining them to make the trailer more compelling for the viewer. We would also highlight the various backpacks of the characters. This would symbolise the level of devolution humanity has undergone, and it would show that survival is paramount now, contrasting to our comforts rather than needs. The actors were fellow members of the group which helped to speed up the shooting process, as we didn’t need to go out asking for help. When actually shooting the animatic we decided in the heat of the movement to change the order of some shots in order. For example we were shooting at a particular location and whilst considering the structure of the animatic we as a group chose to change a few things. Notable examples consist of the fire shot with the feet shots. I feel this made the structure and feel of the animatic more professional as the trailer seemed more progressive and suspenseful.

The length of the shots did dramatically vary throughout the animatic process as we actually witnessed the longevity of every shot, again something we couldn’t experience when using the storyboard. One example is the panning shot of the two boys tied sitting against the camera, which we first expected to last for approximately four seconds, but once we discussed at experienced the shot at four seconds we as a group decided the audience needed to be exposed to the poignant shot for a longer time. So the animatic opened our eyes to things such as timing that we couldn’t have realised using just the storyboard. Adding to this were the various transitions. We as a group focused on the idea of slow fade outs predominantly to black, which would symbolise the decent to metaphorical darkness for humanity, but upon testing the various different fade ins and outs we had improvised, and in my opinion bettered our original ideas on transition.

The actual construction process was quite long, arguably the longest was the shoot. This was because we were worried at the start of the quality of the shots, we needed an assurance that it was primarily a planning document and a very early rough draft of the final product, one we had this verification we moved forward. We began with the shooting getting the shots with three different groups and shoots, meaning the time was on our side. Once we knew we had the shots we went about their order, length and transitions. At first it was very hard to adapt to having to this to every single shot. This required time and made us feel satisfied we allowed each other more time to get to know the editing software. In this situation we essentially allocated roles once in the suite, one’s job was to always refer back to the storyboard, giving a fellow group member at the computer the information on the shot order, length and transition. Whilst others worked in the music suite making a suitable soundtrack that would give a realistic mood and atmosphere to the animatic. These allocations ensured we all knew our responsibilities and what we all had to do, this allowed to meet the final deadline with a reasonably respectful animatic.

The soundtrack we believed had to make in constant co-ordination with the shots, otherwise there was a possibility the two wouldn’t match or be on time. So, with this in mind, we constructed the two different formulas at the same time, making the whole process slower but I believe making the project fairly more successful. It was in most part one of the hardest parts of the whole process. We found it near impossible to export the soundtrack to a suitable format to be able to use on the animatic, making the process a lot slower then we initially planned, but once we had learned the exporting process I feel the project prospered.
The use of inter-titles were a very late addition to the animatic. Although we had good idea all along of the contents of the various inter-titles we planned to include in the animatic. We knew that we wanted our various taglines that we wished to include on our individual posters, an example is “SURVIVAL IS INSTINCT”. This I feel portrays the most very basic human instinct in a setting which all characters base their actions on, survival. The wording is separated in three inter-titles engrossing the audience making them ask “what comes next?” adding to the animatic’s code of enigma. The speed and the use of the inter-titles increases as the pace of the animatic quickens, this allowed us to sandwich the inter-titles against quick, aggressive, flash-like shots which portray the ugly side of humanity. We felt this made the animatic more hard-hitting for the viewer and showed our target audience was of a 25-35 age group.

The soundtrack was most probably the most fun part of the entire process as yet. In my group we do have a few musicians we allowed the group to benefit from their talents and I feel the soundtrack does show this. The slow guitar riff at the beginning is performed by fellow group member Will Kearse, who we believed had the ability to produce something good enough for the animatic and eventually the final trailer. Here he produces a grim and slightly unsettling mood which accompanies the images brilliantly, which I also feel gives off a atmosphere to the audience informing them of the bleak nature of the project. Will and I did investigate other post-apocalyptic media projects and their soundtracks and we believe Will’s piece was inspired by the motion picture “The Road” and the Naughty Dog game “The Last of Us”. These inspirations are fellow post-apocalypse projects which informed us that they were the correct inspirations to have. The animatic however doesn’t possess all of the eventual soundtrack we plan to have ready for the final trailer, we plan to have several other extracts included in the trailer. These vary from gun shots sound-effects to shuddering thumps which would assist very quick cuts.

The pace of the animatic I feel will eventual be seen to mirror the pace of the final trailer, at 1:46 it goes with the modern codes and conventions of other trailers in terms of its length and narrative style. The pace itself however was something I was very controlling over. At a very early stage I always knew I wanted it to start slow and get gradually get faster and faster and eventually plateau at a very slow ending. This came to me after watching the trailer for the low budget French film “Our Day Will Come”. It still stands in my opinion as having a very strong influence on the animatic and I hope this will continue on through to the final product. The trailer featured very quick flashes of shots, out of order with the film’s timeline which depict severe anarchy and expands the trailer’s code of enigma making the trailer more memorable to those watching it, and this is something I have been very desperate in trying to integrate into our project with a section dedicated various shots lasting half a second making the pace very fast and energetic.

I feel the animatic identifies its target audience through its bleak and unforgiving narrative. The animatic isn’t a comedy and this identified through the various intertitles such as “when they come…will you run…or fight?” Which clearly identifies the project as a sub-genre of survival, it also hints at strong violence, but doesn’t show it, these hints I feel will help to expose the target audience of a higher age group.

Improvements I feel would consist of the length of time of the shoot, I feel it would need to dramatically decrease as I feel it did damage the time for editing, although it was small, it wasn’t small enough and I feel it did damage the quality of the project. I feel in the real trailer we would need to be far more professional as a group in finishing the shoot quicker and then giving us even more time to get equipped with the software, as I feel none of us had the time before hand to be confident in the editing phase. Also the amount of soundtrack on the actual animatic as I feel the soundtrack alone is enough to influence an audience member to go and see the trailer and if we had expanded on our current extracts I feel it would have greatly benefitted the animatic making it sound and feel more professional and this is something we will have to incorporate in our final project. This leads on to quite possibly my biggest regret and that is the lack of mise-en-scene in the shots. Yes the animatic is a planning document, but I feel it would greatly improve the look of it if we had put more effort in making the shots look much more like they were from a post-apocalyptic world. This would however have taken much more time than we had, but this is something that we have to involve in our final trailer.

To evaluate my role in the whole process makes me believe I took a commanding creative role in the group, I feel I took charge of the shoots and any creative changes involving shot angles, lengths or transitions. I ensured my desire for the animatic’s quick pace influenced the final animatic, and I feel I ensured we all were aware of shoots via social media and text message meaning we all knew the times and locations. I feel I took an active role in the creative sense of the soundtrack, making sure Will had a second opinion before finally involving it in the animatic, this was essential to ensure Will was happy with his work. I was present at every shoot taking most of the pictures as Will, Lloyd and Charlotte performed in front of the camera. This meant I had the responsibility of the angle, lighting and style of most shots. This is a role I feel comfortable with in going through into the final product but I do feel I need to be more in touch with the editing software so I can offer help and not have to rely on others to do the editing as I offer advice. So overall I am happy with my efforts, but as I said improvements will have to be made to improve the final trailer.