Over the past few weeks we have given three different assignments on storytelling and cinematography. We were given the assignments over three week, and the finishing of one would lead to the start of another. The task was simple, create a treatment/story, then make a storyboard out of it, and finally make it into an animatic. Below I will reflect on what I thought of the process and what the results where.
The Treatment
Creating an idea for a story is not that difficult. I usually have a lot of ideas for stories popping in to my head from nowhere. But when given the task to create a short story the ideas suddenly stop popping to my mind. And when I finally get an idea for a story it's either too long or too complicated or lack of entertainment value. After trying to come up with a story for a while I decided to give one of my vague ideas for a story and try to make that one work. I realized that by using some of the techniques we learned at school earlier this year I could form this idea into a story. The vague idea I had was of a robot that had lost his head and wanted it back. And using what I had learned, like that my character should always do something pursuit of a goal, while overcoming an obstacle. Combining this while trying to implement the three act story structure, my story started to take form. What I struggled with was finding a proper ending to the story. After pondering a while on how the story should end I got a suggestion from one my classmates that really worked as a punch line and I went with it. I saw my story as finished even when I knew that it could still be worked with some more. But I wanted to keep it a little open for change in the next step of the process namely the storyboarding. I'm happy with the results and I think I created a funny little story.
The clumsy robot
In a storage facility in a location unknown, a robot head sits all alone. When the light is turned on the robot wakes up, and it realizes it has no body. In another part of the storage facility the body of the robot starts to make its way around. The body soon tumbles in a stairway which he decides to walk up. On the top the stairs we meet the robot head once again. The body just walks past the head because it's facing the other way so the head cannot see its body. But just before the body walks out of the room the head can hair its body walking. The body then starts to retrace its steps, walking backwards towards the stairs. Getting closer and closer to the tip of the stairs, the body shows no signs of stopping. Eventually he takes one step too much, and is now balancing on the edge. The robot is struggling not to fall, but he can't fight it and tumbles ruining the stairs on its way down. Lying among the debris the body seems lifeless. After some careful processing in the robots head, the robot decides to make a few more attempts on connecting its body parts. The robot tries everything from a ladder to helicopter, but has no luck. In all its aggression from failing all the attempts the robot tosses a metal nut up in the air. The nut travels far up into the air before eventually hitting the robot head and making it fall. The robot head rolls to the edge and falls down. The body makes a desperate attempt catch the head, but fails as the head falls straight on its neck upside down. Before the robot can react the head is automatically screwed on upside down.
The Storyboard
Our group chose to use my idea in the storyboarding process. There was a lot up for discussion about the story but also how to best tell it in pictures. We discussed what angles to use and when and where to move the camera. It's fun to see how differently we visualize a story in our head, and how draw and present it. I found that sometimes my group members had totally different ideas for certain shots than I had. Sometimes we drew it as I saw it sometimes not, and sometimes we mixed all of our ideas. What was important for me was that the story was told in a way that the audience could understand and get the feeling what scene was suppose to tell them. I have some mixed feelings about the final result of the storyboard. That's because I think it tells the story ok and some of the shots are good, but on the contrary there is some shots I don't like and could be shot in a more creative and less dull way. I will give you some of examples what I mean below, and you can see what shots I'm talking about by reading the PDF.
This shot could be lower to the ground, and not aimed at the "corner" of the room. Maybe so low that it could be tilted upwards to set focus on where the robot is going.
Example 2: Shot #7
The robot head could be placed in the center of this shot. The camera should be closer to the head too, so that the viewer could notice the expression on the robots face.
Example 3: Shot #17
I really like this shot because of the way it first shows you the robot body arriving at the top, but with a quick zoom out it’s a whole new picture and it changes the story. I also like how it displays the distance between the body and the head, good for the storytelling.
The animatic was the final part of the process. Our final storyboard was all digital so to get it in to the animatic all we had to do was crop the images and place it into Premiere. I started working on importing the files and getting them sorted on the timeline, while the other helped me or looked for sound clips. The process of creating a good animatic requires it to played over and over again, reviewing, commenting and changing it while working on it. I felt that my group worked well on the animatic, because even dough I was the one editing the animatic, it wasn't necessary my ideas and thoughts that made it work, it was the group that made it work. Maybe we could have planned more time for this final step of the process, but I really didn't think that creating an animatic would be so time consuming, that's something to keep in mind for future planning.
The animatic we ended up with could be better in some ways. If we had more time I would like to improve the timing of the clip and added some better sound. I'm also nor sure if the music we added to the animatic really added to the storytelling or not, maybe it would had worked better with another song.
From storyboard to animatic some of the decisions and ideas can be forgotten when translating it into an animatic. I think that we managed to recreate the key shots from storyboard onto the animatic, but something that was explained by text on the storyboard may have been lost. When utilizing process of creating an animatic you can realize this problems of the story not translating or not, and I think tats something I'll keep doing for future movies.
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Who am i?
I am indeed the one and only Adrian Fjellberg. Famous for nothing... Yet!
Born in 89 in Oslo, Norway. Now I study to become a 3D artist, and I trive as a student.
