Critical Evaluation - Story and Film Language

PROCESS.

I began the process of creating my animatic by first writing down various ideas; I thought about an action sequence involving the age-old conflict between condiments tomato and mayo (only to be won by the superior BBQ sauce), a sad story of a the red traffic light guy wanting to reach the green traffic light guy, as well as horror set in a corn maze where a young woman is pursued by deadly crows. But in the end, I settled on a dark comedy told in the style of a children's book about a Beaver caught in an existential cycle of death and rebirth. I also structured the story based on the story arc shown to us, giving the story a large narrative drop but with a high rise, followed by an even deeper drop as Mr. Beaver's ending isn't exactly happy.

Then I designed the character of Mr. Beaver, I created a turnaround and some construction guides. I also created some expressions to test how far I could stretch Mr. Beavers features and determine whether his simple face would be able to convey enough emotion.

Next came the storyboarding, again I tried to use various techniques such as mixing up various angles and shots to guide the viewer's eye around the screen. I also aimed to use the rule of thirds as much as possible alongside some shots that utilised the triangle composition.

After cleaning up and digitally redoing the storyboard, I placed it into photoshop premiere and began creating the animatic, I added various effects such as lighting changes and zooms and movement. Additionally, I rented a microphone and added narration to complement the images and help create the children's storybook feel for the animatic.

SUCCESSES.

I believe I was able to convey the story both visually and audibly pretty well despite having difficulties with the length of the animatic. I also was able to fit in a variety of shots including close-ups, extreme close-ups, wide shots, over the shoulder, etc. I also successfully implemented some effects despite my lack of experience, I managed to create a moving close up which changed to a wide shot to display Mr. Beaver falling off a pier. I also managed to get the character to move and alter the lighting in certain shots. Arguably my best success (and failure) was when I realized my animatic was three minutes long and I had to get it down to about one and a half minutes, and I succeeded. I just condensed the rhyming death montage into a smaller shot that featured Mr. Beaver waking up various times in distress interspersed with my most well drawn death scenes.

I also think I did a decent job on recording the narration, managed to match the tone and style of a children's book author reading their work to a group of kids in a library; and by creating my own anti-echo recording booth in my bathroom, he audio quality was fairly good.

FAILURES.

The most glaring failure is that I didn't properly time the length of my animatic, it ended up being to long causing me to cut a large portion of content from the final piece. This meant it didn't entirely follow the original storyboard and it also meant I wasted time that could have been used to perfect and add more to the scenes I had left. In addition, the drawing, I'm not a particularly skilled draftsman but I could have spent more time smoothing out the lines and trying to give Mr. Beaver a more formatted and consistent appearance. I also feel that there was more I could have done audio wise, such as sound effects for the various crashes and explosions or I could have added a nursery style backing track to add ambiance.

WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY?

To begin with, I would definitely have timed the animatic better, then change the storyboards to focus less on the changes from scene to scene (the death montage) and instead focus my boards more on the changes within the scene, perhaps in the scene where there is a gas leak in the kitchen I would show the leak, show the various stages of Mr. Beaver making his tea to add tension and then the outside shot of his house exploding into flame, with various woodland critters running in fear.

I would also have taken more care with the drawing, even though animatics are by nature fairly rough, I still would have liked to try and draw the backgrounds more neatly and keep Mr. Beaver more on model.

I also would have added more audio, explosions, screams, gunfire, thuds and yells. maybe even gotten someone else to voice the few lines Mr. Beaver has to better separate his character from the narrator. In addition, I would have liked a nursery/lullaby style soundtrack in the background to help make the ambiance more like a children's book, adding further to the disturbing disconnect between the violence and the style it is presented in.