As part of our research and development, we were assigned to create a rough animatic for our story to understand the timing. The animatic did not require fully timed storyboards, so I ended up doing some extra boards in between the major beats I had previously drawn, with a very rough dialogue track I recorded. Meanwhile, in the background, I included some music I recorded for my solo musical project, Lost Cosmonauts. In some cases, I felt I only needed one beat to show certain points, which explains the long pauses at certain points. I felt that it would take that long for the actual beat to happen.
This was the first time I had to really focus on the dialogue in the script itself. In the past, I have written dialogue the projects were longer. As a result, I wanted to really condense what they were talking about. In Ideas for the Short Story, the authors explain dialogue is used for a number of reasons, such as setting the mood, revealing character and driving the plot forward as well as the resolution, among other things. Personally, I feel I used dialogue to specifically reveal character and drive the plot. For instance, we immediately see the conflict between our protagonists with the first line Ryan utters. We immediately see he is fed up and wants to leave. Meanwhile, we hear Mr. Winters' insane ramblings and he is not someone taken seriously. The way the dialogue drives the plot comes ironically when Duncan ignores his friends and responds with silence. Later on, Zack's panicked blabbering prevents him from effectively warning his friends of the incoming invaders, making them vulnerable. During the climax, the tempo of the speaking picks up as we hear Duncan's ramblings, signifying the increasing tension in the scene.
Aside from dialogue, the other main audio I included for this animatic is music I recorded. I actually spliced together two different songs that happened to be in similar keys and are meant to represent the rising tension in the scene as well as illustrate the mood of their world. In other scenes, the lack of music is meant to represent the boredom of living in Mercury Bay for our protagonists or the numbness Duncan feels after losing his friends.
As of now, this is a very rough animatic. To me, the characters personalities and their dialogue were the most important features and I wanted to time that out first. As I continue working on it for Research and Development 3, I will add more sounds such as ambient background noises and sounds for the UFO and the slapstick jokes. I also want to probably rework some of the dialogue. Ideas for the Short Story warns how dialogue can interrupt the story rather than support it. It can also serve as narration that overtakes the story rather than let the visuals tell it. I feel this is the case with some of the dialogue at the beginning, which might be too much exposition. As I work on it in the future, I try to flesh it out as a legitimate storyboard, I might try to show more visuals to tell what the characters are thinking.
One last change I made to this was the ending to the story. I was not really happy with the whole idea of a party on the UFO, and I was still trying find ways to include and focus on Mr. Winters. As a result, I changed it to a religious joke where it is revealed he is apparently a religious figure to the aliens and is almost like a pope to them.
As this post is being written, we are only a few days away from finding out who gets green-lit. However, in the event my film does not, I am happy to be doing this so I could possibly go and produce this independently.
No comments:
Post a Comment