animatic analysis

A critical analysis of the Animatic Process of your groups Film Trailer

1.     An Animatic is a trailer created with still photos rather than recordings, it is used to help visualise if the plot is effective as well as to help determine locations and camera angles/shots.

2.     To undergo the process we had to write the plot before developing it into a storyboard, from there we then took all the photos required before uploading them to the editing suite and adding effects such as transitions, sounds and intertitles.

3.     The narrative was created by cutting out the storyboard pieces and re arranging them into an order that seemed appropriate and told the story without giving away all of the plot, this seemed successful as upon viewing in class the audience were able to guess the roles of characters and what had happened to result in the current actions while still leaving questions like “will they survive”? From this point the only change made between the storyboard and Animatic was the length of certain shots and removal of ones we felt were no longer needed.

4.     We used the storyboard to plan out each shot and location so that we could take all the shots that happened outdoors at the same time to save time, this helped where the weather was an issue and we had to take advantage of the breaks in the rain.
It also helped decide whether to take long shots, medium shots or close ups. Altogether we had a totals of 4 photo shoots with 3 different locations and the prop of rope, the main reason only three locations were used was because of ease of access, because we needed to take the photos when we were all free it had to be somewhere nearby that we could get to quickly.
The rope was used because in certain shots characters were tied up.
we chose the actors based on appearance for example, Dominic was chosen to play the role of someone discharged from the army as he looked the oldest and the audience wouldn’t question it as he looked the part.
At each shoot we would take multiple photos of the same shot, before looking over them at the end and choosing the best few to use in an Animatic.





The only shots we were unable to take were of a train station, this was because of proximity. None of us lived close enough and some of us had to take buses home meaning we could not walk the 40 minutes to the station wait for a train and then walk another 40 minutes back. The other shot we couldn’t take was of Dom sat on the actual train. We planned to in the actual trailer but because of cost to get the whole team onto the scene we decided to wait until the recording process to do it.
After beginning the process of creating the Animatic we began to see the plot just didn’t work, we had come away from the genre of a psychological thriller and what we were left with resembled a very amateur attempt at an action. Because of this we decided to go back to the process of writing the plot using our time to finish a revised plot with the objective of completing a storyboard over the Christmas holidays.

5.     We constructed the Animatic by first adding the images then putting them into order. From there we changed the time of each shot before adding the transitions and intertitles. Finally we finished it by importing a soundtrack.

6.     we chose the length based on the type of shot and the timing of it in the Animatic, for example long time span shots were used when there was dialogue or intertitles but in fast chase scenes where the trailer reached its climax we used very short snappy shots. Transitions were edited based on the event to happen before it, when his friend dies we used a slow transition to create impact but when the action sped up we chose very shot fades or none at all.

7.     We used a font that was easy to read so that we didn’t have to linger on the intertitles for as long as other fonts, we used a red colour font for the title “Retribution” to show violence and danger. We used intertitles that helped link to the images displayed, for example after he holds his dying friend the intertitles “the death of a friend” is used to add impact as well as confirm to the audience the character has been killed.

8.     the soundtrack music was a good choice, the only flaw was a lack of knowledge at how to cut certain parts out, this meant we had to either overlap sounds or have music where we didn’t initially want it, while still effective the whole process would have gone by much faster if we had learnt how to correctly edit the soundtrack. It affected the mood as it helped with the climax and action aspects of the Animatic, we would use slow music for a build up or slow shots and fast music at climax or in quick shots, we also used the non diegetic sound of a heartbeat to symbolise the loss of life when his friend dies in the army.

9.     The completed Animatic appeals to our target audience of 15-25 year olds predominately male by casting actors who are in their late teens so that the audience can relate to them and presenting the action aspect that many younger men enjoy.

   10. We plan to change the entire plot in time for the moving image trailer we have began research into films such as “memento” and “shutter island” that fit the genre and conventions of what we want to do while also researching into music that will fit the genre and scene it is used in.

   question number 11 can be found in a seperate post.

12.     I contributed to this process by rewriting the chosen plot into one we then used, planning and taking a majority of the shots as well as helping in the editing suite with the order and length of shots as well as intertitles and the music used.