Log
Project SONHOS
Time in production 28 weeks
Status Last part of pre-production
Today I, Hannah (director), will talk about my favorite step in the animation pipeline - storyboarding! This is where the internal director in us all comes out to shine. The puzzle of shot choices and camera movement is my biggest joy to solve. So, without further ado, here are the pieces of the puzzle!
Understanding the script
Before making a board, I think. I don‘t always do that for drawing, I should, but for boarding I have to in order to be minimally efficient and intentional. Intuitive boarding has it‘s space, but not in this very super serious project of mine. So, what do I think about?
I think about what action needs to be shown, therefore I make a shot list. Thanks to Andy Cungs class, I learned that every shot has a reason for existing. In this list I write the one specific action that will be shown, and then a suggestion of framing according to the objective space the action needs. Here is a real example from this project:
But before doing the shot-by-shot list, I note down the main beats in the narrative. I do that to have a clear break-down of he emotional journey throughout the story. Those beats, in return, can be categorized into bigger sections. Here is an example of the beats in section A of the film:
Character reveal
Establishing the environment
“Something is wrong”
Antagonists reveal
Pursuit at location Pedra do Sal
Pursuit at location Lapa
From those beats I create the actual shot list, which is like the bare-bones minimum, and afterwards I make an energy chart, which means I categorize how much the tension is rising and lowering across the shots. That helps me define which moments have the most impact and therefore deserve special treatment - where The Cool Shots will go. I observed this first being done by the animator Ezequiel Torres. And then on top of all that, I attribute a describing word to the beats of the scene, because that helps inform specific shot choices, acting choices and secondary actions. If the beat is about „discovering“ I‘ll probably use progressively wider shots, if it is about „danger“ I‘ll come up with an action happening that puts the main character in danger. Additionally, I write down whose perspective the scene is from, so I don‘t board something outside of that character‘s experience.
Thumbnails
Using all of this information from my analysis, I start sketching the shots. For the thumbnails I want to communicate 2 things: the composition and the perspective. So aside from the very rough sketch of the elements in the frame, I put in the horizon line (HL). Many times, when cleaning up the shots, the position of the HL changes slightly, because when cleaning up I realize how the down shot or up shot I made is too extreme for the situation.
It is in this stage that I bring in references, which I picked out before, during the research stage of the project. Here, the references specifically serve to observe shots that have been used in similar scenes. So for example, to find fun camera angles to show a car chase sequence, I looked at Mad Max Fury Road and Akira. Those are more literal references, but I also look at clips tangential to what I am doing. I‘m doing a car chase, which is in a broader view, a chase sequence. So other references I looked at were the trailer for Watchdogs: Legion directed by Alberto Mielgo, and the Prowler chase sequence in the first Spiderverse movie. Those scenes not only give me shot compositions, but also conceptual ideas - like „he turns around the corner but the way is blocked“ or „there are many close-ups when the pursuer is close to the protagonist to show their fear“. Those aren‘t image-references, but ideas I can apply to my own film (idea-references?). I usually take a brief look at the references before starting the thumbnails, but then resort to them whenever I‘m stuck on a shot.
Sometimes being stuck means not knowing which shot to use, but sometimes it means having two shot ideas and not being able to decide which one is the best.
And it‘s in those scenarios that my previous analysis helps, I pick the shot that fits most the word attributed to the section or that contributes most to the tension build up or release. And if this still does not help, there is only one way out - opinion. In the end, shot choices create a style, your style, someone else‘s style, or a random style, but like in drawing, the strokes of your film have a personality.
Clean up
This term is misleading because storyboards usually aren‘t clean (or shouldn‘t be) but, you know, a thumbnail is too rough. What I want to accomplish with my clean up is a minimum communication of movement and acting, aside from making clear which character is which. It is here that the time you have available will influence how far you can go. With a lot of time, you can animate out the movement as much as you like, fill elements in in 50 shades of gray and apply effects like blurs and accent colors. With little time, you get something like me, only the minimum necessary to understand what’s happening, with clunky cuts between shots and still frames.
I started the board too late, aside from making it way too long and ambitious and having complex character designs and cars. A chase sequence is really not easy, because it needs to be visually interesting and dynamic, and I didn‘t plan it out in the script. But nevertheless, I love it! I love having a finished storyboard, even a clunky one, you can finally see the film, how magical is that?
Cutting half
The first version of the animatic, my friends, had 10min. The animatic was the final step of the first semester, meaning the second semester I have to work on this is meant for animation. A semester has roughly 3 months. I loved my 10 minutes, my teachers loved them, my friends loved them, but future Hannah didn‘t love them. I could feel her yelling from the future that we are crazy and that the project turned out shit because there was no time. So what did I do?
I cut 4 minutes. I cut all the cool parts. Not all of them, of course, but really the most fun chunk from the chase itself. I kept the bones of the story but cut the muscle and skin and pretty clothes and it hurts my heart but scope is real and mine was not. However, being too sad to actually throw away that stuff, I implemented a system of stretch-goals. I separated all the shots that are essential, then marked the ones that will add back the fun stuff if I have time to do so, and even created stretch-stretch-goals for the shots that just add that little polish to everything. My intention is to have the essentials animated until the end of the semester, that being my thesis film itself, but then (hopefully) completing the rest afterwards with less pressure. After all, this whole thing is supposed to be a proof of concept.
Up next
Next issue I will finally talk about sound, from the perspective of a noob! How I made (stole) sound for the animatic, found voice actors, lost voice actors, and hired composers for my weird idea of a score.
Have a magical day!