A Critical analysis of the animatic process of our groups trailer

1. An animatic typically consists of pictures of the storyboard synchronised with the storyboard. The function of the animatic is it allows the animators and directors to work out any screenplay and camera positions.

2. An animatics process is to give you an idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. In the animatic there will be rough dialogue, a sound track will be added to a sequence of still images to test whether the sound and images work effectively together.

3. Separately all of the class came up with there own plot synopsis. We then got put into group which we will work in for the coursework. I was put into a group with Elyse Holder, Millie Edwards and Sophie Cashell we had a discussion on what story we would use as our final plot, we each discussed the positives and negatives of our ideas and came up with a totally different storyboard from all of our ideas. From this we all added in ideas of which we would believe would work for the storyboard and the animatic. The group decided to base our story on one of the 'Friday the 13th'.

4.

• Before organising schedules to take photos for the animatic we had to make a storyboard, so the group would know what kind of pictures to take when we got to the location of which the pictures would take place at. On the storyboard we would analyse each picture so we knew what angle of shot the picture would be, where it would be, and if there would be any diegetic or non diegetic sounds to go with the picture.
• Overall The group toke around 50-60 shots, this was because we would take about two pictures for each shots so we could decide which picture had better quality and would fit in the best. However we only used approximately half of the shots because we took away some shots that didn't need to be used and by that we added several shots because of titles that need to be placed between shots.
• Altogether we used 2 locations, a forest near school site, a road and the lake and forest which was in pandy. When we were at locations we used several props such as a tent, a car, a white hoodie type coat for the actor of Eddie and torches.
• The group decided to use ourselves- Elyse, Myself, Millie and some close friends to act Annika and Scott, this gave the group an advantage because they were accessible school friends and we knew we could rely on them.
•  When We were at the locations ready to take photo's we realised that we could experiment with each shot and take them a bit differently, for example low angle, high angle and point of view shots to make the animatic more realistic and make the viewers look like they can emphasise with the characters in the animatic.
• There was only a few shot that we couldn't do and that was making Eddie look like he was struggling in the lake. So we had to decide to through stones in the lake and to take a picture of the splash to emphasise that the splash was Eddie struggling in the water.
• As we were taking pictures for the animatic the story seemed to progress even more, I realised that we should do a black and white background story of Eddie being pushed in the lake which meant that the audience could relate and understand the story more. Also when we were in the editing suite Myself and Elyse downloaded a background music piece that allowed the pictures and the titles to fit in with the style of music.

5. Whilst in the editing process of constructing the groups animatic Myself Elyse And Millie put the pictures in order of our storyboard, this gave us an idea of how the film would look with pictures we toke ourselves rather than just drawing. We realised that some pictures would look better in a different order than they were originally planned to be at. Once we added the pictures, we added titles and transitions and placed them in the correct place that we thought that appealed to be the best. This would allowed the audience to be informed when the film would be out, briefly what is and going to happen etc, what the film name is etc. Finally we placed a soundtrack in the background which we tried to contrast the pictures and the music together so it would work well.

6. We chose to make all the shots and transitions length different, for example at the beginning of the story we decided to make it a bit shorter than original shots because it is a previous story of what happened to the boy, the middle when the girls get excited and are on the journey is a bit longer because we wanted the audience to connect with the characters and then at the end of the animatic where events start happening we decided to make it a bit fast to created suspense. Although we made the titles length reasonable because the audience would have to read them.

7. We decided to choose basic titles that establish the shots such as 'the lake is revisted' and 'A year later'. However we decided to use a song/ rhyme to make it more remembered for the audience which is off a film that we previously looked up 'one two Eddies coming for you' 3 4 you wont live any more'. When the titles showed up we made a transition of it fading into white and then black for the titles to be shown which i believe was more effective than the titles just appearing after shots.



9. The animatic appeals to the target audience by which the characters would roughly be around the target audiences age, and it shows that teenagers/young adults love summer and going out with friends, camping, drinking up to mischief and being able to do anything now they are driving.

10. I believe i would want to improve the lengths of the shots, make them short and snappy to cause more tension, to make the beginning the background story a bit longer for example  adding a few shots of the main character Sarah panicking by seeing her close friend suffer in the lake. Another idea i would consider would be shots of the mise- en- scene where a few girls are running, maybe have a point of view shot of them running, heavy breathing to create even more suspense. Also in the animatic we didn't have any dialogue so the group would have to discuss what is going to be said to make the audience connect with the characters. Another thing I'd do would make the music more precise for the shots. E.g when the girls are happy, happy music, when they are screaming and running for their lives, fast pased music. Finally i think there should be a bit of a twist at the end because the story can be a bit predictable.