Feedback and scipt changes

So today we had another showing of work in progress in class. The feedback we got on the concepts & designs was quite positive and the tutors seemed to like the idea of stylizing the film with painted textures. Em did some concepts showing these textures and it seemed like we "got the okay" on that. The character concepts I posted yesterday for the kid seemed to work too, and the look seemed to suit the age of the boy-character. We told them that we would spend the day rewriting and "trimming the fat" of the script to make it tighter and funnier - so after lunch we went over to the Phoenix-labs to work on it. To make a long story short; We did a LOT of trimming! Came to the conclusion that the date could just as well start with them meeting in the park and then we figured the start/ending in the bar was unnecessary too. So the new script we came up with is this:

Research and concept art for the apartment

So I have been doing some research on the apartment/house that our female character "Jen" lives in. The location we had in mind when writing the script was New York, and I decided to try and look up "street-apartments" online. I pictured apartments I've seen in different American sit-coms such as "Friends" and "How I met your mother":

(image taken from: http://veryaware.com/2010/11/how-i-met-your-mother-season-6-episode-7/how-i-met-your-mother-13/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most significant feature to me is that all the houses on the street look fairly similar and that they have stairs leading down to a busy street. The way we could make Jen's house separate from the others is by putting a flower-pot, or maybe light it so that one door stands out from the others. This is something we can figure out later I guess. But I did some searching online for images to use for architectural reference. I picked out different examples of buildings that could work nicely for our scene and assembled them:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inspired by the architectural styles I did some concepts of my own. In my concepts the backgrounds are a bit less "urban".. I tried to work wit the fact that the couple is going to the park, so instead of showing a city in the first bit and then moving on to a park I pictured it might be nice to have the park in the same area so the whole mood will be a bit brighter and more colourful. Think the style of the film might look nicer that way, but then again; It's just concepts..

Feedback and some concepts

We presented the animatic (posted in previous post) for the class and the tutors today and got some more feedback on the story. It seems like it's working, or it's close. We have some timing issues on the jokes and what needs to be emphasised more. The animatic we posted has not got any of the actual camera angles, staging or cuts that will be in the actual film since it was a bit rushed in order to get it done by the lecture. So according to the tutors we should be able to go with this story, it just needs to be "snappier" and timed better. We are also wondering about looking into an issue that Siobhan mentioned in a e-mail she sent us about the story; "Show not tell where it is possible", so we might try and get rid of some dialogue and replace it with actions instead. Will give us a chance to do some funny scenes animation-wise too. The story as it is seems to have potential according to the feedback we got so we just nee to figure out how to tighten it up a bit more.. It's not very funny at the moment, but we are doing a full day of work on this and any other issues tomorrow. After class we had a short group-chat and decided that we could work on concept/artwork by ourselves today. I decided to do some situation drawings for the characters (still pretty rough, but a lot more detail than I drew in the animatic):

The new script, feedback & another storyboard/animatic

After one round of feedback we wrote another draft for our script and sent it to the tutors. The feedback we got from Chris the second time was this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "My thoughts... A lot tighter, but I'm not sure you need the bit where the guy actually talks to the boy to trade the balloon for the ice cream. I think that part could still work with him disappearing off screen and coming back with the ice cream...I think you'd get more of a *UGH* from your audience at the end if they realise that the boy already had a condom animal...and maybe you should make the animal less obvious...perhaps draw a face on it as condoms don't look like snakes when they're inflated...I think! You should probably blow one up to see what they look like... Anyway, apart from that I would also think carefully about the moment the boy first appears with the ice cream...he would provide the perfect reason for the guy to stop putting his arm round the girl, especially if he's just stood staring, licking his ice cream...not sure if I mentioned yesterday, but if you look at the Incredibles, when Mr Incredible comes home after being sacked...he parks his car and slams the door while a little boy sits watching him on his scooter and his bubblegum bubble bursts...a lovely scene and great reactions from both characters...I think you need to start that relationship at that point and it would really help drive the story. When the guy disappears, the girl could be watching ducks or even better, another couple walking by hand in hand and you could play on that to show that's what she wants...she might sigh or react in a way that emphasises the fact...the guys then rushes back into shot with a half eaten ice cream... If you play this right it could be really great. Maybe you shoudl get it boarded up and into Premiere for Tuesday so we can take a proper look?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, we wrote another draft of the script, but haven't heard back from any of the tutors on that, except Ellie who said she would read up on it and give us feedback in class tomorrow. We still decided to meet up today and do a storyboard/animatic to bring with us and show in tomorrows lecture. I drew the storyboard pictures for this one whilst Em and Scott directed me and we all did some brilliant acting..! (hehe..) Scott took all the files with him and edited it all together and added subtitles since the audio is a bit poor at times, so here is the new script as a Storyboard/animatic:

Mood concepts from "just married" idea.

Just thought I'd post these concepts to show how I wanted the mood to be in the "just married" idea. It's not very useful to us now, but it's still worth posting since it was how I pictured the staging for that story would look.

"Balloon animals"

After the first idea got turned down we worked out a new story, and this time we got rid of the car-scenario and the just-married couple. We still wanted to work on the whole boy and girl story as a base, but we figured it could be funny to make it into a first date story instead. We also liked bits and pieces from the two previous stories and therefore decided to keep that in mind when we wrote the new one. We worked out an idea of a couple going on a date where the boy wants to impress the girl, but because he's not really the cool and impressive type he put's on an act and ends up embarrassing himself in front of her. We had a few different angles on the story, so we had a group-meeting where we wrote down some notes;

We took these with us to the labs and wrote the first draft:

PreProduction module has begun

Okay, a bit late to announce since it's already been two weeks of work for this module. To be honest I've forgotten to post anything here since we have been hard at work with ideas, getting a showreel ready for EXPOTEES but I promise that's going to change. So to make up for lost posts I'll try and update you on the work we have done so far. (By we I mean, Em, Scott and I - Keeping the team from the mime-project since we seem to work quite well together) We started the first session with pitching our idea for the final year project. The idea was based on a real life experience I had with an ex-girlfriend. In short; We where supposed to go to her house for the weekend, a 40 minute car-drive from my house. As we where loading bags into the car I made a joke as I usually do and she laughed and made a joke that was more aimed at me. As we started driving I made another joke, which to be fair was meant to be funny, but I guess it could also be seen as an insult. The joking turned into a silly argument about things we where annoyed by in the relationship and about 35 minutes later we came to the conclusion that the relationship just didn't work. When we got to her house I unloaded her bag and had to drive back home alone. Kind of a sad story, but it's funny when I look back at it. A good way to explain it would be; "Funny because it's true". After pitching our idea to the class and tutors we got some great feedback and suggestions to help us improve the idea. The one we liked best was an idea to make it into a newly wed couple on their way to a honeymoon, this would make it ore tragic, and funny since they just got married and ended up arguing on "the happiest day of their lives". We still figured that we needed more than one idea so we decided to split it up and make storyboards for two ideas that we could pitch for the class. Since Em lives further away she worked on one idea from home while me and Scott met up to work on the other. I drew up the images for the storyboard and we recorded the dialogue where we "acted" out the characters. Scott then took all the images and sound-files with him and edited it all together to a storyboard/animatic: (I apologize in advance.. Hehe) Soo, yes. After we showed this in class we got feedback from Ellie and the class and it became apparent that the idea was a bit too easy for a three person project. Especially on a Masters level. It was also a concern that it might become boring to watch, the fact that the entire story is just an argument in the back-seat of a car. It was suggested that we made them drive the car instead, and maybe make the story more about the life of the couple. So one idea could be that the car-ride was a metaphor for their journey through life. We sat down as a group after the lecture that day and came up with some ideas. The one we decided to try and work on was that the couple met and had their first date, then they got married, had a kid, kid grew up, they got old. So basically show their whole life together as a long car-ride. We decided to go back home and come up with ideas for improving this idea and to try and work out another story. The thing we knew for certain was that we wanted to keep the couple as a foundation for our story since we all wanted to do a story about a relationship.