Animatic review

An animatic is a pictures in a set order which is to display how a film trailer may be portrayed to an audience. It is to see whether shots will flow well and whether pace of shots will be good and whether certain editing techniques will be needed during the actually plotting of the film. The animatic which we created was a good help to find what would work well and wouldn’t work within the film trailer. We created a narrative within my group’s animatic by giving a clear representation of who the family is through close scenes of the family together, this then is followed by shots leading up to the break of the equilibrium where you start to see the narrative of the film start to break down and go into a more physiological break where it takes a lot of thinking and patience with the trailer to get a clear understand of what is happening. As with most physiological horrors we tried to encourage the sense of realism within the family’s everyday lifestyle to create the higher sense of narrative that they are just a normal family, obviously this is seen to change throughout the time of the film trailer. The story boarding which we did helped us a lot with gaining a better sense of narrative because you could see which order would tell more of a story giving us a better view of what would work and what wouldn’t work before we went out to take images. With making the animatic we had a very set date which we was all able to make and it was very organized, we all kept in contact and made sure that everything was prepped ready for the date so we would hopefully get It all done in one session which was overall a success. We did not 100% follow the storyboard shot for shot when we was working it was working with what we would do with the lighting situation and working around it which I felt as a group we all handle very well giving us plenty of time to spare in the end. We had to shoot in two locations which was at Alys’s house and in the barn next to her house. These were both easy accessible and fitted well with the theme of our plot. The house was great to work with as it had everything we needed to make it seem like an everyday couple moving into a quiet house and the barn was very eerie and creepy making it perfect for its representation throughout this film trailer as being the main area of action with possession. The props which we used were all well chose by the group as we all went out to find these props such as ‘teddy’ which was used throughout as the child’s toy but also representing possession as the film trailer is to go on; the ‘china piece’ this was to break and this is for the witch to be realised, we chose the piece well together and thought that the stylistic effects of it looking old was edited by Alys extremely well. The characters which we had to play our father, mother and son during our animatic was Luke as the father and Alys as the mother, I feel that they worked extremely well together as they have done drama projects in the past together so they have a good connection with each other which can also been seen through the pictures took. We did not have someone the suitable age for our kid so we had Dora to play the son, she did a good job of representing the main images of the boy which was to look isolated and overpowered by the mother. We did not take any additional shots during the making of the animatic which I feel could have been changed but shots were becoming too complicated with matters of lighting with it becoming dark and the availability of lifts back to each other’s houses. During the editing process it was rather straight forward as we had previously talked through what we would like to happen during it so the effects with adding fades to black and whether to fade in and out was already decided so it was a matter of adding them, we did have a few things we wanted to change whilst we was in there as it was noticeable that they did not work as we suspected but we worked together and came to an agreement on other things which could be added to replace the things which did not work. The length of shots were decided at the making of the story board so we had a clear idea of what we wanted to create and we followed that through. The choice of titles and intertitles were discussed together whilst we was planning the storyboard, we came up with a few examples and decided what were our favourite and went with them. The texts and size we used was important as we wanted it to stand off the page so that it would engage the viewer to read and hopefully gain further understanding into the narrative. An example of one of our intertitles is ‘Fear her’ this signifies that the mother is changing into something scary and that she should be feared. This is played during the change of her between possessed and fight the possession so it shows that she is dangerous. The soundtrack was suitable for our trailer but I feel that it could have been more intense at parts as it did not give that huge sense of fear which you were meant to have during the fast cut sense. Representation wise during the narrative I feel that it was a good pace but it would have been better when the pace was needed to pick up. The pace of the editing was quite towards the fast cuts but the music was a bit off and a little syncing was needed so it would have fitted better to the clips which was playing but overall I believe it was a good starting point and it shows we were going in the right direction and that it was a good idea of how we can develop our ideas as a group and link better when it comes to the real thing. I personally think that we did not hit the target audience well enough. There was not enough shots which physically stood out as a viewer myself, the main iconic images were Alys playing the mother on the chair possessed, the child having the knife to the neck, child in the corner extremely isolated. Other than that it did not have a huge fear factor. As much as this was a learning curve I believe that we will need to develop a few more scary shots to hit our audience better. The main changes which I would make to the trailer would be to include more iconic horror images of the child and mother both in uncomfortable situations and more jump scares, but then to match this the soundtrack has to also be worked on to suit the shots which are taken. I do feel as a group we all worked well and was organised for the task. We all was ready and prepared and knew our rolls and stuck to them well. As a group I do not have any issues with anything at this moment in time. I do believe that the location, time and setting is all very good for what we are trying to create. The area looks quite isolated so it suits the feel which is created throughout the narrative. I feel as my roll I couldn’t play a physical part during the actually filming so I was the camera during the actually filming of the animatic and I feel I did my part to give input when shots were being taken so each shot was as intended on the story board. I was also in charge of finding the name of ‘Delirium’ which is another term for insanity which interlinks with basis of our film with possession and the lead to insanity of the mother. I also had quite a bit to help out with the editing process of the animatic. I showed the others how to use the software we was provided and let them do some so we all had an equal input to the film, we all had our rolls and stuck to them well and I feel as a group overall we worked really well together and that we will now take what we have learnt front this and put it into our actual film trailer.