Critical Analysis of the Animatic process of my groups Film Trailer

The Wikipedia definition of animatic is 'a simplified mock-up of still images and rough dialogue’. I believe that is using still shots which are all edited together to make a brief trailer which will indicate whether the film trailer will work, almost like a rough draft of the actual film trailer in still images. We create an animatic for a quicker analysis on what will work and what will not. This gives us an option to change our ideas in the early stages of the creation process.

 Creating an animatic can take up a fair bit of time, it requires to make a storyboard for the chosen shots which are to be used in the animatic. Before creating the storyboard you will have to consider the limitations which you may have, you may not have the budget to use specific props or outfits. After creating this storyboard, it would be recommended that you make a shooting schedule with your group based around the shots used in your storyboard; this makes it a lot easier when it comes to arranging trips to locations and the characters needed in the group to take specific shots. It’s also important that you arrange to have the following on each of your trips to take the still shots for your animatic:

-          Correct costumes

-          Actors

-          Props

Once been on the trips taking the shots will take less time if you have planned the storyboard thoroughly and realistically whilst considering the location. Once the shots have been taken, it is important to go into the editing suite together as different opinions may be brought into the editing suite, e.g. difference in order and people wanting different effects to be used, addition of sounds etc. If this has been done in a group, then decision-making can become a lot easier as you instantly have each other’s opinions on plans.

As a group we followed the storyboard and kept everything in order. But once we got into the location on many shots as a group we had decided that maybe the camera angle had changed from an eye-level shot to a high angled shot to make someone seem less powerful. We decided to do this as a group as we thought that the shots would look more appealing. We also asked for other people’s opinions outside of the group which we considered as well.

From my experience we have learnt that the story board was a very useful process and that we wouldn’t have had any structure without it as it made us more organised once planning a shooting schedule.

During the editorial stage of the animatic we used the storyboard to organise how the plan would be set out, before we went into the editing suite we roughly estimated how long each shot would last according to actual film trailer examples, therefore the editing became a much quicker process, we did change the timing on several shots as sometimes we believed as a group that shots lasted too long, or they were too short.

Our choice in the inter-titles was to download fonts, we downloaded one called ‘scratch and demons’ to reflect our genre. The colour red was used to represent fear and blood.

The soundtrack which our group used was a mixture of chimes mixed with high piano notes, we used this as we felt that it created tension and fear for the audience and gave it a creepy effect.

I think that the animatic appeals to the target audience through the soundtrack and the age of characters. It appeals because of the features and activities which are taking place, e.g. the event taking place in the summer and people camping, this is something which the audience can relate to. The horror genre is usually stereotyped for males to watch, so we decided to add romance into the story so it appealed to a female audience as well, this created a larger target audience.

I think overall from the changed that we should make s that we shouldn’t give away as much of our storyline to our narrative, we also needed a soundtrack that would create a much tenser atmosphere for the audience, and we need a soundtrack which will create mystery. We also needed to maybe consider putting the movies tagline into the film trailer.

 This is a close up of the character Lucy; she has a demented and scary look about her. Her face is covered in water. As a group we made sure that her hair and make-up would make her look distorted so the audience would be clueless at wondering who it was. Because of this we thought it would create a code of enigma of the audience wondering why she was like this.

This is a medium-long shot of both male characters having an argument; these two characters are both around the same age of the target audience.

This shot of two characters holding hands instantly creates the idea of romance and safety, almost as if the male character is taking care of the female character. This will attract more females for the target audience.

This shot is effective as it shows the camera in a point of view shot, so the audience can experience what the character is experiencing.

 This shot is of a female character looking isolated in the dark, this can make the audience feel fear for the character. It also makes the audience unaware that they do not know where she is and what she is looking at.

I was a main character in many of the still photos, but even when I was having the photo being taken of me, I would always look at it straight after, and be critical of it and share my ideas with the group on what we could do to improve the photo e.g. different angle or different pose. I did also help out taking still photos once I wasn’t in the photographs. I also contributed to the group by helping in the editing suite, by adding effects and changing the length of the clips. I would always ask my group weather they thought it would be appropriate to make the additions of effects before actually doing them.