Animatic Completion Post (round 1)!

As the title would suggest, I have now completed a full run through of my animatic*! After many iterations, I may add. The film currently runs almost eight minutes in length, so although once I have filmed all the footage it’s likely to vary, it still gives me a good idea early on of how much animation and backgrounds I’ll be looking to produce and therefore the length of time it might take. Which is always nice to know!

*if you’re reading this and are unsure what an animatic is, it is essentially a moving storyboard. So in the most basic form, you would draw all your storyboard panels as usual, then put them in the timeline in an editing software and adjust the duration of each panel to mirror how long that frame might take to play out if it was actually a moving film. Then add any scratch dialogue/ SFX/ temp music to give more of a sense of the final animation and then you’re good to go! If you want to find out more info or delve deeper into this, then there’s a ton of resources online such as this video (this whole series is excellent by the way)!

The animatic took a lot longer than I thought it might- though doesn’t everything animation related?! And it wasn’t quite as smooth a process as I’d have hoped, but I feel it’s been such a wonderful tool in shaping the story for my film, I don’t regret doing it. Or at least not for this short (a feature I expect will be a different kettle of fish). It has given me a much more accurate idea of how the story works visually, rather than any storyboard or script I have ever written. It’s probably because I can see (in the crudest way possible) the film play out like I’m actually watching it and because of that, it makes it clearer to see which sections are working, which sections aren’t and what needs more work. It also allows others who I’m asking for feedback to see it visually too, meaning the feedback received is likely to be more accurate/ relevant.

When I made my previous short film, I went the more traditional way in terms of numerous script drafts, followed by a storyboard and then into filming it. Once I pieced it together in the edit as per my storyboard/ script, I realised that the story didn’t quite translate as I had intended on the page. This resulted in me spending a significant amount of time in the edit essentially crafting a new story from the footage I had. Well, not completely ‘new’ as the core elements were there, but it wasn’t the film I had scripted either. This meant loads of footage went unused, so that time spent filming those scenes could have shifted to spending more time on the scenes I did use and not having to rush towards the end of shoot day 2 when the light was fading. But you live and you learn and nothing good ever comes easy.

Whereas for this one, I used the animatic as part of the script writing process. I’m a much more visual person, so I felt this way of shaping my story suited me better. And I feel a lot more confident going into the shoot of this one, that I already know it will work as a story and I’ll be shooting only the scenes I’ll be using. Of course a few things will change- it’s rare for things not to at each stage of the filmmaking process, but I feel relatively confident that it will work well once shot.

I’m now in the scary ‘waiting for feedback’ stage of the process. I have sent my animatic to a few people whom I trust and value the opinions of to see if the story makes sense to anyone who isn’t me and see if anyone has any notes/ thoughts I have not considered. Once I have all the feedback, I will decide what/ if to make changes, especially if a certain note keeps cropping up in numerous responses. I might do another post on the feedback aspect of creating the short, as I feel it’s an important part of the filmmaking process. So stay tuned for that!

I am still not going to be revealing the synopsis just yet (sorry!), but I will give you the title: ‘I Wish I Was There’. So you can use your imagination of what it could be about… I’ll stick a few panels below as well.