Early start today, as we had the green screen studio booked for 10:00am, I really liked Harshali's idea with the Cruelella De vill/ Meryl Streep character (think of the of fierce, fabulous poses she could do for her character). But I choose the Scientist idea, a sci fi theme and something a little different to what I would do, I'm thinking doing a theme like this could be quite diverse to the other characters I've animated beforehand, Mrs Crawley is a a enthusiastic young nerdy apprentice scientist with her tutor aold wise professor of science.
sketched out the storyboard and key poses I had in mind and actions both characters are going to perform, here are a few I sketched out before today session:
Female Professor poses
Mrs Crawley poses
These are the original storyboard I drew Monday for the green screen session:
My idea: Mrs Crawley is an apprentice scientist excited about her latest invention - the time machine!
The scene opens with flash, as two metal doors slide open (picture elevator doors) as parts of the time machine fall from the roof and the smoke clears.
Mrs Crawley and a tall old female professor are stood side by side inside the time machine , Mrs Crawley has a remote in her hand controlling the time machine. The Professor has a clipboard for marking Mrs Crawley's invention.
First and last scene
(storyboard reads zig zap down and up)
I
we managed to film reference for the 11 second club thanks to R&R (both Rachael's) great acting skills. with the reference i was able to take pick up much more, including the natural motions, arcs and lil ideas I would miss without the real performance.
We did a few takes on the idea and after watching a few, I thought the idea needed to be simpler. So I looked over my idea again and made a few changes to simply the idea.
The scene opens with flash, as two metal doors slide open (picture elevator doors) as parts of the time machine fall from the roof and the smoke clears.
Mrs Crawley and a tall old female professor are stood side by side inside the time machine , Mrs Crawley has a remote in her hand controlling the time machine. The Professor has a clipboard for marking Mrs Crawley's invention.
Mrs Crawley is looking out of the time machine ecstatic that they have gone back to the pre historic age, but the Professor is so "snobbish" and wrapped up in herself, she hasn't realised they've gone back in time.
The Professor looks down at her clipboard ; "Please don't think were being ungrateful Mrs Crawley," finds Mrs Crawley's name and puts a cross next to it "but there comes a time when things are best left to the professionals"
Mrs Crawley is shocked "But I..."
"now I really must go" the professor jumps off the time machine and walks off screen. Mrs Crawley tries to stop her from leaving the time machine but is afraid to jump out of the machine.
we hear the professor off screen "good day"
The camera cuts to a long shot of a pre-historic background, with Mrs Crawley alone in the time machine.
I've changed the characters thoughts and some of Mrs Crawley's actions but not the setting. I think this idea will come across alot clearer to the audience than the original because in the orginal storyboard, Mrs Crawley goes through the transition of a high to low, excited to sad, which I think is too much for such a short animation. So instead, Mrs Crawley's character stays excited character throughout the animation to avoid confusing the audience.
We have booked another green screen studio Friday 10:00am to re-shoot my idea with these changes, hopefully it will be clearer than before.
Harshali had managed to find a really good Jazz piece to fit in with the animation sequence, it has a really nice slow tempo which I think matches the beat of my character perfectly. I hadn't thought very much about sound up until now, I knew I needed a few of the cartoon Hanna Barbera sound effects to match up with the actions of my character, I need the shakey head sound effect at the head turn at frame 1200 and a "aaah" male voice at frame 960, as the head is rolling back, also I need a drop sound as he drops the chocolate into his mouth. I want to sync the three walk cycles at the beginning, middle and end with the animation to this audio as Siobhan suggested in the recording session today, I think it will help alot with the timing of the piece
Today we also had a chance to use the recording studio for the first time, I'd never used a sound booth before, it was so much fun and a great opportunity to get familiar the equipment used for pre recording sounds. We did a practice run for the audio to the animation, where we watched the animated clip on the screen and read the dialogue in time with the animation. Harshali and me first acted out the female voice in turns to to get different interpenetration for the female character, here is the second draft of the script we used:
Camera Profile/script
After two takes we started to come up with more and more ideas, adding more to the dialogue.I think i worked alot better this way as the character felt and sounded alot more natural when the dialogue wasn't scripted, we even came up with the idea of using two characters thanks to Siobhan, the girly talk between best friends was so much fun and I think set the scene for the enviroment of the characters.
Friday I will be shooting one more take for the Time Machine sci fi idea then continuing with the mime animation for mondays recording session with our female voice actor. I want to get the complete sequence down with inbetween at least so the actress can understand what the character is doing and react more naturally.
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