Pre Production - 500 word review
Starting Pre Production on the first of February, I allowed myself 16 full weeks to complete the process.
I began with my script. At first I thought I new what I wanted but after a week back at school I was confused and frustrated. I eventually decided to develop my original idea, which I like but to this day I’m not sold on it.
I submitted my script and began to think about thumbnailing. The environment I envisioned was difficult for others to grasp until I had Edward Rocha mock me up some layout sketches. After this everything seemed to fall into place. Ed continued to assist me with my thumbnails, which turned out really good, so good that I ended up using a lot of them in my Storyboard.
I made the decision to create a digital storyboard this year. I feel like it gave me more freedom in terms of camera moves and shot sequences. I didn’t add timing to my SB until after creating the animatic. I think it would have been guesswork and I would have had to change it anyways.
The animatic went fairly smoothly but I really struggled with music/sfx. I still don’t really know what mood I’m looking for so the scratch track is rough for now. The music is all from Sound Booth so I defiantly don’t want to keep it that way!
Character design came really easy this year. I had sketched a rough concept of Avery on paper, so I basically just scanned it in and created a digital copy in PS using my Wacom. I trialled some colours and decided on the yellow after the red was to much like Santa and the blue to similar to Sal.
Concept art has been few and far between. I created a colour pallet and have a really strong image in my head, which right now is not translating to paper. I want the backgrounds and props to have no outline and to use textures from different papers. I have done tests and created an environment in Maya, which has been so helpful. Its really nice to have my own visual reference rather then attempting to Google things that don’t actually excess. The Maya environment really gave me more freedom with shots and angles. It is defiantly something I would create in the future again.
This year Pre Production experience has gone very quickly, with deadlines and holiday’s always looming. I feel I should have been more organised with deadlines early on however I generally worked fairly hard to get the work done before its due date.
Towards the end of Pre Production I began some production elements so to aid the cross over. Creating schedules and to do lists have better outlined to me what needs to be done.
I am unsure if I would do anything differently as I feel like this year was extremely different to last. I have learnt from the issues I uncounted during Pre Production on Pieced Together and honestly think I’m in the much better position now then I was 12 months ago.
However having more interaction with other students wouldn’t have gone a stray. I defiantly had more this year though. Other then Ed helping me out with Thumbnailing and visualization, I started creating things and options and asking other students for their feedback on them. I think this was a constructive way to get more opinions without really putting anyone out.
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