#fmppreproduction

[final-submissionblog]

I then made a rough animatic for my shots

[yunicoworld]

FMP 500 word Reflection

  After Christmas Holidays I have changed my mind about what exactly I would like to produce as my Final Major Project. This brought me to a completely new project: a mix of live-action and animation.

  I was very anxious about how it would turn out, especially because I did have a little time. However, as soon as I started my preproduction, everything turned in my favour. At the very beginning, I contacted my best friend Stephanie (ex-MDX Film student). She is a professional with amazing skills, vision, contacts and more. Stephanie became my producer and helped to gather the crew. I started to work out on the script, learning all the basics. I wouldn't say it's very original, but I focused on the feelings, emotions, performance and animation. I incredibly enjoyed the storyboarding, trying to visualise everything, the angles, the distorted perspective, etc. It was tough, I was looking at different examples, seeking for the inspiration. Research, research and a lot of reading. My initial character designs were not based on the actress but it serves as costume designs. Drawing are simple and costumes, in the end, turned out a bit different. This includes other little details as makeup, nose piercing, earrings, etc. which weren't depicted on the character sheets. In the production bible, I did miss the background designs. However, I did do a scrip breakdown, marking out what kind of props I do need and on the storyboards the set was clearly visible. My production bible is just a little glimpse of the work I made. It doesn't reflect other details as group meetings, work with an actress, costumes shopping, fittings and etc.

  Animatics were my least favourite part of the work, comparing to the tests and bible. The reason behind it is that a huge amount of my film is the 'acting', which would be individual, time to time improvised and totally different from my drawings. I wanted my actress to experiment with various emotions and subtle actions (a nervous arm scratching, etc.). I tried to do my best to depict it, but I didn't want to restrict myself or the actress. I kept it rough, added a little bit of colour, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish it completely. But the sound effects, my own voice-over and music should be able to decipher silent images and give an idea of what is happening on the screen. It's like a 'Frankenstein monster' which turned out to be alive.

  Test animations are simple. As I'm planning to use animation also over the top of the live-action, I had to figure out, how technically I can do it. So I did a simple recording and tried to draw on the separate frames in the Photoshop animation following the main action. It's not perfect, as I still have to figurate what brushes and colours I will use in the end to match it up the main animated sequence.

  Overall, preproduction was very exciting, emerging, intriguing, challenging and definitely helped me to gain new skills and enhance my previous ones.

[yunicoworld]

This is a couple of my test animations for FMP ‘ Pen and Cigarettes’.

[yunicoworld]

This is my animatics for Year 3 Final Major Project.

[yunicoworld]

Production Bible

Here you can find a link for my FMP Production Bible.