sketches

These are mostly from the spring. I like to draw my friends sleeping :) 

"lessons learnt storyboarding/editing a pilot"

Alternative title, 'All the stuff I wish I'd known before I tried to make my first pilot.'

I wrote this down as I went along, and thought maybe it'd be of use to anyone attempting the same thing. I customised it a little for the subreddit and added some awkward metaphors.

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Organisation.

Start with a final script, make boards, then voices/foley, and lock in an animatic with timings down to the frame. Give yourself a sizeable chunk of time to get everything exactly as you want it. This drastically cuts down the editing at the end and your artists won't hate you for making constant revisions.

Or… so I hear.

For me there's little worse than realising the storyboard is flawed midway through production. That document is your co-director and when it's imperfect or illogical it's like having a saboteur in an executive position.

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Watch Cartoons with the Sound Off.

I recommend series 4 of Venture Bros (the latest series, 5, has less action) for top-notch editing, and also new Adventure Time.

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Cinematic Technique.

If you're boarding the thing yourself you may want to understand setting, flow, and general theory. As such, learn about cinematic technique. Shots, terminology, etc. There's the obvious basics, like the 180˚ rule, but generally aside from the essential rules you'll feel when something isn't right due to you watching TV since infancy. If that happens, ask an experienced storyboarder for advice or research the specific kind of shot you're having trouble with.

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Ruthlessness.

Leave your animatic for a day or two, then come back to it with an axe. If something feels slow, adds nothing to the plot or just plain sucks somehow, get rid of it. Destruction is as important as creation. When traversing your plot, travel light; you can load a horse with everything you'll ever need but it won't gallop.

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Study Directors.

Studying the trademark techniques of master directors (a swift google search will get you there) offers a sort of cheat code list for making shots interesting. Plumb the work of classic directors, not just modern ones, as directors like Jacques Tati and Sergio Leone were really on the money even way back when.

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Immersion.

There are lots of ways to achieve viewer immersion. In the animatic stage have After Effects make the camera move - even if it's only slightly - when a character walks, climbs, flies, etc., or when something/someone is being revealed. It makes you feel more like you're actually there.

We didn't get chance to achieve much immersion at all due to inexperience, and I really regret it. Everything you can do to suspend the viewer's disbelief ought to be done.

Other immersive techniques are blurring foreground/background (though not focus pulling mid-shot unless it's an artistic decision), not choosing shots that are unlikely for the scene (eye-level, rather than on the ceiling) unless you want the audience to feel disconnected from that character, and if you're cutting to a character as they speak it's good to lead them a bit by allowing a fraction of a second at the beginning of that shot before they talk. It's less jarring.

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Suspense.

Receiving a new face is an event, and having dialogue arrive at the same time can be overwhelming to the viewer. If you're bringing a new character into play, see if you can't make it so we hear their voice before they appear on-screen. It also adds light suspense.

In fact, having gentle suspense throughout is a great way to keep the work engaging. It's kind of cheap, but little cheap moves are simply meeting the audience's expectations of engagement. Honestly the primary things people want to see in the mainstream are sex, violence and wealth so if you're in cinema with a "high art" approach you'll have trouble getting stuff picked up. It's a hard pill for a young director to swallow but it's true.

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Sound.

To me there are four aspects to cinema. What you can see, what you can hear, what you interpret, and - a lesser aspect - what is not there. Seeing and interpreting are the artist and writer/director's domain, respectively, and "what's not there" is more elusive and I haven't properly defined it yet, but audio is of equal importance to the first two.

Foley sound designers are great, but if you can't find one then get yourself to an online sound archive and use the search function like a poet. Leaping from a ladder sounds like old elevator doors closing, a wall of ticking clocks sounds like rain against a window, a robot clearing its throat is a broken gearbox/manual transmission, etc.

Contacting a well-versed audio producer (every university has dozens) is invaluable, as you'll need to EQ the final audio track/s so everything sounds cohesive at the end - I recommend exporting your dialogue track and sound effects track separately, and sending music files as well as a music track so they have both the uncompressed music files and the timing of when they should appear.

In animation voice actors are the difference between having something watchable and something unwatchable. Put an ad out on VoicesPro for a "lo-paid" job. If you're at university you have a recording studio, or else they may have their own, or you know a band who have their own connections and they owe you a favour or something. Throwing a professional but out-of-work actor thirty bucks/quid/beers to record something quick is totally worth it for both of you. If it's a larger project, and not a student thing, you ought to pay much more.

from reddit