Here is the final animatic. We had a short period of time to create this, and i did my best to get it done. Since i didnt get to draw as much as I should have on the storyboard. I created the whole animatic. It suited me well as i have some experience with aftereffects. Thanks to Remi, Sverre and Kim for drawing and input on the animatic. And thanks to Kim for taking the time to go over 140+ panels and saving them out in the same format.

The animatic turned out good, and there are limitations to create a film with just storyboard drawings. I feel I managed to do well on this part, considering the short time given. There are changes we would like to make in form of shots and timing. But overall we succeeded to make a long and well organized animatic. If we had two more days we would have the time to make the changes needed to make this animatic even better, and maybe with sounds.

A last thank to Remi, Sverre, Kim for a good groupwork experience and good feedback from classmates!

After we individually had written a treatment we got into groups. My group was Remi, Sverre, Kim and myself. We decided to make storyboard and animatic of Sverre's treatment. Originally idea by Remi. Everyone in the group was drawing on the storyboard. Some more then others, but i think it was great to be 4 people on drawing and discussing story, cameraangles, emotions, expressions and so on. I really enjoyed the storyboard part. It was fun, educational and really inspiring. One thing we did that was great for seeing the story and deciding on better angles and shots. We drew the shots on A2 paper. 3x3 shots. Then placed this on the wall in secuence. We could stand in one spot and look on three walls surrounding us and see if the story was and the shots matched together. Something that i though about alot was the camera angles. Some examples: over the shoulder, high and low angle, establishing shot. The 180 degree rule and others. These had to be done right to tell the visual story better. Im glad we learned alot about camera angles, and after drawing on this storyboard i have learned alot about how to make good shots. Thanks to a collaborating group who worked hard and shared thoughts, we did not just get a really good storyboard, but i think we all learned alot from this.

We discussed alot about how to set up the camera angles to tell the story better. We did some changes to the shots. This wasnt hard to spot since we had all our shots up on the wall. If we were to make changes we probably would make more shots and expanding the story a bit. One connection between the two human characters would need to be more clear. So if we had the time. We know exactly what to change. We have gathered feedback from other classmates about the storyboard and the animatic. The feedback was good and as mentioned. We know what we would have changed and added to the board.

When I see how little time we had to make this storyboard, im really happy with all we managed to do. The group worked excellent, and i would defenatly work with the same group another time.


Here is two of my final storyboard sheets. After some drawfts and changing of shots.

And here is the treatment for our project. Dr. Bum.

This is my treatment for A painter in Paris, late 1800's. I based the story on fantacy. What you can imagine, and what is real.
I started to think about an earlier project i had done. The character consept art. He inspired this story, and by the looks of him. He could easily be the main character in this treatment. During that porject i did alot of interesting research about Absinthe. The story and the myths dont fit well together, and to me this is an interesting mystery to dig in.

What i did in this treatment was to focus on the fun and the most common part of absinthe history. Aswell i drew referance to painters i know of matching the time setting. Van Gogh could almost be this main character, hehe. This treatment is though of as a large and expencive production. There is alot of characters, a huge amount of animation and a whole city is alot of work.
This is the way i see the movie tough. I think it would suit best of with alot of effort put into the animation. The look would be like ratatouille at nighttime, only a bit more darker and dirty. This is the second draft of the treatment. If i had the time i would rewrite it a couple of times, and also write a set of different treatments. Im sure if i wrote 4 other treatments now, they would get better and better.

Before creating this treatment i did some activities creating stories. You can find them further down on this blog site. The technique for writing a short story is simple. You dont think. You just write. Create a start, a end and then build the inbetweens of the story. I personally like that technique. This settup was presented to me by Iain McCaig in his gnomon masterclasses. Back to the story, it could be anything. Forexample: (the start:) Your computer comes alive.  (the ending:)   the microsoft building explodes. And then you fill in, how it got from point A to point B. Did more computers come to life? Did some of them make a union to destroy microsoft for making them slaves? Does some computers become evil, corrupting our computer system? Do we have a huge computerbattle between evil and good? who can save us now...

This story came to life in like 2 minutes as i wrote just now. Its that easy.

Over the years i have though about why films are great, and how they made me feel.
Everyone have different taste, that said i will tell you a little bit of my taste.

I have some examples about good and bad movies. Often the movies with a bad story sells alot better then the good ones. This is often because the use of well known actors. Alot of money spent on effects and alot of publishing.

Four of my favorite movies is: Braveheart.  The green mile.  Forest gump. The lion king.

These film are so good, to me that is. These films made me feel empathy, strong emotions and compassion.

I cant describe how well these films are made. The camera, the story, the directing, the music and the acting was so well done.
If a film makes you cry, that film is great! The story and the acting was so well done that you felt empathy for what was happening. That is impressive because you didnt experience what happened in real life, that stuff didnt happen to you. You just watched this story on a screen, and still it made you cry. Now that was a great movie!

There are several good movies that compare to these. The bright side of life, king kong and the lion king. I could go on and on, and still there is so many great movies that i havent seen yet.

Back to the greatness of these three movies i presented is: They all had good writers, the green mile for example were based on a Stephen King novel. And these writers wasnt scared to disapoint people. They were not scared to make something sad happen and they didnt care if the film didnt end with something like : And they lived happily ever after!

The examples on what the writers did:

In forest gump, his one true love dies after he just got her. That was sad. And the rest of the movie is fantastic! I cant describe.

In braveheart the main character gets killed and we know his people lost the war. That didnt matter, it was so brave, full of heart and it was really really sad. Ergo, the film was great!

In the green mile we see some many diffenrent point of views, so many damn evil and sad things. If that isnt enough the main character who is pure hearted, helping, kind and full of empanthy. And he is even a bit slow mentaly. Short said he is the kindest person on the planet, and he gets executed! Damn that was unfair we might think, and todays blockbuster moviecreators would never attempt this because it would lose overall rating, therefor less money in the pocket. But really, this was great. I felt sad and at the same time a bit angry. This film, and the others made me feel compassion, empathy and sadness. I rearly get to say that a movie made me feel something strongly!

The lionking is great! The journey, the death of the father, the songs, the contrast makes this film so great! The opening is probably the best thing ive EVER seen in films. The greatness and feel of that scene is too hard to describe.

The sad thing is that blockbuster movie creators often go after the overall rating, what makes most money. I realy see a expensive production with a story that isnt "safe" There are noe big leaps that could lead in great results. The thing that matter is to create a film that would make good money. Sometimes we get expensive films that aslo are great. The example is Lord of the rings triology, King kong, The curious case of benjamin button and many others. To reffer the two first films, Lotr and king kong. Films made by Peter Jackson. Jackson has said many times the importance of making films regardless to how the audience feel. And as Im saying, the importance of story. The films were of large budget and they turned out great because he made the film his way. Not the audience way. Many sucsessfull directors do this, Quentin Tarantino is a great example.

This is why I would rather work for Pixar than dreamworks, even if i would make slightly more at dreamworks.
Pixar allways spend most time on the story, like their "partner" disney. They both have allways created films depending on great story regardless of what the audience thinks. Something that Ed Hooks explained when I attended his workshop at Animex 09.
He said: Disney created films for children, and the child in grownups. The thing disney never was afraid of was to scare children. That may sound wierd since they do children movies, but the films turned out to be the best childrenmovies ever. And disney had huge sucsess since they did things their way, the way to create the best story's. Bambi's mother dies, the father in lion king dies. And all the evil and scary characters helped to make a really strong story. Without these things like fear, sorrow, and so on builds up the good story. If they were to make films conserned about how the child would feel, the movies would turn out to be crap. Like many other studios have done.

                                                   These three films are great examples of how bad some movies could get.

The thing that kinda pisses me of is blockbustermovies created for large audience. One good example is GI. Joe! That film was awfull, the trailer was better that the movie, and the trailer was bad in my oppinion. The story is hard to follow, because there is no good story, the shooting, the directing, the actors, the lines, the cliche. Everything has been seen before and it all brakes down to a really bad movie. One thing, the effects were overall good, and there was some impressive action. But that doesnt save the film. It seems like some directors think that if they put enough action and effects into a movie it becomes good. This is very wrong. Sure its entertainment, but after the credits i sat and felt, nothing. Nothing that moved me. This had been a bad use of time if it hadnt been for some cool scenes and effects.

And dont even get me started on the movies: Gamer and Jennifers body! That was a recent waste of time and money! I wont say more about them. I think this post would turn out a bit negative. Dont get me wrong, see the films. Feel the frustration and brake the dvd's after. I learned something essencial about these films. How to never create a film like that.

I have seen so many bad films over the years. I almost think that it would be easy to write a good story for a film if the right people directed it. There is like two great movies in a count of houndred. I then ask myself. How hard can it be to make a good movie? I know there is ALOT of work to make a film, but since you use so much time in making them. Why cant you use a bit more time to create the essence of the film. The story.

Story is everything!

Our short assignment at school was to create a bunch of short stories, short as possible.

One way that i found out to create a story really easy and fast is to write the start, and then the ending. You could later on "build the bridge" to make the complete story.

Some examples are:

He got teleported into another dimention - He saves his own universe by destroying the enemy core of life.
Here we could fill in this story with alot of stuff. It may seem wierd. But i got something down, and really fast.

The dog was left alone in the house - The dog had cute puppies making the family complete.
Here we could put in alot of stuff. Could be allmost anything. The dog was left alone, managed to get out and mate. Later the family allmost split apart, but with the birth of puppies it saves the family and they all stay together. The family could be newlyweds who allmost got devorsed.

Over to my assignment. This was to write short stories short. As earlier mentioned.

My list is:



A indian had killed a bear, but didnt know until after that he had left a bearchild motherless. He decides to raise it by himself. trying to pay the sorrow he caused both the animals.

A robot is sent of to space, looking for life on other planets. Finds something, becomes friends. And unplugging itsself to save the other life from the humans.

A hero from a distant universe on a mission to save his own planet from collision with another planet.

A shark on a bloodlust hunt for humans, gets killed by other sharks to protect the greater good.

A mad child invents a controlling device for human minds, but gets discovered and lands in powerfull wrong hands.

A solider alone. Walking the desert to get back to his base. Falls into a cave, discovering a nuclear storage. Destroys them and himself. protecting his own nation without recognition.

A robot in love with a cat. fishing day and night to get the cat the fish it wants. But no luck in fishing with no bate, the robot is too kind to hurt anyone, or anything. Ends up losing his selfish cat to a human.

A bunny exploring the city after escaping from its home. And all the challanges it may bring

A mountain climber discoveres a portal to a new world. The challange is to find the way back home.


And all this drawn together i came up with a first draft to a short animation film:


 The life of music.
 
One shallow person who has a boring job, same routine every day. Scared of change. Thats Bob. Bob lives by himself, he has no friends or girlfriend. Just his guitar and a goldfish to keep him company. Bob usually sits at home every nigh and play on his guitar. He's quite good at it.
One day Bob gets held up a few minutes at the job and rushes to the train he was supposed to be on.
He gets on the wrong train, but doesnt realize it before the train is on its way.
Bob ends up on a place he's never been before. Its getting dark and no train are heading the way home for him. As he wonder around the street he discovers that its a poor neighbourhood with alot of crime. Bob is terrified and confused. A homeless person attempting to play a guitar cathes his attention. The homeless person doesnt know how to play, but it seems like its the only thing he can do to earn some money. Ofcourse he gets very little. After a while Bob is still standing there, listening. Its like he doesnt know anywhere else to go. The homeless person ask's Bob his name and what he do. He doesnt aswer. More time goes by and Bob has built up the courage to answer. They talk a little and Bob asks if he could try his guitar. He starts playing, beautifully and money starts to roll in. The homeless person is thankfull, but feels a bit unused. Bob pushes over the metal box with the money, flips it and hints that he could drum on it. They do and they really get the music going! People is crowding around them, they earn quite a bit and the setting is nice.

Bob gets an offer to play at a nightclub by a passing by person while they are playing. This is something he always dreamed about, but never deared to try. He accespts, leaves the homeless person again with nothing. A bad thing to do ofcourse.

The night Bob is about to play, he gets up on the stage. But he is to scared to do it alone. People start "booing" him and shouting. As he is about to leave the stage we hear some metallic drumming comming from the enterance of the nightclub. The homeless person is to the rescue. Bob turns around and goes back onto the stage. They two meet, standing face to face a couple of meters from eachother. Ofcourse the homeless person aint happy with Bob. They move towards eachother and shakes hands. Giving eachother the look that everything is ok. they both turn faceing the crowd and starts playing some awsome songs.