Extended Practice: Turning My Initial Storyboard into an Animatic

At this point I could place every shot of my storyboard into an animatic. Sadly, this did not initially turn out particularly successfully. One of my flaws as an animator of which I am trying to get better at is timing. I found it very difficult to figure out the timing of a shot when I literally just have a drawing to look at. For example, in one shot, the cop is playing cops and robbers with his daughter and runs from one side of the room to the other.

Figuring out the timing of this shot is difficult because I want all the movements and physicality of the characters to be realistic and when I tried timing this shot the first time, Oscar gave me feedback stating that the shot was too quick. But I felt like in order to create an animatic with realistic timings, I needed to use reference. This is when I decided that it was essential for me to create a Live Action Video of all the shots acted out by real people and edited together in the same way I would an animatic.

Extended Practice: Creating an Initial Storyboard

At this point in the development process I had pretty much entirely figured out how the narrative of my animation would play out from beginning to end. But right now, this only existed in my head, I needed to turn it into something physical. I had most the shots planned out in my head so creating a storyboard was essential in making these shots concrete. Developing the initial storyboard took around a week and after sketching the shots out roughly in my sketchbook, I then placed each jpeg into the online storyboarding website Boords.

As you can see, my initial storyboard was incredibly rough and loosely put together. There is also text to describe the actions. At this stage I really just wanted the characters to successfully express the emotions they should be feeling at the time and figure out the shot framing. 

Upon completing the rough storyboard, I placed all the jpegs into Boords. Boords is a really great website to use for storyboarding as it is simple yet clear and the layout is easy to understand. Due to the fact that I was able to move around shots easily and delete and add them wherever I liked, I was able to better figure out the flow of my animation. Whereas when I was just working in my sketchbook I was becoming increasingly confused as the layout was looking more and more messy.

Extended Practice: Developing the Initial Idea

I wanted the focus of the animation to be on the relationship between the father and daughter. Initially I did not want the animation to be a comment on guns in America because I felt that point should be obvious, there should be more gun restrictions. But I was advised fairly early on that whether I liked it or not, due to the fact I was making an animation that in someway featured this issue, I was in fact always going to be putting forward some sort of opinion. I needed to be aware of this and sensitive to this so as not to offend people without even realising it.

After giving the idea a lot of thought while working on projects I should have perhaps been more passionate about and talking it through with my peers, I came to a full synopsis that goes as follows...

A 10 year old white, middle/working class girl called Lucy lives with her father in the 'less glamorous' part of Los Angeles. Her father (Robin) is a cop. Lucy greatly admires her father and since her mother is not in the picture and has no siblings, serves as her hero. The story starts with Lucy in class staring at the clock, waiting for her father to pick her up. It is a good few hours after school has ended when her father arrives, Lucy is ecstatic to see him.

On their way home they stop at a takeaway, inside there are other nationalities sat waiting who are aware Robin is a cop and express looks of discomfort and hostility that goes unnoticed to Robin and Lucy. When they get home, Robin prepares dinner and Lucy turns the TV straight on, this annoys Robin and he shuts it off (showing conservative 'family values'). Lucy whines and Robin distracts her with a game of 'cops and robbers'. Lucy plays the robber and tries to shoot Robin (with her hand) who plays the cop. Lucy has Robin in her sights and as she fires her imaginary gun (match cut) to outside in a park in the daytime where a real gun sound is heard. We see the back of a man fall to the ground. Robin is stood twenty feet away with his gun aimed, he expresses a look of genuine horror.

It's the end of the school day again and Lucy is expecting to see her father but is picked up by her uncle, Robin's brother. She is brought back to her nan's house. She watches TV and her father finally arrives. She goes to hug him but she is invisible to him, he goes into the kitchen where Lucy's uncle and nan are. Lucy's uncle spots Lucy in the doorway and leads her out, her nan shows her a photo of her father posed in uniform. This signifies that she needs to remember that her father is a good man and she must remember that.

Lucy goes back into the living room and sits down, confused. What follows is a montage of the next few months. The passing of time is represented by the camera panning 360 degrees around Lucy as strange people in suits enter the house and leave. This panning speeds up as more and more people in suits appear and disappear. While all this is going on Lucy is ignored by everyone yet caught in the middle at the same time. She becomes more and more confused and fustrated and the scene ends with her slamming her head down.

Match cut to at school again in lesson where Lucy's head is pressed upon her desk. She looks up, bored. The end of school bell rings and all the kids leave the room promptly, except Lucy who assumes she's going to be stuck there another three hours, not that she cares. She glumly turns her head and sees her dad standing the doorway with a tired smile. Her face lights up and she bolts towards him. Mid shot of her legs running fades to her legs walking. In this scene she is three years older and the fade cut shows her physical transformation as she is wearing the same converse shoes that now look less big on her. (Side note: these shoes could have belonged to her mother and now they are all she wears).

Lucy is walking home from school with her friends, without taking any notice they pass a memorial of a teenager who was shot dead. She enters her dads house and is eating out of packet of cookies, she drops a piece next to the sofa and leans down to pick it up. She spots an old newspaper under the sofa. She pulls it out and sees that it's from three years ago and that the headline reads something along the lines of 'COP SHOOTS UNARMED BLACK TEENAGER'. She opens it up to read and starts to break down in tears.

Later, Robin enters the house, spots the newspaper on the living room floor and heads up stairs. He spots Lucy in her room lying facing away from him on her bed next to the photo of Robin in uniform. Robin sees that her laptop is open with a YouTube video paused. The video is him on camera shooting the unarmed teenager. Robin closes his eyes and falls back against the wall.

Jump cut to a box of Lucy's belongings hitting the boot of her nan's car. She picks up the last box and walks out the house, her dad touches her shoulder and kisses her on the head, she does not acknowledge him. In her nan's car she begins to tear up. Cut to a shot on the side of the road of Lucy and her Nan hugging.

In the next scene, Lucy is sat on her nan's doorstep, she is 17-18 years old. She looks a lot more like an adult. Her hair's grown out, she's wearing eyeliner and a tank top. Her physical appearance represents her rebellion to her father's conservative views, this is enhanced further because we see she is smoking a cigarette. Her nan opens the door and in a panic she quickly stubs out her cigarette. Giving her nan a cheeky smile she darts past her into the house. Before she is able to ascend the stairs her nan points out the cigarette butt. Lucy looks ashamed, her nan gives her the 'I told you so look' but forgives her and unloads a box of her father's belongings into her hands.

Lucy takes the box and leaves the house, she contemplates lighting another but instead throws the pack away. She arrives at her dad's house and takes her headphones off. (Side note: this is the first time we don't hear music playing. Music has played throughout to steer emotion, through car radios, headphones, TV sets etc.) She dumps the box and instead of knocking discovers the front door is unlocked, she enters. She sees her dad in the kitchen, pouring all his alcohol down the sink (Side note: never really mentioned but her dad is a suspected alcoholic who can be seen drinking throughout, after leaving the force three years ago it is assumed that his alcoholism increased). She also spots that he has chopped up his guns and they are laid out in pieces on the table, signifying his guilt.

Her turns around and spots her, expressing a look of shock. Cuts to a shot of Lucy looking at Robin, in shock. The final shot is an establishing shot of them both stood at opposite sides of the frame, fifteen feet from each other. This is an exact mirror image of the very first scene where Robin picks Lucy up from school and she is on the left side of the frame and he is on the right, here he is on the left and she is is on the right.

End.

Extended Practice: Initial Ideas

Extended practice is a huge undertaking. Being the biggest project we've ever been set, it will require a huge amount of commitment. From the very start I wanted to create an animated final piece. I've had an idea since around last March for an animation that I felt should be at least a couple minutes in length. The initial idea was to create an animation that centred on a 10 year old girl who lives with her dad in Los Angeles. Her dad is a cop who she really respects and admires. Her world comes crashing down when she finds out her dad has shot dead an unarmed black teenager. Then the rest of the animation is centred on how their relationship falls apart and then whether the daughter can ever forgive her dad.