From Script To Screen: Reflective Statement

To say it has been an eventful project would be an understatement. When first being given my three prompts I was rather grateful, as I felt that the three prompts telescope, astronaut, and theatre worked rather well together. (to the point where I began pitching my ideas to myself during the brief!). However, once I began putting my idea out there I realised the MANY flaws within each concept, mainly being able to fit them all into a two-minute short animation. This was then aided by the lovey help of Phil who put me back on the right track, sparking my idea for constants narrative.

Although the project started off rather slow and steady, as I had pretty much figured out the story and the script rather quickly, I would have to argue that this was the calm before the storm.  As soon as the script was finished I had begun both rough storyboarding and designing everything simultaneously, not the best mix.  Though I have to admit this was my favourite part about the entire project, figuring out what each character would look like along with trying to get the story across to viewers through my storyboards.

I especially enjoyed adding the different elements to the characters such as Lea’s mum’s ‘Outta this world Mum’ mug and Leas theatre company logo, while including subtle nods to musicals (in the form of posters) within my environment design of Leas room.  However, if I was to redo this portion of the project I would of probably started designing, and creating concept art earlier in order to really experiment with the different designs, as I feel that I more or less skipped over the discovery phase of my characters and headed straight to complete design.

The next part of the project I also found to be quite fun, which was putting the animatic together. Once I had finally redrawn my storyboard and began putting it together in Premiere, I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a little bit of excitement. For the first time just seeing your pictures come together to tell the story and move along the screen was really important to me, as I finally saw what I was trying to achieve.

However, I wish I would have spent more time and consideration with the soundtrack of Constant as although it matched up with the animation, it doesn’t always give off the right mood. As having the same song play through doesn’t enhance the audience’s reaction of what they should be feeling. For example, for happier moments I should have changed the music so that the audience also hears the happy tone of the characters.

The challenge for me and the part that I dreaded the most was the Maya previs. I am not the most comfortable capable person in Maya. Yet, for this project I do feel that I have taken a massive leap. I can’t say I completed the previs confidently, but I can say that I for the first time I wasn’t 100% confused (it was more like 47% confused). Instead of stressing about not always knowing what I was doing and sometimes having my model completely disappear of the screen, I stuck to it and tried to solve the problems for myself.

Overall, I feel that this project has been quite a big learning curve for me in terms of Maya, but also in terms of how I should approach future projects, by sticking to something even if I’m not great at it, as I could still learn something from making the mistakes.