Digital animation

Pixar:

• Themes
• Characters
• Environments (when and where the animation takes place)
• Styles 
• Narratives

Pixar from rubyshefras

Event driven or character driven? 

One area to explore is whether the animation is event-driven or character-driven. 

For example, many Disney films are character-driven, and one of the commercial reasons behind this is the flogging of expensive merchandise to brainwashed/stupid children.

In a film like Grave of the Fireflies, however, the characters’ actions are shaped by the context of a firebombing raid on a Japanese village during WWII. This is more of an event-driven narrative, even though the film focuses on two young protagonists. 

Todorov's Equilibrium theory:
In a film or story, the power is in a state of equilibrium (balance). However the equilibrium is changed after a disruption, resulting in a disequilibrium. The old equilibrium is broken, and therefore a new one must begin.

The Narrative theory stages:

Stage 1: the equilibrium - life is just as usual.
Stage 2: the disruption - a problem happens.
Stage 3: the recognition - think about how to resolve the problem.
Stage 4: the repair - go ahead and resolve the problem
Stage 5: the restoration/ new equilibrium - life returns to normal or its new state after the events.

Propp's character types: 


pre- production documentation:

1. interpretation of brief
2. purpose, medium, target audience, run time
3. developed storyline with focus on events/ characters
4. synopsis/ treatment 
5. sketches 
6. storyboards
7. scripts
8. personnel and crew
9. running order/Gantt chart

Storyboard: alongside your sketches, the storyboard should capture the movements and facial expressions of your characters. You should use the sketches to generate the storyboard. 

Sketches often include movement lines to show tension in scenes. 

2D/3D Backplates: the cop-out option would be to source these from google. Produce your own - photograph them for 2D backplates, or model them out of old shoeboxes, cotton reels and pipe cleaners, or use 3D programs such as Autodesk, 3Ds Max or 3Ds Maya.  Consider the lighting as well - how you want it to look in the animation vs how it looks in the photograph. 

Personnel and crew: additional personnel and crew to consider for an animated film would include voice artists and foley artists. Foley artists produce sound effects across a range of features, not just animated. They often use real objects to mimic those seen in a film. Bashing watermelons and other forms of vegetable matter is popular in the profession.

 

Cuts and transitions:

• cutting on action - cut when a certain action is done. Like a punk fade cut 
• cross-cut: cuts back and forth between shots - like a phone call ( jump cut) 
• montage- collection of the same footage 
• match cut - cut from one shot to the next either with an action or a visual or audio 
• fade in/out - dissolving to or from black 
• dissolve - used to represent a passing of time with one shot becoming translucent over the other 
• smash cut - going from something intense to quiet/quiet to intense 
• iris transition - circle to close in on an object 
• wipe - its a wipe 
• invisible cut - not to be shown. Deliberately hidden in the dark of the scene.
• wip pan - hide a cut in the camera moving quickly 
• hidden cut - cut is hidden 
• L cut - when audio is carried from one shot to the next 
• J cut - audio from next scene is started before we get to it

Titles and graphics: graphics and title cards can help you to generate the appropriate mode of address for your audience. 

Audio effects:

Production sound, foley work, sound design and sound mixing, diegetic and non-diegetic sound 

• Dubbing: Is the transfer or copying of previously recorded audio material from one medium to another of the same or a different type. It may be done with a machine designed for this purpose, or by connecting two different machines: one to play back and one to record the signal.

• Incidental music: music used in a film or play as a background to create or enhance a particular atmosphere.

• Noise print: A noise print is part of a technique used in noise reduction. A noise print is commonly used in audio mastering to help reduce the effects of unwanted noise from a piece of audio.

• Wild tracks: Wild track, also known as wild sound and wild lines, is an audio recording intended to be synchronised with film or video but recorded separately to avoid any distracting background noises. Such as rerecording the sound of someone walking or eating so that it is amplified. 

Separate sound recording from visual recording use boom sound and lavalier mic to record the sound separately. 

Record sound on lower sound setting ideally

Test the space you're filming in to make sure there's no echo in the sound - sound blanket to maximise the boom sound effect. 

If you do wild lines (pick ups) record them on set so the quality is identical to the footage. 

Foley sound: keep the space quiet otherwise they will pollute the sound. Signal to noise ratio. If recording outside use a windscreen to reduce the amount of wind noise recorded or a sock. Make sure the recording is quiet, otherwise it will be quite loud and distracting to the audience. 

you can use any camera or phone to record sound.

Cardio condenser mic 

Zoom hand recorder

Sound design: putting the sound recorder into props. 

Sound mixing: 

Fades are audio transitions; fade-in, fade-out, cross-fade. Without using fades the audio and sound cut at the same time and can be really jarring to the audience watching. 

Volume levels: if your sound gets too loud it will overload the sound edit and won't allow you to go louder for big scenes.