Category Archives: Out of Your Head

Production Principles: Out Of Your Head, 15-17th November

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While finalising the story, we were recommended to make a shot list, and I managed to condense our story down to this:

  1. A black and white 2D world. A man walks into an abandoned funfair. There is a faint sound of music playing.
  2. There is a camera on the ground. The music gets slightly louder as he approaches it
  3. He picks up the camera and holds it to his ear.
  4. He holds the camera up to his eye
  5. From his point of view through the camera, the funfair is colourful and alive. The music is louder still.
  6. He brings the camera away from his eye and looks up. Then he lifts it to his eye again and presses the shutter button
  7. A cloud of colour bursts from the camera and engulfs him
  8. A colourful stop motion world. Close up of the man’s eyes opening (made of paper). The music is at full volume
  9. A carousel is turning. 
  10. The man walks towards it. It slows to a stop as he stops next to it
  11. Close up of a couple of the horses on the carousel. Their eyes turn towards him.
  12. The horse nearest him is glowing a little. He reaches his hand towards it
  13. He places his hand on the horses head
  14. Another cloud of colour bursts
  15. Close up of the horses head. The eyes, the man’s eyes are moving frantically
  16. Zoom out, so we see several of the horses, including his. All their eyes are moving
  17. Wide shot of funfair surrounded by darkness. Music gets even louder.
  18. Cut to credits

I also had a go at starting to figure out timings:

We started discussing how the character should look today. We mostly imagined him being fairly minimalistic, putting the emphasis in the story on the funfair and what happens to him. Anika drew up a potential design, along with a few alternative details, and then a silhouette version, so we had various visual options to explore:

Initial character design by Anika
Alternative minimalist character design by Anika

Finally this week, after discussing many options for the ending of our animation and getting tutors to explain exactly what was missing from our story, got the green light for the story. One element we really wanted to include was to somehow loop back to the image of the camera that gets the camera into the colourful funfair, but having worked out the timings a little, it just wouldn’t fit without making the rest of it too fast.

Production Principles: Out Of Your Head, 13th November

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10th November 2023

We’re now at the stage of developing the story and visualising various elements.

This is a quick sketch of my initial thoughts for the stop motion section, involving paper cut outs on a multiplane. By having the character and the background elements on separate layers, it’ll be easier to animate the parts that move (e.g. the character, the funfair rides) without moving the parts that don’t (e.g. the sky, the ground).

If the stop motion part is made with paper cut outs, I really like the idea of leaning into that miniature, material world by using a variety of different materials and textures, such as buttons, ribbons etc. It would make an even starker contrast to the black and white world of the 2D section, and create a cuteness that goes against the sinister nature of the funfair itself.

We also have an animatic, made my Jocasta, for the beginning of our story:

Animatic by Jocasta

This is the new version of the story, after discussing together and with tutors:

  1. There is an old abandoned funfair, during day time. The rides are rusty and damaged, the stall are empty, there’s an old teddy on the ground. Everything is in black and white
  2. A man walks in
  3. He sees an old fashioned camera on the ground and picks it up
  4. He holds up the camera to his eye
  5. From his point of view, we see the funfair at night, in colour. There is still no people but the ferris wheel is lit up and turning, and there is music. 
  6. He lowers the camera. In his world, the ferris wheel is still and silent
  7. He holds the camera to his eye again
  8. From his point of view, we see the carousel lit up and spinning (with no one riding it), and hear the music again.
  9. He lowers the camera. The carousel is still and silent
  10. He holds the camera to his eye again and presses the button to take a picture
  11. Colourful paint bursts out of the viewfinder (where his eye is).
  12. He moves the camera away from his face in shock. The colourful paints covers his whole body
  13. Now in the colourful stop motion world, there is a close up of his eyes opening, while the paint falls down off his face. There is the music playing quietly in the background
  14. From his point of view, we see the funfair alive in colour, and hear the music playing louder
  15. With the camera in his hand, the man walks past the ferris moving wheel to a stall that has several huge candy flosses
  16. He picks one up
  17. He eats the candy floss as he walks towards the carousel
  18. The carousel slows down and stops
  19. He is now riding the carousel while it spins again
  20. Next he is is riding the ferris wheel
  21. From his point of view, we see a hook-a-duck game
  22. He lifts the camera to his eye
  23. From his point of view through the camera, we see the hook-a-duck stall empty, with no water or ducks or prizes, in the black and white world
  24. He puts the camera on the ground so that he can pick up a stick to play the game
  25. On the ground, the camera disappears
    1. we can discuss how it disappears
  26. There is a wide shot of the funfair surrounded by darkness. It is bright against the darkness and there is nothing else around it. The music gets gradually louder
    1. this is to create a spooky feeling, to suggest that he is stuck there forever and there is nowhere else to go
  27. Cut to credits

The main issue we have at the moment is how to end our animation. We want to make it clear that there is something sinister about the colourful version of the fun fair, and having a piece of it drift back into the black and white world isn’t quite dramatic enough. We think he should get trapped there in some way, so I added this idea of the camera disappearing, taking away his opportunity of returning home. But is that spooky enough, and is is clear enough? How can we show that this is somehow an intention of the funfair?

Production Principles: Out of Your Head, 8th-10th November

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On Wednesday, we managed to create a basic story idea, and decide which parts will be 2D animation and which will be stop motion. Clara and Evelyn offered to make storyboards, but there were so many different ideas being discussed that it was difficult to make sense of which ideas to include and which we had thrown out. So to clarify things, I wrote a straight forward list of the main plot points, with a few gaps filled in, using clear language and pictures so that we were all on the same page:

Version 1
The man walks into an empty fun fair - there are no people, the rides are not moving, the lights are off. Everything is black and white
There is an old camera on the ground
The man picks up the camera and puts strap round his neck 
He looks through the viewfinder 
Through the camera, he sees the funfair is colourful and alive
He looks back at his surroundings, which is empty again.
He looks into the camera again, and sees a different part of fair in colour
He presses the button.
There is a flash of light. 
When the light is gone, the man is in the alive, colourful fair
The man walks through the colourful fair
He buys a giant candy floss and eats it as he walks
He watches some fireworks
Colours from the camera start spreading across his body
He looks through the viewfinder and sees the black and white world
He presses the button
There is a flash of light
He is back in the black and white world. All the colour is gone
He takes the camera off and puts in back on the ground
He walks away
A piece of colourful confetti blows in the wind in the same direction as the man

We also started a Pinterest board to help collect visual ideas related to our story:

A Pinterest board became a very helpful way to communicate visual elements when language differences made it hard to explain verbally

These are the resulting storyboards:

Storyboard by Clara
Storyboard by Evelyn

Both Evelyn and Clara added details of their own as well, which added to the pool of ideas we had. There’s a part of me that finds that stressful, and wants to have everything decided and solidified as soon as possible, so I’m having to be more relaxed about letting the project evolve and change as it goes. Afterall, when I’m making something by myself, that tends to be how it happens. I think it’s just when I’m collaborating with a group, I feel more anxious about time and getting everything done because I feel less in control.

Production Principles: Out Of Your Head, 6th November 2023

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We started out project by trying to find the key themes and images of our animation, starting with these words from the list:

  • Greed
  • Uncover
  • Tiny
  • Huge
  • Burst
  • Awaken

I tried to gear the group more towards the verbs from the list, as it made sense to me that action words like ‘burst’ would generate more images and basic starting points that we could build upon than trying to navigate too many big themes like ‘love’. Similarly, visual words like ‘tiny’ and ‘huge’ helped to generate simple ideas we could build upon.

At the brainstorming stage, we were open to any kind of images and ideas that came up. I felt more comfortable at this stage to stick to abstract themes than concrete story ideas, since it became clear quite quickly that people in the group had quite different ideas of what made a good story.

However, we reached a point when discussing abstract concepts could only get us so far, so a tutor suggested we brainstormed individually from each word, putting down whatever words and images came to mind without overthinking. This was helpful because we could then bring those ideas back to the main group discussion.

[insert scan of my ‘Uncover’ brainstorm]

We also discussed mediums, as we want to use both 2D and stop motion animation. I think I have more experience of stop motion than the others, and I’m more aware of the possibilities within that area, so I shared this with them as an example of bringing 2D and drawing experience into a stop motion world: