Tuesday 22 January 2013

Unit 3: Online Greenlight Review


2 comments:

  1. OGR 24/01/2013

    Hey Katy - firstly, thanks for passing on the railcard I left at the bar; I'm sure you all had a good laugh at the photo inside; I was considerably younger then; you see what you lot have done to me? :)

    Okay - so, this script idea is solid, but what I really, really, really want you to think about is the potential for some more idiosyncratic vignettes in regard to the bowling ball's adventure; it's not that I think your exiting scenarios won't work visually, it's just that I think they may be a bit unremarkable. The construction site is all good, because in terms of 'cause and effect', this environment appears to give the bowling ball its velocity and height - the spring board if you like, but after that, I just feel as if the things it could effect, change, demolish, experience could be somehow less mundane and more unexpected. A nice example of following an inanimate object through a series of scenarios can be found here in this lovely short, Le Ballon:

    http://www.wimp.com/leballon/

    What I also want you to note is the way this animation uses transitions to move between scenes; for example, the way the clouds in the foreground transition between the hot air balloon to the mountain invisibly - and quickly; my point being is that you could up the number of scenarios your ball enters/creates by simply using wipe-cuts etc. to cut out all the 'travelling in between'; for example, your bowling ball could fall into a dark hole - the screen is completely black - and then you use that blackness to begin another completely different scene - so suddenly the bowling ball drops from on high onto a bouncy castle, flies into the air, goes behind some trees, the screen is filled with the leaves of the trees, and then you use this transition to introduce the next scene, so the camera pans right across the leaves, which are now the leaves of a bush on the ground and we see the bowling ball rolling across the golf course. I'm not suggesting you use these examples obviously, I'm talking about snappy use of transitions and cutting out the 'getting there' stuff. I'm talking too about thinking more surreally about your ball's adventure.

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  2. In regard to your establishing scene, I don't think your undertaker should try and remove the ball at this point; he should simply be left scratching his head by way of introducing your Act 2. I think too you should consider doing a 'morph transition' - i.e. the undertaker looks down at the ball; we then see a motivated POV of the bowling ball; and then, the bowling ball stays still, while everything else in the shot dissolves and so transitioning us seamlessly to the bowling ball in the hand of the guy in the bowling alley just before he throws it.

    You know it did occur to me that the bowling ball could be trailing lots of other stuff by the time it arrives in the art gallery - I don't know, stuff from someone's washing line for example (rather like a snowball gathering more snow as it rolls) - so the corpse could actually be wearing a pair of bloomers or similar. I like the idea of using The Scream as the painting, but in visual terms, I can imagine it working really nicely if the corpse is wearing just the Scream face stuck over his own like a mask (as if his face was pushed through the canvas by the force of the ball, but only the face bit remains). I think this would be funnier, especially if the guy's hands were up around his face in emulation of the painting itself.

    I think it would be good to identify a theme for your bowling ball - something musically comedic and upbeat to accompany it's dash for freedom; this way, ay the end of your story when the bowling ball rolls away again, you can include another burst of that music which will tell your audience exactly what is about to happen next.

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