Animatic evaluation - Mikey

Animatic Evaluation

- As a group, we fashioned an animatic storyboard for our music video to facilitate us to see how well our storyboard and ideas integrated with the music. This involved first of all, drawing a storyboard by hand with all the different shots involved in the video, deciding on angles, distances and the length of the shot, as well as everything that is happening in the shot. The drawn storyboard was then filmed, each shot for a minimum of 5-10 seconds to help with the editing. The video was then uploaded onto a programme called Premiere Elements for editing.

- The animatic storyboard has been edited in time to the music. However, we found it very difficult to get the shots perfectly timed. The lyrics are very clear and present obvious images in the listeners head. This meant that the cuts have to be perfectly time with no or little margin for error. There was a lot of alteration needed during the editing, as there are a few shots that last for only 1 or 2 seconds, yet they had to be filmed for at least 5. An alternative way of producing the animatic which may have been simpler, would be to film and edit the animatic shot by shot, or a couple of shots at a time, rather than filming the whole thing at once. This is because when a shot is stretched etc, the music then becomes out of sync. After completing the animatic, we realised that we needed a few more shots, both from the narrative and of the performance side to the video. This was blatant as the shots seemed to last for way too long and the animatic became slightly tedious and dreary. We did not have enough different angles, especially of the band performance itself, so several more performance shots were added into the animatic.

- We had some slight problems with during the storyboard as none of the group are particularly good artists. This meant that the drawings were not very good and it can be difficult to work out what is happening in each shot. The filming of frames was an easy task as it only needed one person to do and didn’t take very long.

- In conclusion, drawing a storyboard and then turning it into an animatic has dramatically helped us as a group. It has given us some practice at using the programme we will be using for editing our actual video, as well as allowing us to consider different aspects of making the music video. Moreover, we now realise the work will be a more complicated task then originally thought.