503 - Animatic 1

After making the changes, and putting it roughly time, Kahenya sent me the storyboards:

(KAHENYA'S WORK)

In addition to making the changes we discussed, he also added in some keyframes which was really helpful. 

I then went through each frame, polishing it up and changing some things, as well as sorting out the timing for everything. One big thing I changed was adding in the creep's reaction to the girl at the bus stop, having him duck under the car in a flinch. I think this ended up working really well and alluded to the creep's personality more. 

I also added rough sound design to give an idea of the main sounds and how it'll play out. Part of that involved writing a short dialogue between the girl and the friend, and then recording some scratch dialogue for it. Here's the script: 

Yeah, it’s really nice. Shame I only have it for a year though.

Ah damn, at least it’s better than your old place.

(chuckles)Yeah…(keys opening door)... after you.

Oh thanks...Wow this is nice. Where should I put my-(stab)...

Here's the animatic:

I'm quite happy with how this turned out, my favourite bit being the creep's reaction at the bus. I was a bit worried with how it was looking, but after adding the sound it worked a lot better. It showed me how important the sound is going to be in this film. The lengths of some of the shots are subject to change when we start animating, I think they'll end up being longer than in this animatic. 

I changed the start (the blinds closing) a bit as I felt it looked a bit awkward in KK's cut, and I changed some of the camera timings as well. 

Also, I decided that it'll be best to take out the girl dropping her keycard bit when it comes to animating as that just confuses things now. I also wasn't sure whether to have the head turn at the end be a fast or slow thing, currently I've left it as fast. 

Looking at the animatic I realise how important compositing and layout is gonna be, as the camera's movements need to be very on point to convince the audience of the POV and to get that increase in tension.

2 other points that I thought about were:

• Include the girl's sounds but have them very quiet and get louder as the creep gets closer. This'll make the longer shots more interesting sound wise
• Play with gradual colour changes, maybe making the colours more vibrant as the short progreses until the point with the blood where the red is super vibrant.