OUAN504 - Intro Sequence

As the narrative and storyboards have been refined several times though out the project Wing and I have been discussing each scene at length. Specifically, what kind of shot we want to have, the time of day and the positioning of the characters for example. For the intro sequence I had the idea to combine the first two scenes into one shorter scene in order to save valuable time and allocate more time for other scenes within the 1 minute time frame. The first two scenes originally consisted of a wide-long shot of the barn, followed by a quick cut to a closer shot of the barn through the wire fence. Although we both liked this idea, it would have been quite an uninteresting way to start the animation and so I came up with the idea to open with a shot of the moon, indicating to the audience the fact it's night time and from there, have the camera track vertically downwards and setting into a still shot of the barn from behind from half a second to around a second in length - just to allow the audience to absorb the information about where this is set. The idea behind the original second shot of the barn through the fence was to make sure the idea of the fence was reinforced to the audience. This aspect is important because it's the characters main obstacle in escaping, and it needs to be depicted early on so that the premise of the narrative is relayed as soon as possible. The behind shot of the barn allows for the information to still be translated but in a different way. The shot of the barn from behind also includes the fence, so in a way you're looking at the fence from the inside out, the way the characters would be looking at it, rather from the outside in, as the audience. This also means that the camera is never outside the fenced off area of the barn, and in a subtle way are experiencing the same environment as the characters for the duration of the animation. This in turn may induce a more accessible way for the audience to empathise with the characters.

I wanted to see what the angle was like so I rendered a frame using a good amount of daylight from the physical sun and sky. Once I was happy with the angle in terms of the direction of the camera I re-rendered the scene using a night time sky so I could see what kind of effect it was going to have in the final animation, with the scene being set at night. I also wanted to make sure with the shot that there was a sense of drama attached to it, as well as revealing a certain amount of wire fence towards the right side of the shot, as that was the original intention of the scene - to emphasise this to the audience. The first night time render I did, I felt it was too dark, the scene was only lit by the interior lighting within the barn, which only projected a faint glow onto the surrounding grass and the wire fence. I decided to add a natural light source in the form of the moon. To recreate this type of white atmospheric glow I created a spotlight with a low intensity, just enough to illuminate the fence and make it the lightest object and consequently the main focal point of the scene.



I showed Mat the sequence I had in mind, and after reviewing what I'd done we decided it wasn't quite right for the scene. Previously I had almost a vertical crane camera moving downwards from the shot of the sky to that of the barn. It felt like after 5 seconds or so of this that it was too simple and needed something more. Furthermore, normally this shot is done using a pan or a tilt, and not that kind of vertical tracking shot I had put in place before it was revised. I wanted an establishing shot with pretty much the same angle on the barn as before, but the transition to get to the establishing shot I felt could be a lot stronger than it was. Mat demonstrated the way the graph editor can be used to manipulate the keyframes, how to single out various attributes such as rotate x, y and z for example. Another hugely useful way to manipulate the action is to use the handles, or tangents in order to give a greater level of control over what happens. I've spent a short while playing around with it, and I've made certain areas slower and others faster. I also made it so the final establishing shot wasn't as tilted as before and is more of a square on standard shot, to complete the movement.

The second image below shows the different between the two final establishing shots, the one I had to start with and the one I finished with. Like I previously mentioned, one of the key purposes of the scene is not just to establish the scene but show the audience the wire fence and imply that the fencing is keeping the characters (which are introduced in the next scene) inside the farm, and gives the narrative a greater and more emphasised purpose.