CAGD345W: Story Project

Story Project: Soul

For CAGD345W, our goal for this semester is to learn how pre-production works and what the process is. For this project, we needed to outline our story with a logline and synopsis; create a script for our story; design our character and create a character sheet; fill out a shotlist that follows the script and details the types of camera angles and movement that flows with the storyline; create a storyboard; and finally with the feedback we got from our storyboard, we needed to create an animatic. 

Soul

Synopsis: Eleanor creates a companion but upon activation, she discovers her robot companion is rather expressionless. Before she can do anything, the alarm rings and she must leave. The lone robot discovers a remote control and turns on the TV. Scrolling through the channels, the robot discovers a music channel and becomes interested in the dance moves. However, he has trouble copying the moves and falls on his face. Frustrated at this, he walks away and notices in the mirror he’s emoting. It looks like he does have a soul after all.

ProjectStory:

• Problems Encountered: I had some trouble trying to summarize my story and matching the plot points with the beats. 
• Solution: Since this is only supposed to be a 1-min story, I had to revise and cut out a lot of the plot points. This final draft is a lot shorter but I am more confident that the summary and the beats match the actual animatic. However, the summary is still pretty long. 

Script:

• Problems Encountered: I wanted the characters in the story to be nameless but I found it difficult to write the script while referring the characters by "Person A" or "Girl". 
• Solution: Instead I went more into character development and now "Person A" is Eleanor. Though you wouldn't tell how complex and complicated she is in the actual animatic since she only shows up for a brief time.  

Character Sheets:

• Problems Encountered: Facial expressions were probably the hardest part of this assignment. That and the character poses, since the character is a robot it's difficult to decide whether to follow the character's actual personality (which is static and robotic) or just add expression regardless. 
• Solution: I went with it and hey, the character is pretty cute isn't it? I named him B3N and at least at the end of the animatic, he becomes more human. 

Shotlist:

• Problems Encountered: I definitely had trouble doing the shots and the angles. It was difficult to decide what types of angles and movements I really needed for this project. 
• Solution: I ended up fixing and revising a lot from the first draft to this final one after following the animatic.

Storyboard:

• Problems Encountered: A lot of the feedback I received was positive, but what I did take away from it was that the split screens and the transitions were too flashy and don't flow well with the story. 
• Solution: I revised this in my animatic and took out the split screens. 

Animatic:

• Problem Encountered: One of the biggest problems I had was keeping the story within the time limit and the length/timing of the scenes.
• Solution: I took out some of the scenes and either decrease or increase the shot lengths.