Final Submit of Innovative Animation

 ‘The Night Terror’

 https://vimeo.com/151302997

Style: We chose to do it in an Osbert Parker style but using silhouettes similar too Lotte Reiniger

 

Synopsis:

One dark evening, in a Victorian street, a girl is shocked to find a killer has invaded her home! Doing her best to run , a chase scene ensues as she tries to escape and evade death, as he stays on her tail! She runs and runs, attempting to seek sanctuary in a lit Church, but her fate was sealed the moment the killer set eyes on her, and her demise was inevitable as he catches up with her before she can reach safety.

 Inspiration - We were inspired by the old horror movies, like Jack the Ripper style, where the killer is in a cape and top hat. We liked the idea of something Victorian styled with a dark and dramatic atmosphere.

Process -

• We found a sequence we wanted to base the animation on and edited a clip together.
• We made a plan of where the buildings would be and what streets we needed so we weren't making lots of extra buildings.
• We exported the clip into j peg's, went through all the pictures deleting any we didn't need and writing down the ones we did need so we were organised. 
• We put the pictures into Photoshop so we could resize them to be all the same size and then we started to cut them out.
• We researched key things we need help with like how to make the floor look like it was wet and how to make cardboard look like a brick wall.
• We build the set, starting with the first scene and working our way through making sure we had everything we needed.
• We tested key parts to make sure it looked good lie the lighting and the smoke to see if they would work and if they didn't how we could change them so they did work.
• We painted and finalised the details on the set
• We filmed it controlling the lighting (fairy lights and candles)
• We edited it making sure all the timings were correct and nothing jumped or was the samefor too long. Also making sure it felt creepy and it all added to the atmosphere.
• We added sound making sure it added to the animation and didn't take away from it.
• We uploaded it and it was finished  

Issues - We came across a few issues along the way which we tried to correct or tried to do it in a way you wouldn't notice as we didn't have enough time to do everything again. For example for the smoke we used incense sticks and although when we filmed them the smoke looked good and we thought everything would be okay. When it came to taking the pictures that just did not happen. The fog/ smoke would not show up in the pictures and although we tried trapping it in the area putting it right up to the camera, nothing worked and so we just left it in the end.

Another issue was that after cutting out over 500 images ranging from big to tiny we noticed that after finishing the set some of them looked too small in the shot and next to the buildings and made it look funny. We hadn't considered what they would look like against the buildings which is something we will remember in the future. We decided to remove some of the cut outs that were too small.



I think Bethany and I worked really well together as we knew what we wanted and we wanted similar things so it just clicked. We shared everything so not one of us just did everything. We also met up a lot outside Uni so we could get everything done. It was tiring and and stressful at times but the overall animation was worth it. I think it looks great and we have accomplished everything we wanted except for the fog but we know for next time. We put a lot of effort into getting the right lighting and the right atmosphere and mood set and I feel we did this to the best of our ability.