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.

Innovative - Editing and Sound

 When we had finished filming we had to go through and sort the photos making sure all the bad ones (out of focus, lighting bad, double) had been removed to a different folder.

When filming and going through the shots we came across cut outs that looked like weird objects and not normal humans. Below are a few examples of this:
Ninja poses

Weird limbs


After we decided what pictures we would use we put them into tvpaint as a sequences. We then went through scene by scene making sure the timings were okay, deleting and adding a frames and just making sure it ran smoothly and everything was in the right order. 

For the lamppost scenes we filmed them instead of taking the pictures as we couldn't capture the flickering properly as pictures. We then exported them as j peg's and put them in with the rest of the sequence.

Below is our first edit:

https://vimeo.com/151302853

Sound:

Once we had edited it and we were happy we started to look for sound. We already knew the sort of sounds we wanted it was just find them and getting the timings right. Separately we found different sounds we though would work and then we went through and chose what worked best. 

We knew we wanted the sound to be creepy and dramatic and not over power the animation but add to it and make it more intense. We focused on the old horror movie music as that was the style we had chosen for the whole animation.
We wanted realistic folio effects but we didn't want one for everything as we thought that would overpower the animations and it would sound wrong. The main sound effects we wanted was the woman's breathing the man's shoes running and the gate opening. This also meant that the man and the woman had their own sound and as the audience you can differentiate between the two characters. The woman is the victim and so you can hear her breathing and panic and the man is the villain so the sound of his shoes make the atmosphere tense and you know hes comes to kill her.

After the sound was finished, we chose to add a title to keep with the theme of 50’s style horror,  going through fonts until we found one that we felt matched.
Title (For this image, we used a shot that we both really liked to add it to):


Final animation: 

https://vimeo.com/151302997

Innovative - Film day

First shot.
We worked together when filming and getting each shot, I would be placing the different cut outs and Bethany would get the focus right and take the pictures and would also tell me if things looked weird in the shot.

We worked together well so it was easy to do and although it took a long time making sure each shot was good as we went along it got easier and easier as we knew what we wanted and worked together.


As each scene changed, we would re-position the camera, re arrange lighting according to the scene and take a few shots to test positioning.



We controlled the lighting all the way through, using fairy lights and candles and placing them in different positions to make sure it was the best lighting and looked okay. When positioning pieces, we would place the new one before removing the previous one so it would be smooth and not jump.



Some examples of before and after lighting











Focus played a big [art when taking the pictures we tried to make sure each shot was focused fuly, but it was especially hard to do when the cut outs were very small and when the scene was dark.

Example - when the meet in the middle of town




As we went along we took more than one photo for each shot to make sure we had the best lighting and focus. Below are a few examples of when we spent a lot more time creating the perfect lighting, we played around with positioning to get the perfect shot.








Random shot while we were filming: 





 



We would set up a scene first making sure all the buildings were in the right places and looked good. The we would move onto lighting and check that the lighting was perfect and creating to the mood we wanted. We placed lights behind windows as it was a street and we wanted to be authentic.



Although the filming took a couple of days and was very tiring to do, i feel overall it went great. We worked together to control each scene and make sure it was perfect and consistent. The only thing that let us down was the fog because the pictures would not capture it the way we wanted to. So in a lot of scenes we chose to leave as it did not add anything and would pointlessly smoke up the room.