A critical analysis of the animatic process of the groups film trailer

1. An animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in the order that it is planned to turn out in the final product.
The function of the animatic is to see if that product will look how you initially intended it too.

2. Animatic process -
- Story board
- shot schedules
- Props, costume & actors
- Limitations
- Taking of the shots
- Editing the shots together
- Addition of sound
- familiarises ourselves with effects and transitions
- completion of animatic

3. To develop the narrative in the animatic from the original story board we learnt that some initial shots and order of shots did not work well together, it's because of this that we switched some shots around when putting together the animatic.
The animatic was very beneficial in this sense, as if we made the trailer straight off the story board we would of made mistakes.

4. From our experience of creating the animatic we leant that the story board was very useful, giving us the rough idea of what order and what structure to piece the shots together in.
Between us we went out on six separate shoots, some in the same places and some places we only went once, but some of us attended some shoots and some of us attended others, based on practicality.
We chose our actors by focusing on the characteristics of the members of the group, in the plot.
In a few of our shoots we revised the idea of taking panning shots by capturing 3-4 photos of a similar shot, but from different angles, so when put on order the shot appears to be panning, and this proved as a successful technique.
In a few of the end shots for the animatic we did not have the number of people we needed to be zombies, so many shots do not look as pleasing as they should. But we still proceeded to shoot in the same angle and location as we planned just to give is the idea that this is where they would be.

5. During the editorial stage of our animatic, we used a software which allowed us to create our product. Through this software we were able to add sound, shorten and lengthen shots, add titles and intertitles, basically everything that we needed.

6. We decided on the length of each shot and transition by thinking of how long that actuall shot should be shown if it was film, rather than just a still image. An example of this is the still shots of the chase scenes, not so action packed when still but we tried to give them the screen time they would need in the finished trailer.

7. Our choice in the inter-titles was to reflect the plots narrative and the genre of the plot. We did this by revealing the simple facts about the plot but not giving away anything spoiler worthy. The font and effect we decided on was to give the inter-titles a type writer feel.

8. The choice of soundtrack was a song by You me at six, a band. The song was called The Swarm, and the chorus lyrics were 'is this the end of the world?', which we deemed relatable to our trailer. However we are aware this song cannot be used in our trailer due to copyright, so we plan on getting somebody to compose a cover o the song that we can use.
The up beat rock vibe this song gives off also represents the action in the particular part of the animatic.

9. I believe our completed animatic appeals to our target audience through the soundtrack, the age of the characters and also the genre it's self, as zombie, survival horrors are very popular with in the generation we aimed our trailer towards.

10. Regarding any changes to the we would make, before we make a start on the trailer-
- include the trailer title. 'The risen'
- shorten the radio transmission dialogue by cutting up the sound and including only important dialogue. We can the edit this together with the sound of the radio tuning, making the static sound.
- get a male to voice the radio broadcast
- include screams of zombie during zombie change scene.
- use tripod more often, especially during night time shots to avoid camera blur.
- Zombie jump scare at the end
- re arrange the order the abandoned house shot appears
- addition to trailer ending
- finds tunnel door
- wipes door over, discovers 'T13' written on the door.
- film date then appears
- sounds of lights flickering, fades into a low angle shot of
group walking into abandoned lab with lights flickering
- jump cut to zombie jump scare
- billing block.

11. 5 key images that i believe to be important are these -

• Close up of zombie as he changes from human to zombie, setting the sense of fear. 
• The establishing shot of the town when its dark with the helicopters flying over and the explosions in the back ground, this disturbs the equilibrium. 
• The close up of the radio with the radio transmission playing as diegetic sound. 
• Long shot of the isolated town streets, as the music kicks in. (Where the zombies where meant to be in shot)
• Over the shoulder shot of the character finding the broken door, this is an important part of the narrative.
  

12. During the construction of the animatic, my role was not just one but many, as I contributed in each area.
I took many of the photos used on my camera, I found the temporary soundtrack and edited it into the animatic, I helped edit much of the piece together, wrote the plot for our trailer that we all agreed on and also a back story to that plot which included a map of the area mentioned in the back story. I also edited the establishing shot of the dark town with the explosions and helicopters included into it.