3rd Year official back!

I’m officially back at UCA feeling confident ready to unlock my true potential for the last year ahead, we had been asked to produce a project brief outlining the proposal of work detailing the chosen idea, my proposal included the basic premise of the self-lead assignment which is essentially a transcription of children’s Poem by Trevor Millum ‘tell me it isn’t there’, thinking about the route in which to tackle the piece of poetry a large amount of thought will be expressed through a high bred combination of live action with cg. Because I have been working on this over the summer preparing initial steps, I felt the opportunity was there in the tutorial to explain some points/views about the project relating to the 15 weeks we have, (just to add, things are going to be very specific and on a level of achievability this is based on experience of past units), discussing relevant issues that lie ahead backed up with some concept art work. Also in the tutorial I gave details about the productiveness of my summer and how I was fortunate enough to seek advice from another source ‘Matthew Fletcher’ a past UCA student who has experienced the nature of what I have set out to do for this project, an overview of his experience was shared, very useful stuff. Liaising with Matt through the project will really help in difficult situations and a time saver when encountering problems that need solving. It was interesting to discuss the whole idea on a one to one session with Alan, I felt he was intrigued by my idea of taking this kind of approach as its something different plus a new challenge.

So as Alan was aware of the position I’m in with the project, I stressed the potential areas in which I maybe encounter problems, things like how to undertake the initial poem and transfer it into a storyboard context. Should I go for a cartoony approach with the monsters or push for some realistic looking creatures? After reading the poem some suggestion where made firstly the kind of style that will be portrayed in the animation needs to be clear, the decision was made to go for a spooky suspense kind if approach much like a recent day film Paranormal Activity which exploits this nature of suspense and fear, therefore it becomes clear assessing b movies for example taking note of the language of these films will be one of the main areas of research, ensuring this is performed correctly will determine the success of the project. 

Target audience?

As the narration is designed for children I would still like the targeted audience to be of a young age but perhaps have a wider appeal also. Bringing the poem alive with creative sounds, eye catching cg is the main aim.

Taking control of this unit I’ve enlisted the next stages that need to be resolved.
1. Storyboard/Animatic.
2. Researching topics (b movies)
3. Voice over narration – emails have been sent waiting on replies.
4. Boujou tutorials – preferred software package recommend.
5. Environment Tests (HD camera set up)
6. Creating sounds.