#tutorial feedback

We showed our “finalised” animatic to everyone in the classroom to see whether or not we are able to convey what we want in our film.

The response we received: - the sense of the danger/storm/willy willy IS STILL NOT THERE To do this we need to build the sense of dread coming in the beginning maybe through a shadow hovering over the house. We also need to have something shattering or the damage in the film caused by the tragedy through having something broken or to show the result of the house being destroyed at the end. The baby at the end could also possibly be cracked before it match cuts to the loquat already cracked. 

- the abstract/trauma sequence isn’t coherent...? A lot of the patterns that appear in the animatic only express itself as an artful, beautiful piece instead of symbolising the change/catalyst in Vyonne’s body. The audience will only read this as a set of patterns and forget about it later on. Hence the colours and shapes need to be clarified, they all need to be given some sort of meaning behind it and there was a little confusion with the colours being represented in the animatic. Another thing to add is to show a smudge of colour in Vyonne’s body to show there is something alive and give a reason why Vyonne is defensive of her body.

- the music/sound effects doesn’t convey what we intended The music became a distraction to the audience to what’s going on as it is full on. It should be used sparingly. We want the audience to arrive into the film and to introduce/make them feel the setting. This music, however, can come swirl up when the loquat hits the ground. We also need to give the trauma it’s own sounds. A lot of successful films had audio that exemplified the film’s meaning without the audience noticing so while a lot of the audio was used as a placeholder, we will aim to find better sounds so the Sound Design students will understand our intention. 

We were suppose to show the first draft of our animatic in this tutorial, however Milly (who was in charge of doing the first draft of the animatic), was unable to do it due to illness and technical difficulties. Luckily Bene had done a little of the beginning of the animatic to show to the class. The issue is that Bene didn’t draw it the way the storyboard is laid out so we weren’t able to address our establishing scene as how we wanted to originally.

The feedback we received from Jake: - After showing the storyboard to him as the animatic wasn’t able to address our original idea he really liked how the scene is established in the beginning - More work during the trauma/abstract sequence especially when it comes to how it looks and also how we can incorporate the tornado more.    -> he says that the abstract sequence seems more like a nice, calm world in contrast to what we intended which was to show Vyonne’s body response to the trauma. Hence we need to experiment more with the colour and the pattern or at least develop a proper world for it like we did with the “realistic” world.    -> need more patterns that associate with the tornado such as fragmented lines/pieces, jagged lines etc.

In this tutorial, each group shows their “finalised” storyboard to everyone in the classroom to see whether or not there is a link between the original and the adaption. 

Response to our storyboard: - the tornado needs to be integrated more into the storyboard. Such as maybe in the distance through the window to show more risk/danger/trauma - show patterns of the mother transitioning onto the baby to express the effects on the baby - a colour journey with the colour palette changing to represent peace -> danger -> reality

We also needed to show our “finalised” environment and character designs. The only comment we got when it came to these were that our character needed to be more pregnant. 

Overall the response with ours was positive with only changes that we can easily manage. So from this point on we will be: - trying to find ways to integrate the tornado and the sense of danger into our storyboard (we will be all generating ideas for this before our next meeting) - assign certain scenes for the animatic - more studies on colour and possibly the style 

At this point in the process, we were supposed to have a finalised character, environment and storyboard. However, we didn’t. Also Emily wasn’t able to attend this tutorial due to a massive headache.

We’ve only managed to do a rough sketches of characters and the storyboard and provide it to Deb as feedback. Unfortunately most of them were unsatisfactory due to the fact that we didn’t even have a solid idea what our style was going to be in this film. 

Deb noticed that as a result of not producing as much work as we are suppose to be as a team, we obviously have a communication problem with each other. This is the time when we bring up the problems we have within the group: - Alexandra and Milly are strongly communicating with each other but because of that, it’s isolating Bene and Emily from contributing to the group work. As a result it seems that both Alexandra and Milly are taking over the project and not working as a four person group. - Bene needs to be more active and less passive with the group work. She needs to express her own opinions even if Alexandra and Milly are conversing really strongly together. As a group it’s important to involve yourself in every topic. 

Originally, the reason behind everyone doing a storyboard (or in general, everything) was because there was a confusion in how everyone interpreted the story and thought that it was best if we all did one to visually express it. It seems that it doesn’t work out well that way as that delays the project more. Deb started to explain to us how the process works which is to delegate roles to each other. While we were aware that we needed to do that, we had the issue where we didn’t know whose strength was the strongest in character, environment, narrative or storyboard. And we still don’t really know clearly. We delegated roles still as Deb says that will clear the confusion a little bit more within the group. The roles now are: Alexandra - Character design Bene - Character Design and Environment Emily - (will have to discuss before the next tutorial but possibly colour studies?) Milly - Storyboard

Last thing that Deb mentioned with our work is to integrate the shadows that are mentioned in the story which we kind of forgot existed within the story. So we need to somehow integrate the shadows (or the idea behind “loss”).

The day after our brainstorming session was out tutorial lesson where we get the opportunity to have the tutor look over our work and give us feedback on our progress. 

We showed the images we’ve got so far to use as inspiration for our ideas such as the landscape and the general vibe that the images present. He really liked how the Australian landscape images had these really lovely colours where the colour of the shading wasn’t black but purple and that a lot of the indoor images gave of a childhood/nostalgic vibe. He also looked at the character iterations we got which and said he really liked the character in the initial ideas in the Aboriginal context as she was really simple. Unfortunately, with all the rest of the characters iterated he said it was generic but it is understandable as we were still unclear about our ideas at that point in time to expand on more iterations.

We showed the storyboard (Milly’s) to Simon and he was able to provide us guidance and whether we’re going in the right direction. Overall he said that it was too literal (understandably as we only recently got a few solid ideas and this is the first storyboard so it wasn’t going to be perfect on the first try. Especially when the story was hard to understand so it is laid out literally as a first step to a better storyboard). However, he did really like how the fragmentation of the memory is explored in this where frame by frame the scene partially changes. The things that he said that we should explore for our next storyboard are: - how to make it more abstract, ambiguous  - less focus on the Johnny Cakes - more about the unborn child and the mother - epigenetic and how to visually present that  - the contrast of the environment inside and outside for example, outside is fast, rushed and not fluid while the inside is nice and steady as way to present the character attempting to find stability in a world that is about to be destroyed - the experiences of the mother and the unborn child in that moment through    -> vibration   -> sound   -> lighting (shadow and light) - the atmosphere   -> ambiguity   -> trauma   -> danger

After our feedback with Simon we decided to try and narrow down our research and focus on a particular topic that we are interested in that is related to the film we are producing.  Alexandra - Epigenetic trauma Milly - Epigenetic trauma  Emily - Landscape and Characters Bene - Food (the presentation and composition)

Quite snappy which would make the editing process in the end much easier but these transitions might look boring or jumpy so be careful 

Bright colours can help with the weirdness of the storyline, a monochrome colour scheme could hide elements of that weirdness and not make it as interesting as it could be. 

Intro Page still needs to be done 

Last page could do with a hint of pink as the other spreads contain it in some way or another

Highlights in the text to break it up 

Subheadings? 

Needs breaks and pauses in larger texts 

Text box doesn’t work spreading across the spread, they don’t do this in magazines because of binding, move the overlapping spread text box to the page of text

If it’s important put it in bold as it looks like a caption images

Change text to grey as black looks too harsh 

The white text on the pink spread isn’t that easy to read

Not enough hierarchy 

Captions can add interest 

A few dodgy line breaks 

Follow through with the touches, pill illustrations onto text page. The ones that are there are too subtle

Last page text needs to be nudged up 

Needs to be on a horizontal line 

Pill sachet imagery should be full bleed on the page

Maybe bring pink in as a complimentary colour to feel more fluid