Ok, so I’m done with the exercise. Here is a photo of the final board.

I forgot to mention in the previous post to work the exercise quickly…do not over analyze anything…it’s more stream of consciousness in that respect I suppose. Just go with the ideas that come to mind as disjointed as they may be at the time. Make cards at the moment a visual strikes you, regardless of where you are in the exercise, and post it anywhere on the board.

Before this exercise I had some loose notes and thumbnails of my next project…but I was unsure of the final act. I always like to solidify the final scenes of the movie before I start any filming so I know the direction I’m going. Sometimes the end can change when you are filming but at that point the production is moving so changes become more or less justified by what you see developing. This exercise paid off by giving me a complete skeleton to hang the production on and move on to the next step which will most likely be animatics to confirm how the concepts are holding up in the video medium.

When positioning my cards some visuals were indicative of breaks or pauses which seem to equate with acts so I moved the cards around…sort of like paragraphs or sentences. Once I got the main visuals on the board I started filling in with other scenes like mortar between bricks. I also stopped to ask questions about what happens at this point or that point…and somehow (this is the beauty of being in a creative zone – I have no explanation for this type of stuff but if you’ve experienced it you know what a charge it can be) some new ideas came out of nowhere and tied up the ending.

If my theory hold up it looks like the film may be around 5 minutes, not that it matters, it will be as long as it wants to be…the film is in control now. 😎

Some time ago I posted my analysis of “The Frogs Who Wanted a King” by Wladyslaw Starewicz on stopmotionanimation.com as a benchmark for developing shots and scenes. I am running through the exercise for my next project tonight as I draft storyboard cards so I thought I would re-post the info here at my blog.

While preparing for a previous stop motion project I wanted to gauge the breakdown of shots and scenes for a short film. My intent was to get some benchmarks to work against while planning scenes and shooting specific shots. I decided to watch my Starewicz DVD for reference. I would pause and forward one frame at a time every now and then while watching “The Frogs Who Wanted a King”.

The exercise helped me to get a sense of the pace and frame-rate I should be working with while filming something. It also revealed to me that I could plan on doing at least a shot per day (around 6 seconds or so) and just move along slowly but steadily until I filmed everything. I guess it helped me create a rough production schedule since I was also working with no script and just a set of visual ideas.

Here are the specifics that I found.

-25 scenes
-62 specific animated shots
-19 title cards shots
-81 total shots
-7 seconds: average length of shot
-16 seconds: average length of title card
-15 words: approximate number of words per title card
-4 words per line for title cards
-16 frames: number of frames for a “Starewicz-style” zoom

The exercise is to take index cards (or the back of used old business cards) and quickly sketch or write out descriptions of discreet visual scenes of your film. Once you have at least 20 to 30 cards you have a bulk of visual material at your disposal. You then place them on a bulletin board with pins or magnets and start moving them around to find the flow, arcs, or connections of your movie. Ideally, as you review the stream of visual ideas, new ideas or directions will arise and you then sketch or write those and start sticking them on the board.

Iterate through this exercise at least one more time to add 2 or 3 cards to each existing card when needed for clarity of visual communication. Pretty soon you have the visual concepts for around 4 to 6 minutes of footage. In some ways it’s like painting or sculpting with visual concepts on cards instead of paint and the board is your canvas. You can step back every so often and “read” the stream of cards until you feel confident that you can formalize your shooting plan.