For the first session, we had to bring the storyboards we worked on during the break so we could dive right into the cinematics topic we introduced on the last day of term 1.
During the session, we went deeper into the subject, studying the layout, composition and camera language. All these combined serve as an active narrator, conveying the mood, the character’s intent and even the plot.
We learnt this by following three consecutive questions:
- Where do you put the camera?
- What is this scene about?
- What do you want to say?
To answer these questions, we went through these key concepts:
- Placement + framing: decide where to place the camera and what to include in the frame to show narrative.
- Focus + DOF to guide the viewer through space:
- deep focus for an open, exploratory feel
- shallow focus for a tight, emotional focus
- rack focus to “cut without a cut”
- Lens + distortion:
- short lenses to give wide-angle strength
- long lenses to show natural proportions
- Composition basics: rule of thirds, leading lines…
- Movement + shot types
To put this into practice, we were assigned to do the 5+5 challenge. We were asked to create two storyboards that tell a clear story using only 5 shots, each 5 secs long.
Here are my storyboards:
The only feedback I received was for the second storyboard, at the 4th shot, on how to show the pan properly.
During the class, we exchanged storyboards, and this was the one I had to work with and put in Maya.
My struggle with this assignment was that we had to focus on the camera rather than the animation, but my storyboard had a lot of acting. I first positioned the cameras within 5 seconds (120 frames) and then worked on the poses.