48 Hour Film Challenge

48 Hour Film Challenge

Introduction

This was our first mini project/challenge which was assigned to us at the start of the course. The challenge was to create a video which lasted up to a minute within 48 hours. We could not edit digitally and anything we recorded would be in the video. Therefore all the animating had to be done with objects or paper rather than 3D or 2D digitally drawn/ modeled on a computer. 

We started the challenge by getting into groups of 3-4 people and we had to chose (at random) two words which would become the topic of the video. The words we chose did not have to be the definitive narrative, just as long the video had some relevance to the two words. [i.e. If the word chosen was train, the video couldn't be about just cars, unless you connected cars to trains in the video.] 

Development

The words within my group were 'Invisible' and 'Hole'. 

We mind mapped our ideas on what our video could be about:

Despite having different ideas, as a group we decided to go with the X-ray idea. We believed it would be the most interesting to do and would be the most visually interesting as well. This links with the words 'Invisible' and 'Hole' because an x-ray acts like a hole which you can see within the human body without creating a physical hole in the patient. With this idea we added a illustrative aesthetic to the x-ray making everything within the body look 'cartoon-ey'. 

We then roughly story boarded what would happen in the video and assigned each other to different sections of the body which would be x-rayed within the video.  

Story Overview

The patient would walk onscreen and get into position, standing facing the camera. The paper would enter the screen and cover the patient's face. This would then reveal what would be inside the patients head, a skull and a little person climbing around it. Then the x-ray would move down with the little man entering the patient's mouth. From there the x-ray would reveal the throat of the patient with the little man spiraling down it. From there the little man would fall hitting a rib of the patient and falling down towards the gut. The stomach would be pool of spiraling fluid where the man goes down. The x-ray would then move off screen revealing the side of the stomach and arm bones. When the x-ray leaves the screen the patient would then walk off screen. 

Production

I was assigned the chest cavity where in the video the paper moves down from the neck to the gut. Within this section I wanted to add a lot of movement with the lungs and heart to make the section stand out as well as the little person moving through the chest. 

Here are some of the frames I did for that section:

Within the video you can see where the patient tries to match the breathing to the drawing of the lungs, however it is rather difficult to see because of the lower frame rate and not enough screen time. 

I also tried to make the heart beat at a realistic rate but this is also difficult to see because of the same reasons. 

Overall I believed I worked at an effective rate, however the outcome wasn't as effective as I hoped.

Next time I would time the actions of the movements more carefully and have less background movement to emphasise the narrative so the audience isn't overwhelmed or distracted. 

There was a technical problem with the video where a pink rectangle appears about half-way through the video which wasn't supposed to be there. We did not film this and when we played back our video it did not show. This pink rectangle only appeared when we sent the video via email and uploaded it, so no one was sure what it was. 

We also realised that the title was incorrectly spelled 'Invisible' and instead spelled 'Invisbe'. This was a simple mistake made at the last moments of production. 

Despite this, I am happy with the outcome of the video because I believe thew group worked really hard in such a short space of time. 

However there are a few improvements I would make. These include: 

• Making the animation smoother by adding more frames between. 
• Adding bolder lines to the skull section to make the skull stand out throughout that section. 
• Better timing the breathing with the lungs in the chest section to exaggerate and emphasise it to the audience.
• Better timing on the heart to make it believably beating. 
• Toning down the background movements so that they are less distracting and overwhelming for the audience. 
• Bolder lines in the stomach section to make the stomach stand out.
• Ensuring everything is correct with the video before publishing it.