First Animation Steps

16/12/06
Took my first steps yesterday and immediately got caught up in the process of creating a detailed set. Mainly in the detail of the apartment, balcony, etc. Whilst useful and necessary I realised straight away that it's pulling me away from directing (as I was prepared for this).

Obviously it is part of a director's role and made me realise how extensive that role is and the different hats it will require.

So I think I need to be prepared for the various roles of the process which will be something like:
- Location scouting (finding the right buildings)
- Set building - and the right props
- Casting (finding the right characters)
- Staging
- Camera placement, movement and usage
- Take planning (camera takes within a scene)
- Editing (shotline)

I'm sure there will be more.

Also thinking about being iterative - start with a rough set, only necessary props and cut it quite rough. Sort of experimenting. Although I would like to continuously build on the end result, I'm not sure how well Antics works once you have a number of actions in place and you want to start moving them around. My initial experience is that it is tricky. But I can always reset the take and maybe bring over specific actions?

There's also the debate about building the story in non-chronological order. I think this is down to the director's plan. So I have to think more about that (I am thinking too linear right now).

Finally, I want to apply software processes of iterative development - make the film, show it, refine it, review, refine, release. This should give better camera angles, etc. It may mean some rework but hopefully minimised in being able to reset and re-run stuff quickly even if building action from scratch.

Let's see how it works.

PS Some of this came from a very useful chat with my mate Hugh - nothing like talking through your own process and realising how it needs to change... Thanks Hugh!