Rationale
In week 3 and week 4, I finalised the script, I then quickly made a moodboard and focused on storyboarding. The storyline continued to update throughout the pre-production as I looked into other practitioners’ works and reflected on mine, realising some of the actions and shots were hard to visualise. I then produced the first rough version of the animatics. I was also looking at using metaphors to hint at the hidden contents, exploring how the beautifully-depicted elements from the original poem could be used to indicate the sadness and desolation of the rebellion.
Context
The establishing scenes from Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki inspired me while I was sketching out my storyboard, by having the camera moving downwards and gradually revealing the whole environment. The slow, sad but charming background music coming up after the title helps to set the overall atmosphere of the film, repetitively used several times during the story. It was also a great sound reference that I would send to my sound designer later during the production.
Method
In terms of the use of implied metaphors, I sketched a scene of fish falling out from the basket to the poet’s hand, then transferring into the maple leaves, to indicate the protagonist’s desire for richness and joy in imagination, which was eventually ruined by the rebellion. There was also going to be a scene in which the poet was recalling his memory of him before coming to the city, to set up the brief background and provide some basic information to hint at the sadness of the story.
A lot of the early storyboard was produced in Procreate, which allowed me to use pencil brushes to imitate drawing on paper.
Reflection
It took me lots of time to figure out the preferred composition and camera angles of the shots and scenes and some were still set to blank when I moved on to animatics, in which I should just work on other pre-production materials when I was stuck, to save time. Alternatively, I ought to research a variety of animation and related works for reference.
Link to animatic version 1: https://youtu.be/JAEfJe622h4
