DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING
Character Designer/ Storyboard Artist: Georgia Sapounas
Animator/ Lighting Technician: Georgia Sapounas
Production Coordinator / Sound Designer/ Picture Editor: Georgia Sapounas
Storyboard
Shot #: 1
Description of Action: Still shot of Cindy and Martin
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Introducing: Cindy and Marten. Yes, vacuum cleaners can have names too!
Shot Duration: 5 seconds (10-15)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Establishing Shot.
Side profile of Cindy, the MAID, and Martin, the VACUUM CLEANER.
Shot #: 2
Description of Action: Cindy going along her duty of vacuuming, slowly, semi-boring. She comes in from the right of the screen and walks to the left and back, twice.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: whistling
Shot Duration: 23 seconds (15-38)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Wide shot. Cindy is being shot from her left side, with the camera above her head shooting downwards to contain floor space beneath her feet in the frame.
Shot #: 3
Description of Action: Cindy and Martin start grooving while vacuuming.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy Music Begins and continues through to next scene
Shot Duration: 4 seconds (38 – 42)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Medium Close up of Cindy’s feet and Martin starting to groove.
Shot #: 4
Description of Action: Cindy and Martin groove. She comes in from the right of the screen and grooves to the left and back, twice, with some dancing in the middle.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy Music and “this is fun”
Shot Duration: 12 seconds (42-54)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Wide Shot. Cindy is being shot from her left side, with the camera above her head shooting downwards to have a slight amount of floor space in the frame.
Shot #: 5
Description of Action: Cindy is holding onto Martin but it is getting out of control
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy music and “Whoaaaaaaaaaa!”
Shot Duration: 4 seconds (55-59)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Close up. Camera in line with Cindy’s shoulder. Martin is not in the frame as the frame is cut off at Cindy’s waist.
Shot #: 6
Description of Action: Martin is out of control and taking Cindy for a ride as Cindy barely can hold onto him. They move from the bottom left corner of the frame to the top right, diagonally.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy music.
Shot Duration: 3 seconds (59-102)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Medium close up that turns into a wide shot.
Cindy is being shot from her right side, with the camera level with the middle of her body.
Shot #: 7
Description of Action: Martin glides quickly by himself, falls, then gets back up.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy music. “Oh my gosh, what the?”.
Shot Duration: 4 seconds (102-106)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Wide shot. Martin moves from outside the bottom right corner of the frame to top left.
Shot #: 8
Description of Action: Martin, slides back and forth then falls straight down.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: Groovy music comes to an end, “Please someone, make it go away”. Falling swoosh and huge splash!
Shot Duration: 5 seconds (106-111)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Medium close up. Camera looking down on vacuum in order to get more than a side profile perspective.
Shot #: 9
Description of Action: Cindy talking to the camera.
Voice Over and Sound Effects: “Bet ya didn’t see that’s coming. Of course not, there’s no background to see what’s coming. Originally I fainted when a vacuum cleaner started zippin’ around on its own, but where’s the fun in that?”
Shot Duration: 9 seconds (111-120)
Camera Angle and Technical Notes:
Close up. Chest up of Cindy. Lighting from above.
Production Notes
It was difficult to stick to an exact storyboard because this affected the animation timing. The duration of shots were adjusted. I filmed the animation twice because I needed the initial videos to be longer. When I took still frames of the video and edited them into still shots, it shortened the timing quite a bit. Then, when I animated the still shots in Adobe After Effects, the timing was again adjusted. This is something that I dealt with throughout the succession of the project. I was open to adjustments and continued to review the animation to see if the timing was right.
Secondly, my After Effects file became so large with all of the individual footage files that it wouldn’t play in real time. It would pause and skip. This made adding sound very difficult. In order to add sound, I exported the final video without sound from Adobe After Effects to a Quicktime movie. I then played the movie while creating sound in iMovie. I imported music, sound effects, and recorded the voice over’s. I then exported the sound to a .mov file and imported it into After Effects. I placed it in the correct spot in my timeline and the sound fit perfectly. I am unsure if it was my computer that was overwhelmed with the file size that was making my animation pause and skip or if it was the program.
Lastly, with the amount of source files that I had, they kept getting moved around and After Effects was unable to locate them. I organized my files into one folder to allow for easier navigation.
It was difficult to stick to an exact storyboard because this affected the animation timing. The duration of shots were adjusted. I filmed the animation twice because I needed the initial videos to be longer. When I took still frames of the video and edited them into still shots, it shortened the timing quite a bit. Then, when I animated the still shots in Adobe After Effects, the timing was again adjusted. This is something that I dealt with throughout the succession of the project. I was open to adjustments and continued to review the animation to see if the timing was right.
Secondly, my After Effects file became so large with all of the individual footage files that it wouldn’t play in real time. It would pause and skip. This made adding sound very difficult. In order to add sound, I exported the final video without sound from Adobe After Effects to a Quicktime movie. I then played the movie while creating sound in iMovie. I imported music, sound effects, and recorded the voice over’s. I then exported the sound to a .mov file and imported it into After Effects. I placed it in the correct spot in my timeline and the sound fit perfectly. I am unsure if it was my computer that was overwhelmed with the file size that was making my animation pause and skip or if it was the program.
Lastly, with the amount of source files that I had, they kept getting moved around and After Effects was unable to locate them. I organized my files into one folder to allow for easier navigation.
Animation Notes
While capturing my footage, I didn’t have enough light shining directly towards the subject. The lighting should have been coming from the same angle as the camera in order to get a balanced image. There was too much overhead light. This problem had to be fixed in the editing the source files stage, which made this step extremely time consuming. It was an inefficient way of going about creating source files, as it would have been a lot faster to re-shoot the video.
Through the experience I have gained in animation timing, After Effects, filming, capturing footage, creating source files, and matching sound with video; my next animated video would contain more special effects in After Effects. I would be more time efficient and create a better product for the time put in. I spent at least 14 hours just creating source files for this animation but this could be cut down enormously in After Effects. However, it was a point of mine to create cut-out, puppet files in Photoshop from still video clips that were taken from an initial moving image that I filmed. This is very time consuming and didn’t create the most fluidity in the animation. It was difficult to predict the animation timing with this technique. While capturing footage, the actress would pause and the vacuum would stick so I paid careful attention when capturing still frames. I created the animation timing, by editing the timing of each footage file separately.
Lastly, I learned a lot about lighting, animating, After Effects, and sound. My character was Cindy, a maid who was depicted in an organic form of washed out colours with stark outlines that stood out on a white background. I chose to keep the animation simple without adding background elements in order to keep the viewer’s focus on the characters. The background was not the most important in this animation to tell the most important thing, the story. The story was told through the characters’ movements in the picture, along with the composition of the frame. Also, the dialogue, sound effects, and voice over played a huge role in the characters. The dramatic tension rose when the sound went from whistles to groovy music and the pace of the characters sped up with the sound! The resolution of conflict was depicted comically and the sound effects that were created for this part added a lot of fun to the animation and production.
