Editing Before Filming

    About a week ago I met with my instructor to talk about my current progression at the time. When I mentioned the idea of incorporating mix media/animation, she had asked about exactly how I was going to include it. I knew that I wanted to introduce the mix media in the 2nd chunk, I mentioned how it'd show to the viewer, what the animator is thinking, motion trails/visual exaggerations, and possibly some of the emotions the person is feeling. One of the early ideas I had  for the opening was the animator throwing the sketch book at the wall out of rage. When I mentioned this, I was suggested that maybe something should come out of the sketch book and perhaps taunt the animator. I took that idea, but tweaked it a little bit.

    It didn't take long for me to like the idea of the animation annoying the animator; it'd add another layer of frustration. During the initial suggestion, one of the first things I thought about was the very strange and dated Windmill scene from Army of Darkness (1992). The scene follows the protagonist Ash as he goes to rest in a windmill, but is harassed and attacked by tiny evil versions of himself. The scene it self is borderline a slap stick cartoon, which isn't what I'm pulling from it. I'm more just pulling the idea of something small creating that very much annoys the main character.

Windmill Scene - Army of Darkness (1992)

    One of the first things I thought about was if something kept ruining the ideas the animator would come up with, but what? My answer came to me while thinking of an unrelated aspect of the opening. Throughout the first chunk, the animator is fidgeting with their pen by tapping on the page and impact lines coming from each tap. Each line would only travel a portion of the frame before fizzling out, during the last tap before the 2nd chunk, the impact lines would continue until their off screen. These lines will soon be responsible for much of the frustration soon to come.

    The 2nd chunk to me, has been labelled the brainstorming phase because this is where the viewer will see all the different ideas the animator comes up with. Something I couldn't quite nail down was providing a reason for the animator to keep coming up with ideas. But now I have some lines that annoy the character. By putting two and two together, I came to the concept of the lines ruining each idea. This antagonizes the lines and provides a reason as to why the animator would want to throw their sketch book at them (and in turn the wall), as well as force the animator to come up with new ideas.

    Another thing I've done is create an outline of the timings and the actions for the 2nd chunk. Since ideally I'd want this to be in one long take, I have to plan out exactly how long things certain things are going to last. This outline has the animator think up 3 different characters that are each foiled by the lingering lines. Within this time, (vertical) Line Guy is slashed by the horizontally moving lines, Box Boy gets his head screwed off, and Hot Head is blown out. To visualize this portion I plan on making a simple reference video that follows the timings, so I can see if I'd want to change anything