Timing and Math (YAY)

    So something I was low key worried about was making sure to pertain to that 2 minute max time. I was initially worried about going over time, so I tried to be a bit conservative with what I wanted to include. I began to think of the story in 30ish seconds chunks, but I was never too specific with things. After timing out the second chunk with its animations, I really helped me put things in perspective in terms of time. I got an estimate of about 25 seconds for that portion of the opening, which gave me a bit of comfort because if the second chunk wasn't super long, the other chunks shouldn't make the opening over 2 minutes. Though as much as I like to test my luck, I didn't want to risk my chances and have the opening be too long. 

    This all brings me to today. I put time estimates for each short that I've storyboarded. The first chunk gave me a bit of trouble because I wasn't too sure about how long each of the shots should be, so I thought about the pen tapping. From there I thought about using the taps like a metronome. I then proceeded to tap my pen and follow the story board. I found it best cutting after every 8 taps, but what exactly are 8 taps equal to? For this part I consulted to YouTube and looking up videos with metronomes and that either matched or were close to the pace I was tapping. I started at 160 bpm, and went on in increments of 20, until I reached 240 bpm. Not only did this closely match the pace I was tapping, but it also had some unexpectedly nice benefits

WARNING MATH AHEAD:

    By dividing 240 bpm with 60, you'll get the amount of beats there are in a single second. That number is 4 beats per second, meaning that the 8 beats that I had for each shot was 2 seconds. Another cool benefit with having 4 beats per second, it makes filming in 24 fps easy to work with. For every tap in the first shot, I'll have 6 frames to animate the impact trails. Where as if I were to film in 30 fps, not only would I have to animate more overall, but also 30 isn't divisible by 4 (at least in a practical sense). 

    At the current moment, the first chunk is about 27 seconds. In that time, it establishes the environment and work space of the animator. If on the day of filming I feel like including some more shots of the settings, I'll get them with 2 second length in mind and try to find the best place for them in editing. I'll talk more about it in a little bit, but I have time to spare if I really wanted to include some more shots in the first chunk.

    I've already talked about the timings of the second chunk, so I'll keep it brief by saying its about 25 seconds. Speaking of things are are about 25 seconds, the opening credit sequence is estimated to be around that time. realistically speaking there will probably be about 5 seconds more to include wipes other animated elements in the credit sequence. And lastly there's a phone call that leads directly into the title card. The phone call itself is pretty brief, about a sentence of dialogue. The title card while probably be about 5 seconds. And like that, the total runtime is about a minute, thirty. If I'm fully honest, I'm kind of surprised and happy that each chunk is more or less the same in length and of course under 2 minutes.

    One last thing I did, was make yet another test video to visualize the first and second chunk together. You should get the drill by now, "its not how the final thing is going to look, trust me!" Hopefully with this you can get an idea of what I'm going with establishing the setting, tapping pen, and the editing. I like it, thought like I said before I might add a few more shots to better establish the work space the animator resides in. Besides that I am excited to film this hopefully soon and then edit it. And like everything else, I'll be keeping you up to date, but for now I must say good bye.