Ronnie Leah, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

 Our project specifies that it should be filmed with a fixed camera, as if we were using a tripod. I want to investigate examples of comedies which use this filming style in order to get a better understanding. Friends Friends was an American sitcom which aired between 1994 to 2004. It centred around a group of friends as they navigate their lives. It was filmed with a fixed camera, which focused on the 6 main characters  The interesting thing about how Friends was recorded, was that it was actually done in front of a live studio audience. This meant sets and camera placement had to be strategically setup before hand, in order to allow a scene to flow. There were still multiple takes between scenes, however the director felt like the audience played an essential role in the comedy. Certain key events such as two main characters Chandler and Monica sleeping together, were shown to 3 separate audiences in order to see how they would react. This reaction is then played in audio w...

 In today's lesson I was assigned a culture and then I had to apply it to a different time period. I got Greek as my culture and I had to make it look futuristic.  Notes Think about culture, what did they wear? Ancient Greeks were very religious, they believed in an array of different Gods. Greek wasn't a single country, it was made up of smaller states. These states would often go to war, using Greek Spartans. The Greeks biggest enemies were Persians, however the Greeks won Spartans had long spears and large round shields. They believed 1 spartan was worth multiple men It was hard to make the Spartan's outfit look futuristic and still remain within the original shape of the armour. 

Below are a list of possible storylines for the story theme I have been given. I was trying to think of interesting stories which gave each character a deeper purpose. I can then reflect this idea in their design Character: Superhero/Supervillain Theme: Psychedelic Album Covers Character Trait: Vain World Time: 1960's Scene (What's Happening): Saving/Destroying City Action: His/Her Powers Man From The Future  Man is from the future. In the future the world relies heavily on a superhero. Man is jealous/obsessed of this and so makes/steals a time machine to travel back in time to when the superhero first appeared. Works out/already knows how superhero got his powers and so wants to become hero himself. This goes wrong which results in random kid getting powers. Man has to now use the kid to fight crime instead of himself, uses the opportunity to make himself famous. Man takes on the whole persona of the hero who he knows from the future and uses his knowledge in order to plan wha...

 We decided to meet up as a group in order to sort through the many ideas we have for 'When Not To Go Outside'. We previously identified that the key to creating a good comedy is to create contrast and so we wanted to pick the more outrageous ones.  The image below shows our ideas in order, with the top being the ideas we like the most and the bottom being the ideas we liked least. For ideas that we didn't like, it was mainly due to them not being as out their or exciting as the ideas we already picked. This made them seem boring in comparison or simply not fit the type of comedy we were going for. Other ideas seemed far too closed off as an idea or simply too complicated to be practical for our animation.   I tried to present our ideas in a more visually creative way, rather than just writing down a list.  We now have to flesh out the ideas which we like (top half) in order to create a framework for our animation. 

  As a group we have all individually come up with a selection of ideas for skits, which answer the sentence "When Not To Go Outside". Each idea ranges in time required to reach a punchline and location needed in order for the skit to take place. In order to come to a decision on what skits will be used in the final animation, we must identify what type of comedy animation we are creating.  We know from the brief it must include the following parameters: Be 2 minuets long Be relevant to the starting sentence (When Not To...) Contain a minimum of 3 skits Has to stick to a fixed camera style of filming No Arnold rendering The brief mentions that the three key aspects of a funny comedy are 'contrast', 'character', and 'visual structure'. It mentions that the sentence which we have been given (When Not To...) is designed to inspire contrast. We came up with many examples of sentences (Sleep, Laugh, Propose) before arriving on 'When Not To Go Outside...

  Below Is a mind map of ideas which complete the sentence of "When Not To Go Outside". Any idea I had I wrote down, ready to share with my group. I also drew several thumbnail images of my ideas in order to explain them in more detail. 

 Today we had a meeting as a group in order to establish what each of our roles would be throughout the project. This way we can establish a work flow to ensure we complete the animation within the deadline. We tried to spread the work evenly, so that we all contribute a fair amount to the project.  Now that we had established the roles, we could all begin working on the project with little confusion.