After some research and brainstorming I went back to my storyboard to make changes. Here is a very short version I did that just includes the basic opening shot & flashback, no ending or development for one of the pitches:
In the beginning there is an awkward transition between the child's point of view in the opening of the film and switching it to the security guard after. So I opted for a scenario where the films starts off with the security guard and ends with the security guard's point of view. The shots in this is quite similar to the final version, but I decided not to show the security guards face until he meets the child to build tension in the beginning.
This is the current shot list, I have tweaked a bit of the shots but most of them are shown here:
My aim is to finish animating by our hand-in deadline and colour after, however I'm trying to prioritise my shots so the story is clear and the different sections in the film is clear.
Film Flow
While working on my film I categorised each part of my film with the opening act (which where it's mostly setting up the set and slowly revealing the main characters, the meeting where the two characters interact, the flashback sequence where the audience see a younger security guard reach out but fail to retrieve his toy. Finally, the final stretch where the security guard tries his hardest to do what he couldn't in the past.
After establishing the shot list I can start organising the shots. I have all the shots lined up and grouped together into different Photoshop files, however there are times where the film loses its momentum in the rough shots. I have started playing around & rearranging some of the shots to make the story more fleshed out and improve on the flow of the film.
In the rough animation each shot isn't timed correctly, some run faster than I prefer, but after animation the movements will be much longer. Currently my rough animatic is currently 1 to 2 minutes long. The rough animating gives me a starting frame to work on and a overview on all the scenes I need to work on.
All the updates have been included in the shot list above (via post its/ included digitally)
Opening Act
From this storyboard I changed the opening shot drastically, after some consideration I realised the rough story I had in the beginning included an awkward perspective change between the two main characters, starting the story from the child's perspective and then shifting it towards the security guards. It made more sense to follow one character perspective rather than two. The film's storyline will also slowly unravel smoothly if we have the security guard discover the scene of the accident (where the boy drops the toy) during his rounds. With the flashback scene later on and the main emotional storyline based on security guard, it made sense to follow his perspective. It also gives us a chance to shape the younger character more with the way they react to the situation through the eyes of another.
The short has a mysterious feel to it, leaving the audience questioning what it all leads up to until the reveal in the end (Edit: sadly the video has been taken down. I only have a screencap of those two shots but the animators blog is here https://alexavagimian.tumblr.com for reference). I think this sort of vibe will work well as an opening to my film. As the film is dealing with quite a light topic in comparison the change of tone in the film could make the story more interesting. This also gives me a chance to draw detailed backgrounds and allow the audience a really get a feel of the set in the beginning. I also wanted to set a contrast between the colours in the lift and the hallway. Where the hallway is badly lit and quite grim the lift is more luminous with warmer tones of colours in comparison.
Flashback
The flashback is triggered when the security guard sees the situation the child is in and this resulted in the two characters bonding for a moment over losing a toy. Originally, the flashback was going to show a younger security guard losing a toy in school, forgotten or misplaced only to realise it was gone later on, resulting in a longer flashback storyline. However, after some brainstorming I didn't know if just the act of losing a toy is strong enough to leave an impression & form a connection in the audience's mind, so I decided to be more specific with the situation. In my film the young boy drops his toy down an elevator gap. What stood out from this situation was the physical act of having to reach vertically down a small gap, the child's inability to reach for it and the set of the lift (unstable/ could be called away in any moment).
I didn't want the flashback to be a complete parallel to the current storyline, as long as the security guard is shown to be struggling and reaching in a similar manner to the boy would be fine. Somewhere like a river, a ditch etc. This also gives me room to play around with interesting animation sequences.
There is a couple moments in the film Spirited Away where Chihiro (the main character) remembered that she dropped a shoe down a river when she was younger. I used this shot as a reference point & went back to study it a lot which resulted in me following Alan's suggestion of setting the flashback over a river where the security guard would watch as his toy floats away while he's trying to reach for it from a bridge above:
I also liked how they used sound and touch as the main ways of perception to trigger that memory. I also looked at this video that talks about different flashbacks: https://vimeo.com/99139322 I really enjoyed the example they used where the flashback is hinted through the sound effects & you could tell it was a memory with the way the sound was presented and the characters reaction to the situation. Sound design and music will probably play a bigger role in the flashback sequence in comparison to the other parts of my film. I really want to incorporate the water sound effect every time the security guard thinks back since the five senses plays a key roll in triggering memories. I will have to talk to my sound designer in the future to sort this section out.
FLASHBACK ANIMATION VISUALS
For the flashback sequence of my film I wanted to make it quite dreamy and through smooth transitions. Something like this 10x10x17 I did last year (the last bit): https://vimeo.com/204256347. As I've set the flashback set over a river I can use the water current as the main selling point of my flashback animation. An extreme version of morphing would be Masanobu Hiraoka's work. They did the credits for an animation called Little Witch Academia. I don't think that's how I would want my transition to look like but something smooth like that would be cool.
Here is a mock up of how I think the transition would go, its a little cheesy as a shot but the characters tear will drop and morph into the flashback. I'm pretty sure it's been used before but I wanted to make the movement quite fluid and interesting so the water animation will be very important here:
Here is a rough animation I did by hand, just to test out the tear drop pattern. I continued the shot in photoshop after getting the first couple drawings in to test out how I wanted it to look:
The Set & the Characters
All these events leads up to the security guard finally retrieving the toy. After some considerations with my tutor we both though the build up is important. From the beginning of the film I have already established the three key characters of this film and that is the Security guard, the child and the setting. The ending will use all these elements & see how they interact together.
I established before there's a climax scene where I start bringing in all the different components introduced to the film, however one of the issues I had was keeping the characters roles established throughout the film. From the introduction and the flashback it is established that the audience is exploring the mind of the security guard, and the child is the catalyst. However, during the climax sequence when I try to introduce the idea of the child being scared by the situation and the surrounding this focus began to shifted which changed the tone of the story when it shouldn't have been the case.