2nd review

2ND REVIEW OF DIPLOMA PROJECT (Taught)
31.7.2010
Present: Vijay, Avy
Absent: Anandhi
Mukta’s progress has been extremely slow. She has not done justice to the feedback given to her earlier. She had, for instance, been asked to take cuttings from newspapers/magazines etc of abuse of children as servants and use some of this material to help her construct her narrative. She has ignored this advice by and large and has stuck to her very basic narrative.
Then she was asked to do character sketches and thumbnails. She has dived into storyboarding at the same time without establishing her characters or settings. This reflects in her work. For instance, for her central character, a girl, she brought just two sketches – both frontal and flat.
Panel advice: We want to see 40-50 explorations of the central character, her body language, her gestures, her expressions, poses, etc. You can either do this by hand, tablet or in Maya. This is to be shown to us by Tuesday August 10.
The panel then gave feedback to her on almost a frame by frame basis on her storyboard.
Shot 2 – You are using many children in this scene – that is many characters. How are you going to develop these? It is not possible given your timeframe. So think of techniques of how you can show these children without showing their faces. Simulate the crowd scene. In this scene, they have uniforms. The setting is urban.
Shot 3 – Here you have to shift the setting which is not clear. This is the village where father and Maya are together. Flesh out the distinctiveness of the village setting as this is the happy setting she always returns to in her mind when she is an ill-treated servant. Father as a character has also to be fleshed out as he appears in some frames as an important character.
You can use devices like Chapter 1, Chapter 2 to show transitions across settings and time and event. For instance, Maya is sent to the urban home with the promise of “education” but she ends up being ill-treated as a servant. You can name this segment “Maya’s Educations” – giving it an ironical twist.
Instead of just your standard two frames of a servant girl doing chores, you should have a whole series of images that shows her “education”, including chores that show her as a “slave” and “imprisoned’, the punishments, the tears, the fears, etc. How will you treat these frames? You can try time lapse as a technique to show the work sequences and animate the calendar that shows the passing of time.
You say you are planning a five minute film. Be careful then how you use your process and time.
Do thumbnails of the entire story – decide clearly on what your scenes are that is divide the thumbnails into “scenes’ – in parallel develop the storyboard.
Switch effectively between the atmospheres of “oppression/slavery” and “happy memories/liberation”.
As it stands, your storyboard is extremely flat and uninteresting. Use the medium to bring depth. See how you can vary your shots – for instance, milk is boiling – work with long shots mid shots close-ups, the expressions on her face, the angles.
The last sequence has to be very well thought out. Does it have a happy ending? Is it ambiguous? Do I use a black screen and audio to generate a strange ending?
Start figuring out some short-cuts, for instance you can use references for your characters – keep the film semi-realistic.
To do:
1. August 10 – Thumbnails of entire story
2. August 13 – full story board
3. Begin modeling the environment, props and characters.
(end)