All the shots

Now, I've finally an animatic that I'm not ashamed to include in my demo reel. Big improvement over the last one, wouldn't you say?

Old Animatic

New Animatic

Credits and Closing Gag

I wanted to parody Disney's Paperman credits, being my favorite credit sequence, except that I'd immediately succeed them with a downer gag. I originally wanted to end this on a "maybe, maybe not" note, but the more animations I see, the more popular ambiguous endings seem to be. Since I'm all different and original (probably just pretentious), I decided that I'd end this on a loud, resounding "Nope!"

(Skip to 6:30)

Shot 18 - Lefty's Perspective

I long debated whether or not to show Ava in this shot, as it ultimately determined who's perspective we were taking in the following exchange between our hemispherical heroes. When I brought up the dilemma to Gil Zimmerman, not only he thought that taking Lefty's perspective was better, but everyone in the room unanimously agreed before he could say anything.

Shot 17 - Low-angle upward tilt

We tilt slightly upwards from a low angle to fully capture Boomer's despair.

Shot 16 - The monster shot to end all monster shots... AGAIN!

WHEW! So... emphasizing all his expressions this time, we heighten the level of intensity to the panic.

 

 

12, 13, 15 - OTS Zooms and a Medium Pan

 

 The act break in which Tom breaks away from the tension. Over-the-shoulder zoom-ins allow us to take in the awkward tension of the moment as Lefty & Boomer argue inside Tom's head as Ava waits for him to say something.

 A medium panning shot shows Tom entering the classroom without saying anything. This shot always got the most laughs in pre-screening, when it was just a static shock, so I'm hoping that the pan doesn't ruin that... can't see how it would... maybe I'm just being paranoid.

Shot 11 - Split-screen argument

Same as shot 8, but without the rotation Tom foolery.

Shot 8 - The double POV within split-screen pan with a rotation at the end

 Definitely the widest png in the animatic (8640 pixels to be precise). The pan was easy, being 2D by nature, but the rotation required a little more trickery. I added motion blurs between the section with the girl, and the section with the timer, and swapped the scales of Lefty and the Boomer Cam to make it look like they had a diagonal xz relation that simply rotated 90 degrees. How successful it was, I leave such judgements up to you.

Skip to 2:50 for a comparable pan/turn.

- Cinematography by Robert D. Yeoman

 

Skip to 1:30 to see the camera pass through solid objects.
- Cinematography by Darius Khondji

Shot 5 Breakdown

Shot 5 is the reveal of both Boomer and his goal. For this, I had a single push in that begins with Boomer still guarding his face from the previous impact, then revealing his face to question its cause, after which his monitor pans up to reveal Ava. 

Of course this also involved storyboarding Tom's POV, creating an animatic within an animatic scenario. I also hated how the footage currently shows Ava picking up her books with no concern for Tom's well being, so I added a pause for frantic apologies, which will also mirror Tom's more stammering apologies from his earlier near incident.

Here's how the animatic looks.