Week 8 hasn't been especially productive as I've been focusing on the dissertation formative - but I've turned the first, intro section into an animatic; making some small changes from the storyboard. It's encouraged me to think about pacing of course, as well as the shot composition. I'd like to introduce some camera movement when she discovers the hair - I'll crane around her as she lunges for the mirror to introduce some movement and make the impact of this moment greater. Before then, the shots are quite static, so I think this might be needed to inject some excitement and foreground the abstract section to come.
In week 9, I've been developing (and finishing off) this section of the animatic.
I've added in a couple of details and an extra shot to introduce the bathroom - and as Alan has called them 'the instruments of torture'. i.e. the objects of beautification etc. that allude to taking care or faffing over one's body/ its functions. While I don't currently think these will feature much later on, I think it's important to set the scene and tone with them.
This version also has the character turn back to the mirror to further inspect her scalp - she maybe can't quite believe the appearance of the solitary grey hair and wants to put her fears to rest, or maybe to validate them (via a kind of morbid fascination).
Either way, she can't stay away. The worry is self-fulfilling, and more white hairs are discovered. I think this revisiting of the hairs is important to build tension, to set up the later spiral into old-age related worry.
I've tried to portray this transition sequence at the end, but I don't quite know if it works. It doesn't help that it's quite ugly at this stage, but I think a fresh perspective would be helpful. I do like the idea of the bathroom tiles kind of engulfing her or dissolving around her. She never leaves the bathroom, but maybe figuratively she's somewhere else. I think this is the section I'd like to more fully animate to see if it works - with the inclusion of the transition to more papery textures.
So, next I'd like to flesh out the end of this section (or the transition to the next); then establish the key moments in the next - probably not in as detailed an animatic, but more like thumbnails. Then finish the animatic with the final section, which will be quite a bit shorter than this first on and will see her drift back to reality and wash the grey hair down the sink, before looking back in the mirror and leaving the bathroom.
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