The first thing I did was brainstorm ideas. The theme was that we could not use living creatures as the main characters, but instead, we needed to create a personality based on an inanimate object. I had several ideas pop up at once, and I initially wanted to do a different character, but the class told me I should run with Drill Sergeant Flashbang, so I did!
Here is the log sheet I used to brain storm the concept:
Once I had a general idea of what I was going to do with the character and story, I needed to break up the story into its major components, or "beats". In feature films, there can be upwards of 15 beats, but in shorter stories, this tends to be reduced to 3-5 core beats, due to trying to condense the story into its major components. Each beat is supposed to comprise several actions at the same time, to convey the overall story of that stage in the story.
I should started with a beat sheet, which is a text document describing each beat. I skipped that step, accidentally, and went straight to the beat board, where each beat is visually represented. The beat from the beat sheet is written below each corresponding image, so I did the work, just a little out of order! Here is my beat board:
From here, the next step was to write the script. Each beat was fleshed out to tell more detail of that portion of the story. One of the things I realized is that I am still more verbal than visual, so while I was telling a story about this grenade, I couldn't help but write dialogue. I noticed during presentations that I was almost the only person who did this, particularly to the degree that I did. Most people allowed the story to tell itself visually, with varying degrees of success.
Here is the script I wrote:
Now with a script and beat board in hand, I extrapolated the visual images and told the story in more detail, adding in shots, camera instructions, basic zooms and pans, dialogue, and other shot details. I decided to recreate the art, mainly because I wanted to be able to work with the eyes and mouth more, and my first version didn't work well with that. Here is the slideshow I posted in an earlier blog:
Finally, I added sound and music. I conscripted my kid, who wants to get into acting and voice acting, and put him to work on the voices. I didn't change any of the visuals, but adjusted the time spent in view based on the dialogue and action in the scene. I ended up doing the voice for the Drill Sergeant myself, but all of the other voices were my kid. I also made some of the sound effects myself, but found some free stuff online. Here is the final animatic:
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