New Member
💻 Oldtimer
I found this at Planet Half-Life, and I thought it would be worth sharing here:
Guide to Animation:
Film making "Do" and "Don't":
Guide to Animation:
Source: http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=111If you plan on doing an animated film for your PHL Film Festival submission, I'm assuming this is not your first time animating. If it is, I would strongly suggest you reconsider and do a live action film or video instead. I'll be skipping the technical details of actual animation itself, as you could be using Flash, Adobe After Effects, making a machinima using Source or the original Half-Life engine, or even doing hand-drawn frames. That's way too much to cover in one guide for a simple contest, so it's up to you to learn how to do all that. But if your heart's set on animation, here's some pointers to making an animation as best you can.
I suggest you do the following steps in the order they are presented.
Step One: Pre-Production
Once you have your script, start drawing what you want your characters to look like and make up storyboards. Unlike a live-action film, animation storyboards should be as close to what you want as possible. Later you'll be translating these directly into your final piece. Use a binder to make a production book that has every possible detail arranged in an order you can figure out. How does a certain character move, what's the color scheme of a room, etc. If that sounds like too much for what you're planning to do, then simply do as much as you think is necessary.
Step Two: Voice Recording
Once done with pre-production, have your actors record their lines. Unless it's a stylistic choice, do not use a cheap computer microphone or a head set. Go to Radio Shack and get an affordable but decent mic instead. Make sure the audio levels of your recording session are consistent and loud without overpowering the mic and causing static. Being too loud and close to the mic is just as bad as not being able to hear anything. The lines don't have to be in sequential order and in fact you could work with just one actor at a time. Since you haven't animated anything yet, feel free to let the actors improvise and see what you come up with. Only when you're completely satisfied with this audio should you continue.
Step Three: Animatic
An animatic is simply your storyboard set in sequence or roughly animated to the final cut of your voice soundtrack. First you want to edit all the voice recording into what they would be in the final piece. Second, you scan your storyboards into your computer. Like video footage, edit each board to go along to the dialogue. This gives you a really good idea of what your full animation is going to look like and you can make any adjustments at this step without sacrificing much. The animatic is animation's version of the rough cut in film and video. This is also where you'd start to place other sound effects.
Step Four: Animation
Okay, this is where you're on your own. Basically, you're animating based pretty much exactly on your final animatic, so this step should be simple as long as you're familiar with the animating style you're using. Now is when you can truly sync up your voice and effect soundtracks. Lip-syncing will probably be the most labor-intensive part of this endeavor, unless you're making an machinima in Source. You'll have to go through your voice soundtrack millisecond by millisecond to make notes of phonetic sounds and what mouth position will match them. It's a true pain in the ass and the reason I'm no longer interested in animating anything myself.
Step Four: Editing
Just because you've finished your animation doesn't mean it's done. Like a film, all of your "raw footage" should now be re-edited to be as tight and finalized as possible. This is where you'll add scene transitions, music and titles. I'll repeat what I wrote for those of you working on video: be conservative with any special transitions or effects, at this point the simpler you do things, the better. Also, you don't really have to get any clearances for any music you use?at least for this contest's submissions?so find what fits your film best and run with it.
That pretty much wraps up the guidelines for a more professional approach to animation. If this was another site, I would have gone through things like how to properly lip-sync, or programs like Adobe After Effects in much more detail, but we simply don't have the space and this isn't the context. If you need some brushing up, there's ample advice all over the web. Have fun and we look forward to seeing your cartoon!
Film making "Do" and "Don't":
Source: http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=110Let's go over some basics of filmmaking, in dos and don'ts format. I'm assuming if you're reading this you plan on shooting using a camcorder on video tape. Animation is covered in a separate guide.
DON'T start shooting the moment you've finished your script! Your audience will notice the single camera angle for an entire scene, the obvious reading of a post-it with your actor's lines on it, and all the other traits of a rush job.
DO a little something called pre-production. This doesn't just mean getting your set ready, or just some simple rehearsals, either, although those are important. If you want to really kick it up a notch, do some storyboards. Think about your script like a comic book or an animation. Even if you can't draw, stick figures will suffice. Go line by line and action by action, what would be the best way to frame it? How do you want your lighting to look? When are you going to go for that special close up Alyx when she? Well, you get the point. This is especially important if you have some complex action sequence. Everything you see in your head, every shot, you should put down on paper in an ordered fashion and then test it out by seeing if you can do all you drew out with your camera. Only when you can make everything "work" exactly the way you want it should you finally hit the record button.
DON'T rely on natural lighting and your camera's auto-exposure! It will give your film that over brightened, low contrast mark of the beast.
DO set your camera to manual exposure, as well as manual focus. Always keep in mind that your camera can not "adjust its eyes" so to speak in darker rooms, so just because you can see fine doesn't mean your camera will. Your lighting should always feel a lot brighter than it has to be, but don't overdo it either! In daylight during the afternoon, take your camera out and under manual exposure, set the amount to be just right. This calibrates your exposure to its ideal conditions, and you want to make a note of what it's set at. Always use that setting. If in the viewfinder or LCD screen things look too dark, you need more lights, not a camera adjustment. Too bright, you need to tone things down a bit. As for manual focus, it will give your film a depth of field that is often canceled out by the auto-focus feature. When you have your background and foreground a little out of focus compared to your subject, it really does look like a much better quality picture.
DON'T assume all light is the same! Your various shots will not match up later on and things will get confusing, not to mention under ugly shades of yellow and green.
DO, if your camera has the option, run the white balance feature. Without getting into specifics, different sources of light have different colors that are exaggerated on film and video. When you first start filming in a room, hold up a blank white sheet of paper under the light, zoom in all the way so it take up your entire frame, and hit white balance (this will vary depending on your camera). You'll notice with the option turned on, the white paper will be pure white in your viewfinder or LCD, and everything else you film in that room under those lights will be correctly color-balanced as well. This makes a huge difference in the final look of your film!
DON'T shoot handheld unless you want to annoy your audience! Jerky cinematography sucks.
DO shoot using a tripod and a dolly. If you don't have a dolly, simply set your tripod on anything with wheels that won't make a lot of noise. If you need to truck over a bump in the floor, simply lay down some cheap, very smooth carpet. The less your camera jerks around and has frame stuttering, the better. Obviously, handheld shots are fine if you wish to use that feel stylistically, but the best handheld shots are still when the camera was held as steadily as possible by its operator.
DON'T record your audio using the microphone already in your camera! Chances are you'll loose most of your dialogue while at the same time recording a lot of your parents' conversation in the next room about you and your friends messing up the house.
DO use a nicer, better quality mic that you plug into your camera. You can find one for a decent price at any Radio Shack. Plug this into your camera's external mic outlet, and while you're at it have a pair of headphones on your camera as well. The best situation would be to have a one person filming and a second holding the microphone and listening through the headphones. If your camera has the option, keep your audio levels visually in check on your LCD screen and make sure they are consistent. For the best sound, have the mic on a boom pole (anything sturdy you can attach the mic to and easily aim it), and keep it aimed in the general direction of the sound source (your actors' heads for example), as closely as possible without getting into your frame. Remember, your sound is HALF of your film! Good sound that you can really only get by the procedure outlined above will put your work far and above the majority of people who own a camcorder.
DON'T get caught up doing special effects just because this is about a sci-fi game! If you don't really know what you're doing, the effects will come out horrible and your film will be much worse off than it would have been without them.
DO keep your film's vision within your reach. While writing, keep asking yourself, "Am I really going to be able to do this? How much money would this cost if I bought what I needed to do this? Do I have the resources to show this?" Keep in mind the almost infinite amount of subject matter you can work with besides just Half-Life that's still in the HL universe. If you happen to live near a desert, for example, you could easily do an amazing film out there with only one actor, no extra lighting, and nothing but some decent lines of monologue, a simple costume and maybe some make-up, and it would come out a lot better than someone trying to make static images of headcrabs appear to be attacking people in the back yard. Of course, if you are adept at tools like Adobe After Effects (then why the hell are you reading this?) or you're renowned for your make-up work during Halloween, feel free to go all out!
DON'T edit your film using horrible-looking transitions, cheesy titles and generic nonsense! Usually when editing, the principal is the simpler, the better.
DO capture all of your footage using a firewire cable (or however you transfer from your camera to your computer) and make a rough cut that's simply all of your best takes in their sequential order. Show that to the other people involved, then show it to people who weren't involved at all (but not your mother, who will enjoy every second of it no matter what). Get their feedback, then go in and edit again and again until everyone's said, "Yeah, this is good." Now you have a picture lock, and only at this point do you go in and start adding any effects, titles, transitions (be very careful with those, your best bet is to stick to cross fades and dips to black), music, etc. (As a side note, you don't really have to get any clearances for any music you use - at least for this contest's submissions - so find what fits your film best and run with it.)
Well, that's all the technical advice I can offer. What you have above are the condensed basics of what would amount to TWO YEAR'S WORTH of classes at an accredited, four-year film school. I also suggest that you watch a lot of films that you enjoy the style of and study just why you think they look so cool, then copy that. Remember what Tarantino has taught us, ripping off another film's style in your own work is not stealing, it's paying homage!
