2012-02-03

Dialogue selection, Ghost story

... and on with our first dialogue shot!
After many weeks of searching... watching a number of movies and TV episodes along the way (including, incidentally, the last few seasons of Doctor Who)... I did a complete about turn during this last week and shelved all the potentials that I had gathered up! Why so? I wanted to approach this more from a character perspective instead. In particular, having lately put my own rigs back to work again with the facial expression assignments, I've opted to do this assignment using my own rigs rather than with Bishop or one of the ten "potentials" AM provides for our use.
The characters I made for the Hero Book movie are all kids, with the exception of Faith. I had a half dozen adult characters slated for creation as well, but the job folded before I got that far (they were only going to show up in the closing "Club of Life" scenes). So I have these assets sitting around. I've really been wanting to put them to a more rigorous test now that I'm advancing in animation skill.
I spoke with Charles about it, and now I'm going to take the plunge.

The two characters I chose for this shot are Nono ("sadness" face) and Lillian ("happiness" face). So they will now be playing the parts, respectively, of Dianna and Anne (the clip is from Anne of Green Gables, the classic 1980s CBC series). I had considered using Lillian and Sibusiso ("disgust" face), but there's a bit of an age gap, Sibusiso's a few years older. She's also really tall so she'd be difficult to frame, and I just don't see her playing along, she's too mature.
Nono's a bit petite for Dianna, so it's a similar problem in the opposite. But I think she's a good fit emotionally for acting out the transformation from fear to abject terror. And Lillian's a perfect match for Anne, and shows an appropriate hint of mischief for this particular moment. Or rather, more to the point, it's really Dianna and Anne who are matching to Nono and Lillian. Anyways, I meant to show them together, so here we are:
Dianne (Nono)    Anne (Lillian)

Once I determined to find a clip that was appropriately dramatic and which involved children, the range of possibilities narrowed down dramatically.
I do like the fact that this shot will be exploring a friendship-dynamic. It's a bit more unique, there seem to me to be more shots happening with amour relationship dynamics. Charles also pointed out that the use of a ghost story is more unique. I do know of one other AM dialogue that has involved a ghost story... might as well track that one down so as to take note... student showcases, Summer 2008, Richard Fournier, there we are. "Sphaghettios with meat!" Haha. That was a nice one.

Well. Lots to be done. Planning phase: it's an odd feeling to be shifting from polish back into planning again. I've got 8 weeks of screaming to endure now. But rather than allow that to incrementally drive me crazy, I'll most certainly be preparing a swap-out clip with that screaming dialed way down!

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