March 11sec Part 3/4 – Layout and Camera

Welcome to part 3 of my workflow analysis for my March entry to the 11 second club. You can catch up here:

Part 1 – Thinking + Planning
Part 2 – PreProduction

Final Animation

Rough Layout
Layout movies were something I never understood. And when I asked why they were necessary, I would get answers like “it tells you what and when in the story.”
I couldn’t help but think, “Don’t the storyboards do the same thing?”
Yes and No.

I don’t know the real way of doing these things, or the real reasons, but I can share why I found it necessary to use a layout movie for the first time.

The main reason was that I had complicated camera moves. How do you time your camera moves if you haven’t animated the characters yet? Or how can you animate your characters without first knowing what the camera is doing? The former will result in a big waste of time because you could never make the camera track emptiness and get it to work out correctly once the characters are in the shots. The latter will result in a big waste of time because you would animate parts of your character that could be out of frame and the audience wouldn’t see. A rough layout movie will save time.

By placing basic ‘stand-ins’ of the characters in their rough positions and playing their rough actions, you will have something for your camera to follow. By using these stand-ins as a guide you can get your camera behaving close to the way you want it to. And you get a better feel of how long the actions will take and where the cuts need to be.
The storyboards and the Rough Layout movies work in conjunction. Neither is really much to look at, but combined you can get a clear idea of the final product. The storyboards often give the proper expressions and poses, and the layout movies will show how the scene will play out in 3d space.

PLAY ROUGH LAYOUT MOVIE

Notice I spent as little time as possible on the way the characters are posed or the specifics of how they move. All I wanted to do was hint at the actions taking place, and how long I thought they should take. The speed the director walks up the stairs is very important because practically all of the camera movement is dependent on his movements. So I spent a bit of time trying to nail only the timing of him getting up on stage. Same goes for the ripping of the paper and storming off.
I’m sure you also noticed that these are not the final characters. The character modifications from part 2 were happening during everything going on here – another reason Layout movies are helpful. All you need is a stand-in character to get started.
When I finished cutting together the Rough Layout, I felt like it took an awfully long time to cut to shot 3, so I knew I needed to change that. Getting to shot 3 sooner meant that I would have to do more lipsync than I originally planned, so it’s a good thing I found this out sooner rather than later.
However, many of the comments from the 11 sec club voters stated the final movie still took too long to get to shot 3. I totally agree. It holds just a bit too long on his stunned reaction. So I should have moved the cut to happen even sooner than I did.

Camera
I love cinematography. Its a shame I’m not very good at it. But I’d like to share a couple of general guidelines I like.

Resist the temptation to do ‘cool’ CG camera moves. Just because the scene takes place in the computer and you CAN do all sorts of wacky moves, doesn’t mean that you SHOULD. Think of all the times you’ve seen in movies where the camera glides through a keyhole. or through a crack. or a gun barrel. There’s plenty to choose from. You know why those stand out in our minds? Because they immediately remove you from the world you’ve been drawn into. You get ripped out of the story and suddenly become aware of the camera move. You might even think to yourself, “wow, that was cool!” All that proves is that it was in your face enough for you to take notice of it. Anything that takes you out of the story, even for a moment, is a bad idea in my opinion.

The camera has weight. Along the same lines as the one above, the camera should feel like it exists in the world you’re portraying. It’s one of those things that you only notice if it’s wrong. In CG it’s very easy for the camera to feel too ‘floaty.’ I wish I had some examples of floaty cameras vs. weighty cameras. I promise I’ll keep an eye out and try to get some examples to post in the future.

Think about how a camera really moves. All too often we will look through the camera view we want to change and then click, tumble, pan, and track our way into the desired angle. This method has many problems. A major one is that when you ‘tumble’ in 3d space the camera will rotate around the point you clicked, or just from the center of the viewport. Cameras in real life never ever work that way. They rotate from the point at which they’re attached to something (someones shoulder, a dolly, a crane, etc) and also from the root of that object they’re attached to (the person’s waist, the dolly’s pivot, the crane’s arm, etc). None of these mean the camera can pivot from the object they’re focused on. It just simply feels wrong when you do it with the tumble method.

Have motivated camera moves/cuts. Don’t show the audience something for seemingly no reason. There needs to be motivation for what you show. Have the character look offscreen at something before you pan or cut to it. If the character starts walking, let them lead the camera. Or if the character is going to grab something, let them reach for it before you cut to it. Don’t just cut to it for no reason. It’s very jarring and feels out of place.
Hows this for an example: A car chase scene – the cuts are quick, the music is racing, the moves are fast, then cut to a little old lady about to cross the street. It comes out of nowhere! but you can sure as hell bet the car chase is going to go speeding right her by in a couple of seconds, maybe one of the drivers is even going to have to swerve out of control to avoid hitting her. Good directors/D.P.’s will find clever ways to make you aware of something important to the story without shoving it down your throat.

Try to keep these things in mind when you’re developing your animations and short films. It will really help sell the idea, keep the audience absorbed, and exercise your mind to make you a better filmmaker – all of which I am constantly striving for.

Part 4 will be about my actual animation process. Blocking, splined, workflow, thought process, thoughts on video reference, and more. Check back later to see!

And please let me know if you have any advice to further my learning!
-Jacob