Animating the Poet's Room

This room required both close-up and wide-angle shots. The shots I was involved in were where the poet get's up in bed, where the poet shouts for the painter to 'be quiet', and the loop where he roles over in bed.

For the shot with the poet getting up in bed, I was pleased with the motion, where there is anticipation of the action before it happens, as well as at the end, where the poet settles into his new position. The blink is also well timed. The only issue we kept facing was that the camera kept moving without us even having touched it. We took it off of the carpet, which helped a bit, however, whenever the battery of the camera had to be changed, this jogged it slightly. The software also kept crashing and meant we had to turn the camera off and on each time, also jogging it slightly. It couldn't be helped however and we tried our best to get it back into the same position. It is not noticeable in playback unless pointed out and otherwise runs very smoothly.

We had the same issue with the other shot, and being a longer shot, we had to replace the camera battery a few times. Despite this, I was pleased with the overall shot. The animation of the mouth was very accurate, due to Harry's plan, which mapped out each mouth movement for every syllable of the character's dialogue. This meant we had a good idea how long each mouth shape lasted for and we knew it would sync with the dialogue we recorded. The sliding back into bed is a nice touch as it conveys the poet's frustrated but tired emotions. To enable the character to slide into bed, I had to slice the end of the bed open in order to let his feet through. Another challenge was keeping the duvet still. While it did have a layer of tin foil to keep it under control, it was not enough to keep it steady but we tried our best to get it into the position we wanted it to be in. 

To achieve the loop, we only had to animate the poet turning over across the bed from one side to the other. The footage will then be reversed and seamlessly look as if he is constantly tossing and turning. This scene will be used as a half-transparent shot, overlaid on top of another scene of the bed, to convey the passing of time. This was the quickest scene to animate and there is not a lot I can critique about it.

What Went Well

• The movements are very smooth making the poet look realistic
• We found the most efficient way to make a loop cycle that worked for the poet tossing and turning in bed
• The mouth plan was crucial - we didn't have to worry about the timing of this on top of the timing of his general movements

Criticism

• The duvet was the biggest challenge to get right as it kept moving too much
• The camera battery and crashing software made it hard to keep the camera in the right position
• The bed had to be cut open midway through a shot to allow for the poet to slide back into bed