Animatic feedback and new ideas

We managed to finish the animatic for today, which we showed to our class and Helen. Got some good feedback but also quite a lot of changes which are needed. After watching it myself I immediately saw some flaws and scenes and shots which need to be edited or added in, so I did agree that it wasn't perfect. Plus no one gets the animatic right first time - there always ends up being many many drafts.

So basically the main criticism was that it needs more structure, and that the audience needs to know early on that the marshmallows plan to eat our main characters Ande and Mozbie. I absolutely agreed with this straight away, as after seeing the animatic a few times myself it was something that stood out to me that it was quite sudden when the marshmallows suddenly attack. So we plan to have glimpses where a marshmallow tries to eat one of the pilots or we see at the beginning the marshmallows are up to something. There were also a few other shots which needed slowing down or edited as well, which was of our own thoughts.

What was also questioned was that the village isn't that well populated, yet there is a full army which appears later on in the film. This is something which we couldn't yet show in the animatic though because we haven't settled on backgrounds designs yet, which I will come back to later.

So at moment we plan to add the changes given to us by Helen, as well as the feedback from other course mates and our own ideas, which are listed below:

- When Ande and Mozbie are sliding down the roof, rather than having them revealed that they're fat at the end, we will gradually make them get bigger as they slide and then bounce off the floor.

- The plane crash scene needs to be clearer (we had a thought that we see the plane actually crash through a telescope or binoculars, which is being held from a marshmallow. But we don't see them, only a snigger/laughter to highlight that someone is watching them)

- We need to colour the cola bottle to make it clearer it's a sweet and not a drink

- Colour Ande and Mozbie in their colours so it's much easier to differentiate between the two


Our own ideas which we need to add into the animatic

- Speed up the beginning scenes so there's less time to wait for the first gag (when we are establishing the characters and their hungry situation we going to make it faster , and gradually ease into the gags to give them that much more punch)

- More chocolate needs to land on the marshmallows when the volcano erupts

- The shot of Ande and Mozbie fat needs to be held for longer (after they bounce off the floor)

- Change the ending shots as the camera angle is too simple (possibly a POV shot when they're being thrown onto the fire, and the marshmallows could terrorise them and chew on them)

- More background gags (bouncy castle, ferris wheel, clues as to the marshmallows being meat eaters, etc - we're developing ideas at the moment)

- Develop camera angles

- Backgrounds need to be finished

- Work on timing (fat scene , war line up establishment, fire throwing scene)

As for the music we don't want it to over power the sound effects so we may see if we can use the sound track we had for the animatic, because it does everything we want it to. We recorded the sound effects ourselves, and we're not sure whether to stick with that or go for proper sound effects - but we don't want it to lose that naturalistic effect, if that makes sense. Voices and recorded sounds rather than just sounds downloaded from the internet.

Other ideas: 

Licking lathering marsh when it rains chocolate, marsh walking like a dog over to chocolate sniffing and he licks another's butt shiny and sticking far out, pov shot from chocolate dollop flying towards ground marsh getting ready to eat and it completely covers him in chocolate, toys in the house of bondage, when Mozbie looks at bondage marsh caught in the act back an forth shots, then mozbie continues eating the door because he doesn't care, liqourice house.