Source: Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg
READING & WRITING
One of the great things about animation is that it is an endless chasm of opportunity. Things that are impossible to create in our reality become normal in animation. Anything is fair game. Anything goes.
Much like how atoms are the building blocks of all matter, beats are the building blocks of all stories. Every beat is a point where something happens to push the story along. As an example, the following short story contains five beats:
a little girl sees a stray kitten across the street
the little girl decides to go pet it
the little girl looks to the left
the little girl looks to the right
the girl crosses the street
Linear vs. Nonlinear
The most common, and thus traditional, means of storytelling is through a linear structure generally made up of 3 acts. Simply speaking: 1. A character(s) has a problem to solve. 2. The character(s) develops a solution. 3. The character(s) solves the problem. Within these three acts, characters are flushed out, obstacles continuously derail the progress toward a solution, and then finally the solution is seen (sometimes not in the way you think it will happen.)
Nonlinear stories, however, don’t follow the 3-Act Story structure. In fact, they follow their own set of rules. This type of storytelling is considered “artsy” and abstract, but it can create some amazing stories. The foundation of nonlinear stories is inspiration, which could be a sound, a picture, etc. There is then a very loose structure that helps plans out the type of story.
Now, this is all great, but the hardest part is having a flushed-out story to begin with. What you may think is a properly planned story in your mind might not be that way when written out. Sometimes manipulating the story can prove to be much more effective. For instance, starting later into the story, or adding in a big secret. The same can be done for experimental stories, like using music or poetry as a foundation, or showing repetition/evolution.
Once all of this planning is set, then it’s time to storyboard! This is when the story begins to take place visually. Each shot is drawn out, keeping in mind the same principles as filmmaking. Shot composition, framing, staging, and continuity are just some of the bigger concepts to pay attention to. The fact that it is an animation alone is not going to be enough for a viewer to keep watching. Shot composition and framing are important no matter the medium.
RESEARCH TO INFORM
Cinemagraphs are an incredibly new phenomenon (just ten years old) that mix photos and video. Created by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, cinemagraphs are still photos with one or a few aspects that move. For example, a photo of someone pouring tea, but the steam is moving upwards. Or, a photo of a soccer player about to kick the ball and the crowd behind him cheering. Cinemagraphs can evoke a little breath of life into stillness.
There’s a treasure trove out there, and I could spend hours looking at all of them, but here are a few of my favorites:
Source: Jamie Beck
This one is so real it makes me feel like I’m actually in the room. It’s truly seamless.
Source: Jamie Beck
This one doesn’t give off the same sense of reality but the movement of the globe and her arm in the reflection is stunning and creative.
Source: Jamie Beck
This one also plays with reflections in mirrors. The simple movement of applying lipstick and the high quality of the image almost makes it seem like it’s a video.
Source: Julien Douvier
Water movement is popular among cinemagraphs but this one stood out to me. Not only is it in black and white, but the angle is obscure, making it interesting to look at.
Source: Julien Douvier
Another water one, but this one has a different movement. It’s not just a simple wave, but of water pushing through sea grass creating these intriguing lines in the water.
CREATE
Feeling inspired, I’ve decided to take my own stab at cinemagraphs.
This first one I created in Photoshop. I found the overall process to create this very easy, and as soon as I did it once, I got the hang of it. The big marble rock in the foreground is what I kept as the still part, and let the water be the motion. I had to make sure not to include the bubbles underneath the rock in my still selection because then it would throw it off completely.
This little guy I got by chance. I noticed he was crawling around this rock, so I set up my camera and waited until he came into the frame. I was lucky enough to catch him hanging out on the edge for a few seconds before scurrying off. This one was created in Adobe After Effects, which took a little longer for me to wrap my head around but it was still doable. The hardest part was trying to cut out the ant as close to its body as I could because in the video a shadow appears and changes the lighting.
For this last one, I went back to Photoshop to create. At the park, I was intrigued by the way the shadows were appearing on the trees and wanted to capture that movement. This one was a little harder because there are two trees on each side of the photo, so I had to create the mask more carefully to ensure the trees did not separate. The colors are wonky because Photoshop kept giving me an “unable to save, an unknown error occurred” so I tried to reduce the size as much as possible, thinking that was the problem. Still don’t know if it was, but it finally let me export it.
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