From the course: 21 Foundations of Animation
Staging a scene to tell a story
From the course: 21 Foundations of Animation
Staging a scene to tell a story
- [Instructor] Most of the material in this chapter is taken from my course Animation Foundations: Storyboarding, which is in the library if you want to go into this content in greater depth. Staging is the art of positioning the characters and the camera in the best position, the aim, to communicate what's important and essential in the scene. That's the actions and the emotions or motives. An animation storyboard artist is the equivalent of a live-action director. The boards determine all the elements of the shot. A quick comment on aspect ratios. Find out what your aspect ratio is, because some projects might be on the old TV aspect ratio of four to three or as many are now on the digital 16 to nine aspect ratio. And these also have safe areas, that's the area in here in blue, and here in pink. And these are areas of the screen where you don't want to put too much important stuff, because it might get cropped on some screens. You might even sometimes encounter the extremely widescreen formats. There's a whole variety of these anamorphics, so before you start posing out your scenes and staging them have a good sense of what your aspect ratio is first. In a well staged shot we need to be able to see what is happening, where it's happening, and why. In this simple example from my course on animated in Animate CC we can see an alien zoom into the screen from over the horizon prior to zapping the rock pile for its minerals. All the information is there in one panel. On the top row we have a series of boards that work, they're okay, but they're a little dull. On the lower row are the corrected versions. In the top version we can see the character unsuccessfully to persuade his friends of something. If you look at the lower row you'll see my corrected version. My problem with the first panel is that all the characters in it are in these really dull zero poses with their hands down by their sides. This is pretty dull. So I decided to keep the camera angle the very same on this corrected shot, but I pushed the poses of the characters. Starting with the smaller figure. I moved him into a sort of head scratching position to give him personality and I tilted the other two figures back slightly, so they're leaning away from him like they distrust him somewhat. In the middle panel I actually changed the camera position, so I switched the focus from the small character to the two cold-hearts, because their expressions were more interesting. In the final panel I kept the same camera angle, but I pushed the pose into something stronger. You will note that at no point here do you see dialogue, you don't need it. The scene reads without dialogue. And this is a good example of strong staging, because you don't need to have the radio script of the show to know what's going on. Always try to get the strongest poses you can, because it's just too easy to settle for what works, so don't be afraid to push your poses a little bit further. Perspective will determine much of your shot staging. We start with a centered image with the horizon at halfway and the vanishing point in the center. This will be in the sort of typical Union Jack composition, which you generally want to avoid, 'cause it tends to be a little bit static. I'll show you exceptions as we proceed. By moving the horizon to the bottom of the screen we create a worm's eye view in which we are very low looking up. By moving it to the top of the screen we create a bird's eye view and now we're looking down on the landscape. This is a very common perspective choice where we put the horizon at about 1/3 from the bottom of the screen. Of course, we can also set the main vanishing point to the left or the right of the screen. And the same goes for the worm's eye view and the bird's eye view. And we can also tilt the camera for the so-called Dutch angles. Let's overlay some backgrounds so you can see how the angles relate to actual staging. This diner image is a really nice example of a Union Jack composition, which again, is something that you're told in books don't use it. There are times when it's really nice and this is one. Worm's eye views are great for cities, establishing shots, the glories of nature, that kind of thing. Bird's eye view are great if you want to show predicament of your character, if they've broken down by the side of the freeway. And the standard 1/3 horizon is fantastic for setting up a commonly used environment. And this is a shot that can be used over and over again for different scenes. If that feels a little dull then all you have to do is offset the vanishing point and compose the image around the vanishing point to the left or the right of the screen and you can get these really wonderful, dramatic shots. Here's another example. Notice how much detail is squeezed in from the large foreground characters to the small guys in the background, as well as the city skyline. So this composition staging has a fantastic sense of space. Here's the standard 1/3 again and this time we're inside an awful cubicle firm. Another low horizon gives us a beautiful sunrise. And alternatively a nice hero shot where we see the protagonist rising, surviving, coming out of the rubble pile. And another example of the 1/3 horizon, giving us a really nice extreme long shot, which will establish the settings of the action. Here's the 1/3 from the top of the screen. And it's like a ceiling's eye view, which is, again, another nice way of giving us basically a top down view of the scene, the action, where the character is, what he's doing, and how the people around him are reacting. A camera tilt on an upshot is perfect to allow the maximum screen size for the descending robots, it gives them more area to move down. Staging also communicates emotion and character relationships. The protagonist here, Bumstead, is going to work in his awful job for Happy Harry. The clue here is the staging. The gigantic sign is bearing down on Bumstead ominously and that suggests that Harry is anything but happy. So this is the scene when Bumstead gets fired. Now the expressions tell us something already, but really the staging doesn't tell us too much beyond that. But we can really amplify the emotional horror of Bumstead's predicament by changing the relative size of the characters. And we can take this really far. We could really make it completely obvious now what's going to happen. Notice, again, no dialogue, this is all being communicated by staging and design. You can also use off-center framing to create a sense of alienation or unease. When you set up different shots be aware that you don't cross the line of action and this is sometimes called the line of the camera. This is an imaginary line along the main line of motion or sometimes between two characters. Pick one side of the line for your camera point of views and stick to it. If you don't and you cut from one side of the line to the other you'll produce these really jarring cuts in which your character will appear to change direction in the middle of a scene. You've got plenty of choices of camera angles, high or low, on either side, but you should only cross the line of action very rarely and only if necessary. This is a good example of a complex sequence. By staging the shots on the A side or the B side of the line I can ensure clean cuts between scenes. So again, A or B, choose. There are lots of different storyboard styles and formats, but this is a really typical one, it's called the workbook style and you'll see it a lot in TV production. The artwork and the camera moves are in the image panels with the sequence and scene numbers below them. Along with dialogue, notes, and any other information that's important. Feature style storyboards often have a more fluid writing process and so as a result sometimes these are just single panels on a page, which can be pinned to a wall and rearranged until the story is finalized. Live-action storyboards, unlike animation storyboards, only have to block in the framing of the shot and the character positions, so accurate likenesses or backgrounds are not really needed, because those are going to be provided by the actors in the scene itself. So remember, clean staging is simple, it's direct, and it tells us something about the scene, the characters, their actions, their thoughts, their feelings.
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