Page 216 - Mediapedia Mobile

PART III SHARING YOUR WORK
07_MP_234-277.indd 270-271
6/20/08
9:29:19 AM
the setups. Leave space at right and left for dialogue bubbles. With each new location, begin with an establishing shot, a wide shot that shows all the actors and their relative positions to each other.
GALLERY
Step 4: Compose rough layouts. Import the stills into your computer and study which ones will go with each part of your story. Refer back to the beat outline and keep the story moving forward. Think about what viewers need to see to un- derstand and follow the story.
“Deep Creek” had a huge run on Oxygen’s Web site as a fea- tured property. It was “very sticky” at AOL. The serial was marketed as a juicy soap with plenty of secrets: voting fraud, adultery, extortion, secret love, black magic, teenage craziness. The eight panels here are from the project’s launch episode.
Step 5: Write dialogue. Write short, clever dialogue for each scene. Use vocabulary that reveals something about the personalities you’re creating.
When art directing “Deep Creek,” we studied the way comic books use thought balloons to carry dialogue. We chose a simpler version (above). Webisodes need lots of frames that cue the viewer about location and time
The location and main char- acters are quickly established (frames 1 and 2). One of the few crowd scenes shows the town’s voting polls (frame
Step 6: Photoshopping. Make outlines of each charac- ter (use the Trace Tool in Photoshop described in Chapter 2). Use high contrast to simplify the lines you will trace. Then simplify more. Silhouettes are very effective.
3). There is room for straight visual storytelling in this medium (frames 4 and 5).
An exchange of dialogue between the seventeen-year- old daughter of the mayor and her trusted twenty-five-year-old political aide (frames 6, 7, and 8). Note how vector graphics permit blow-ups.
Step 7: Use Illustrator. When the characters and screen dialogue are in place, it’s time to create very abstract and styl- ized backgrounds. Illustrator is a good tool for this job. Keep backgrounds simple. One or two details can establish a location. Don’t forget to design a great title card and series logo (see type ideas in Chapter 3).
Photoshop’s Brush Tool was used to create outlines and silhouettes.
The creative team included Julina Tatlock, producer/director; Sean Lightner, lead programmer; Brit Payne, lead animator; Scott Collishaw, writer; Amy Huelsman, illustrations. Dori Berinstein and Kit Laybourne were the executive producers.
Step 8: Premiere your series. Send this series, one a week or one a day, to a mailing list of your friends. Let the last episode end with the best cliff-hanger yet. Maybe you will want to give the last frame in the last Webisode a graphic that reads like this: “Will John and Mary find true happiness? Let me know if you want to stay tuned . . .” At this stage you get to do what all Hollywood and TV executives do: sit back and wait for the judgment of your audience.
Backgrounds should use limited colors to keep file sizes small. These images sample how each location had its own color palette. Illustrator was used
[ 270 ]
CHAPTER 7: PROJECT IDEAS
[ 271 ]
to draw and size the elements that make up the backgrounds.