Story board 1st draft

This is my first time to draw a storyboard, it is based on the scripts I have wrote in previous journal. I have finished the beginning eight shot of my scripts. The left side is the film frame, and the right side is the detail of the pictures. The the black mark is the tutor's comment which shows many disadvantages in my storyboard, the first thing is the sound, I should write each frame one sound action. Second one is the transition between each frame is important to write. The location of the scene need to be mentioned at the beginning. I always ignore details of storyboard and scripts writing, because the pictures are shown in my mind, so that I regard some details unnecessarily. However, that is the big mistake I have made. Because Jools mentioned in my scripts commets that storyboard and scripts is for the production team looking for appropriate actors, and other cooperative partners, so I need to present everything the film to complete the storyboard and scripts. So in the second draft of my scripts and storyboard, I will pay more attention to the details of my work.

Ann‘s grandmother script （1st draft）with Jools' comments

ETARY

Ann put a bound of lily in front of her grandmother's grave.

Folding her hands together and seems talking something.

Suddenly it was raining.

A lady passes an umbrella to Ann.

She raised her head.

ANN

Thank you!

The lady smiles and nods her head.

ANN

How can I return it to you?

LADY

My house No.XXX.

SCENERY SHOT (TRAINSITION)

LADY'S HOUSE (OUTSIDE THE DOOR)

Ann knocks at the door it was opened with a squish.

A elder woman opens the door, looks at Ann

ANN

hi, i just return this umbrella to the lady, does she live here?

the woman takes the umbrella and say

WOMAN

Thank you.

At the same time, she closed the door.

STREET (NIGHT)

Ann is on her way back home

a psychopath catches her and pushes her to the wall

Ann struggling, shouting and crying,but no one could help her.

Suddenly the lady appeared to beat the psychopath off.

Ann hugs the lady and cry out loudly.

LADY

he is gone.

ANN

who are you?

LADY

Siren. Your school mate

ANN

why I did not met you before?

LADY

because you always focus on study.

It is too late, I got to go.

The lady soon walk away.

SCHOOL CORRIDOR (DAY)

Ann walk in the school corridor, Siren walk forward and pat her shoulder and run quickly.

SIREN

I have a meeting.

ANN

could you please tell me your name again?

other school mate looks back and answers ANN

MATE

I have told you four years, but you still can not remember my name.

at the same time Siren says:"s-i-r-e-n, siren"

Ann smiled

ONE MONTH LATER BEFORE GRADUATION

SCHOOL DAY

Ann sit behind Siren

ANN

it is the last day before graduation, how about take a photo to mark our university life?

SIREN

EN...sounds good.

PHOTO STUDIO

photographer controls the camera

Ann and Siren stand in front of the background

PHOTOGRAPHER

3,2,1. good.

Come back 2 days later to get your photo.

GRADUATION DAY

Ann walk to Siren's classroom, her seat is empty

Ann find Siren every where, but can not find her.

SIREN'S HOUSE

Ann knocks the door anxiously, but no one answered

she ask the pass-by people

ANN

do you know where is the houselord?

PASS-BY PEOPLE

there is no one lives in for years.

Ann can not believe.

PHOTO STUDIO

the photos lay on the table, only Ann was in it.

ANN

Do you see the girl take photos with me?

PHOTOGRAPHER

Are you drunk? only you come here that day.

Ann can not believe it.

ROAD

she run on the road.

The suspicious scene come back to her memory: in siren's house, in the school corridor, in the cemetery.

suddenly, she got an idea,she go back to cemetery.

CEMETERY (AFTERNOON)

Ann runs to her grand mother's grave

Siren appeared to her,

SIREN

I know you will come back, but I can not stay with you anymore, because it is time for you to face your life by your self. I will always stare at you.

SIREN walk in Ann's grandmother's grave, and lay inside. She suddenly became the sun, and grandmother smile at Ann.

Ann turns back , tears dropped from her eyes, she dry her tears and says:" It's time to start my new life."

Actually I want to explain Ann's grandmother dead long time ago, she become a girl who others can not see to protect Ann. After graduation,  Ann should be an adult to face the society, so her grand mother can not protect her anymore.

Jools comment:

How do we know it is her Grandmother's grave? what tells the viewer this? Nothing written in this scene tells us anything about these relationships. Suddenly it was raining isnt the best way to tell us that the rainstorm is sudden. Is it severe rain? it feels like it the way you have written this.

You should write number not noxxx. you should alao give us a number. Why not simply make one up?

You need to write the transition (not trainsition) scene. We need a location. 'scenery' isn't a location. This document is for the production team as well as finding, actors, set and costume designers, so 'Scenery' shot doesn't tell us anything. You have written it as a 'scene heading' but perhaps it simply needs to be 'action' and not a 'scene heading'. Even so you need to tell us what we see.

'opened with a squish' I don't understand that.

a 'psychopath'. This is too easy. Imagine what we would be seeing on the screen. This is waht you shuld write. You write 'psychopath' as if this imeidately means something but it doesn't. psychopaths can look a number of different ways so be more specific. Every word is an opportunity to tell a story.

Your explanation at the end make sense and you need to think about the story and the screen. watch a film over the weekend, on television, that you can record if possible and then examine it to see how the story is told through dialogue and more importantly through ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. What the characters do and don't do as well as what they say

After Effects Practice

After Effects is a basic element of film post-production, it is useful for my MA project. The in class time is limited, so I make this tiny video to practice the After Effects skills. It is my first time to use it, and the old  AE edition that I got, therefore, this 6 seconds video shows a rough effects. I have used three pictures to make this video, it looks simple, but takes me 5 hours to do that.

This practice makes me more skillful with manipulating After Effects than before. I know how to matting, how to set the vectorgraph in video, and how to change to colour and so on. Matting is the most practical part of film-making, because it makes me possible to add supernatural scene in film, such as putting two same people in one scene. I think it is a good start to learn more complicated post-production techniques. They make most impossible plots possible, thus, I feel confident in making fairy tale film.

Three original pictures are as follow:

The Analysis of Tim Burton's film (1)

Tim Burton is a director and producer of the fairy tale movies. From the moment he appeared in the sight of all, he was loved by fans like the black humor and marked with the styles like solitary, bold, and dark and so on. Two dozen of his movies are mainly took the fairy tale materials, but he presented the fairy tales in ways of dark abnormally. His movies highlight not just the simple fairy tales but the irony of reality beyond the fairy tales field by means of Gothic style. The distinct contrast of beauty and fear formed the great art tension which is not only on visual but also on psychological.


It was because of the expression form of Tim Burton, which is inconsistent with the mainstream movie, so there has much incomprehension about him. Many people think that the existing of fairy tales is to meet people's aspiration of the beautiful life, to provide the children a good guide for the future life. The Gothic fairy tale is precisely the opposite, however, it takes the most "pure" things in the world to reflect the most "ugly" things, and set the hell of the background in the "Corpse Bride" to irony the beauty in world, this inevitably opposed by the people who hold the mainstream thinking concept. But what they did not aware is that the greater visual tension and dramatic tension present by this exaggerated contrast maybe could reached what the mainstream fairy tales can not reach.

5 Words and A Story

Ann have a good friend Siren, they are classmates they play together, eat together, go to class together.Siren always give Ann a hand when she faced some problem. One day before graduation, they go to photo studio take photos as momento. The day at graduation, Ann could not find Siren, she is missing. Ann call her but can not get through, Ann go to Siren's home but nobody in. A passer-by tell her this house is no one lives in for long time. Ann can not believe it, she back to photo studio to get all the photos. There is only Ann inside.

She ask the photographer: "do you see the girl photoed with me ? "

"No, you came here alone."

Suddenly, every suspicious memories come back: people's wondering eyes and so on.

Ann's tear drop fallen down to the photo, Siren suddenly appear on it, says:"you can find me in XX."

Ann come to the place at the expected time, but this is her grandmother's grave, she dead 10 years ago. Suddenly, Siren appeared and smile,then walk into her grandmother's grave. Ann turns back and closes her eyes, tears dropped from her eyes and says:" It's time to start my new life."

5 Words:  Happiness, Worry, Sad, Love, Growth

The Analysis of Tim Burton's film (2)

The Gothic movies are mainly about the strange and mysterious adventure stories happen in dark and secluded places (such as the deserted castle). However, the fairy tales are mainly faced to the children, they are always the fiction works with a strong fantasy color and shape the character images through rich imagination, fantasy, exaggeration and symbol tools to reflect the life, and the stories plot often be strange, intricate and fascinating. The Gothic fairy tale is a combination that it doesn't take the traditional subject of warm and nice, but a non-mainstream expression form. The appearance of Gothic fairy tale has brought the modern mainstream fairy tale another new narrative way which turns into the fairy tale didn't suitable for children. Moreover, the tension of the movie allows it form the effect of "1+1≥2" which is the original single element can’t reach by the collision of the two distinct aspect in drama and vision. It not only provide a new expression mode for the contemporary bizarre movies, but also offer the right understand way on the Gothic fairy tale movies to the audience. Most subjects of this style movie are focused on the human nature which is the satire for the dark side in society. They take the nice thing brought by the "ugly thing" to satirize the things looks beauty, together with the tension created by the contrast to sublimate the theme of movie and the deeper ideological connotation was reflected. This make the audience understand the meaning of beauty and ugliness from another perspective that not just from the visual point, but also from the heart to realize the truth, kind and beauty. In this way, the Gothic fairy tale gives a profounder psychological feeling which is the most significance of art tension in Gothic fairy tale.

The movie style of Tim Burton has very obvious features which is different with the aesthetics movie that it does not explore ideas by profound imagery, but in the form and content to rendering the audience on their ideology. The Gothic fairy tale is not the light-hearted fairy tale for children, but the instructive movies full of irony on real world which touch the people's heart, this black humor often appear in Tim Burton's movies.





His first movie of "Vincent" was treated as the prohibitive movie for children by Disney Executive and blocked at the moment it appeared, and it was this movie that has laid out his later movie style of fantastic fairy tale. There also have some bright tone in his movies, such as the "Big Fish", "The Chocolate Factory" and so on, but he continue merged with the fantasy and adventure plot into Gothic movies, and we can find this art tension generally exist in Tim Burton's movies. The development of Gothic fairy tales is rapidly growing and more and more audience turn to love the black humor. And from the movies of Tim Burton in recent years, the movie tone presents the clear and canty trend gradually, but still invariable thing is the human nature subjects, such as the "Alice in Wonderland", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Big Fish". We look forward that the art tension of Gothic fairy tale with the Tim Burton's characteristics will last long expressed in his future works, and perhaps his movie is about to become the mainstream.

The characteristics of Gothic fairy tale film

Combining with the fine works of Tim Burton to analyze the characteristics of the Gothic fairy tale.


The characteristics of sense of vision and hearing: the expression forms mainly focused on the black and somber tone of the screen, the exaggerated characters and magical scenes. The music style always is more bizarre and eerie. The vision, hearing and music combine together to form the strong special style of characteristics. These has reflected in many movies of Tim Burton, such as the "Corpse Bride", "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Sweeney Todd", all these movies took the dark screen style as the basic tone of the movie and the dark and sunless scenes throughout the whole movies under the weird background music to form a unique sense of Gothic.





The characteristics of drama: in the movie, a majority of the stories are the fairy tale theme of fantasy and adventure tours that they always happened in the castles, underground, and other dark, hidden and gloomy places. Set the bizarre plot of the background, based on the weird and different characters personality to consist the structure of the movies, as well as the satire on the complex reality life through the fairy tales which lost the innocence. At the same time, the designing of the character images is one of the major features of the movies. Under the character images who with the demonize appearance there always have a soft and kind heart, or the characters who looks kind will always do some thing be vicious, but the heroes of the movies must be kind hearted, the ending always give people with profound inspiration and form the effect of irony. In the movie of "Sweeney Todd", the distinctive Gothic opera add more color to the movie, it is the dark tone that instantaneously created the delicate dramatic tension which made the movie no longer rigidly in the Gothic style and also contained a dark and merry temperament.