I finished the film! I'm pretty happy with it to be honest. I can see all the flaws and all the wannabe-improvements. But at the same time I can see all the nice parts and all the parts that went oh so very right.
So let me explain it a little bit!
This film is entitled "A Year on Leith Walk" Mostly because the events happen across a year and also to reinforce with the audience that the events are not on the same constant time line but are taken from points along a year long time line.
Next point to mention is why I kept the camera at the same angle. It is often said that animators get so caught up in making the characters move that they forget to move the camera. That is not the case here. I usually try to move things around a bit to try and focus on what I need to focus on. However here I didn't move the camera once. That is because I wanted to draw parallels with the statues themselves. Like a POV. But as I am aiming to personify the pigeons we can still see them all the time. Which allows viewers to begin to relate to them and create character without the need for them to actually do anything.
This shot also allows me to show the viewer the community around the pigeons and how they relate and react to them. This was something I was interested in conveying in this film. I wanted Edinburgh to come through as well as these pigeons. I think I struck a very successful balance. I feel for these pigeons by the end of my film and I hope my audience does as well.
Lastly I want to extend that later point by explaining why I chose to incorporate the aspects of Edinburgh and the events I did. My film has a scarce narrative and I deliberately decided on a film with that effect. I spent a long time storyboarding out just the key event in my film e.g. the man dressing them up in the winter. However the story pulled the camera angles around to viciously and it was easy to get confused. So instead I tried storyboarding it as just one aspect of the film and allowing the story to follow the communities feelings towards the pigeons. However that created a two hour long film concept which I was not going to squeeze into 3 minutes. So I spent quite some time thinking about how to make sure I kept the film short and still create the climax through the storm. So I started to list things that made me think about Edinburgh, about that area and about statues. I eventually ended up with a pretty extensive list with everything from rain to the festival. Then I began to select those that had both a personifying power and community spirit. Which is how I ended up with the film content I did.
Actually I'd also like to explain the sound design because that is pretty important. I knew from the beginning of the project I wanted to try some different things out if I was planning to stick to techniques that I knew. So I thought I would concentrate less on developing a story and more on developing an atmosphere. Which at the moment I feel works in my favour as my story writing isn't that great just now. This is one way I arrived at the plot that I did because of it's low maintenance. So to compensate I knew my sound design would have to be very well constructed in order to hold the piece together. Sound design then became make or break. Which is why when I first created my timeline for the project I left myself a generous chunk of time for editing because I could not rush the sound design. I created the sounds myself for the most part. All the character footsteps, birds and various other noises are my own design. Some are from the ECA sound library and some came from sound bible. It took me several days to composite them and adjust the volumes and levels to get a good effect. I spent some time trying to make sounds appear diegetic instead of extra-diegetic. Which I eventually managed to a fairly impressive degree (I hope). And in the end I feel my sound design has helped create an effective atmosphere so I'm fairly pleased.
I think that's everything I have to say about the film but if I remember anything I'll get it up here asap.
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