Project.two
Task.two
Project.two
Task.two
Project.two
Task.two
Project.two
Task.two
Project.three
Task.five
Project.three
Task.five
Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
Pitch Video
A level 3 VFX students FMP
script planning
And writing
Pre production is a majorly important part of my project as these two weeks are going to be really impactful to my project in the end as if I manage to do a large part of the actual creation of assets witch I plan to do, It will help me make the most effective use of my time because I don't want to have to got from creating assets straight to animation them, this on other projects has lead to a fast burnout, and that's something I really want to avoid with the FMP.
I'm aiming to get the script done by the end of the first week as the whole production proses relies on it to move forward in a timely manner, I'll have to choose what topics to cover and how long I want to spend on them, With the target audience research in mind; they gave opinions and proposals for how long and how much depth they would want to see in my project.
13 & 14 / 04.21
I decided that to properly plan my scripting proses I would need to create a basic outline of what happened throughout the invasions, highlighting the points I want to touch on, I ended up using the book 'Mongol invasions of Japan 1274 & 1281' by Stephan Turnbull to outline the invasion and the major events that lead up to it, the book has a fantastic chronology on pages 17and 18 witch really helped me to add dates to events as well as get an accurate timetable for what happened.
This is a good first draft for the plan, I fell like I've made enough notes under each of the subheadings to give me a great skeleton to build up from, covering all the events I think need to be talked about. I made sure to follow the advice from Nick from the Shogunate YouTube channel to read though my sources a few times before starting to plan to make sure its coherent.
All in all I think in going to go for about 1500 words, I don't think this will be too long but it'll still give me time to cover all the topics in a pretty good amount of detail, it is however not set in stone and I'm not opposed to changing it later down the line.
Script Plan First draft
15.04.21
Script Plan final with start of the writing
Today I finished the script planning and made a few edits to the existing notes to further the quality of the plan, I also corrected some of the spelling mistakes that I saw after I had uploaded the PDF, this is an inevitability as I'm not exactly the best at spelling.
I finished the plan off by adding sections about the second kamikaze, the aftermath and the conclusion, all parts of my project that are majorly important as I think that the aftermath and the events that happened after are some of the most interesting to speculate about.
I also started to actually write some of the actual script, I'm quite happy how its turned out so far but I am aware that certain points in it don't flow as well as Id like them too, this is fine though as I plan to go back and review it as I go, I can easily find the parts that don't flow by simply reading it.
I'm planning to get the whole script finished by the end of this week so I can move onto making the assets.
extended writing
16.04.21
Today I made substantial progress into the writing of my script, with some initial feedback from matt I reformatted and rewrote parts of the first few paragraphs I wrote yesterday, we also managed to decide on maybe a 15-17 minute time frame for the whole video, we did this by reading out the first paragraphs and timing how long it would take, this gave us the ability to extrapolate a reasonable timeframe for the rest of the script.
I know that this is way off the scope of the target audience research but I feel like it would make the resultant content a lot better if I stuck with this new estimated timeline, Bar that I'm'm happy with the quality of work I'm putting out and I'm positive I can complete this to the exacting standers I've put in place for myself by the end of the weekend.
With the help of matt I discussed the possibility of someone from either the drama or film courses voice acting certain parts if not the whole thing, this is a possibility I'm open to as paying for a voice actor to read my entire script is well beyond my means.
17 & 18 / 04.21
Full script
Over the weekend I finished the script to a standard I was quite happy with, It came out at just over 3400 words, a sizable script to be sure, but one I'm very pleased with, I cover almost everything I want to, There are plenty of quotes so I have space to get other people to voice over them.
When writing I constantly went back and made changes, by reformatting and rereading sections that I thought were a little out of place.
When finished I had a chance to re-read the whole thing to myself and I'm happy that It flows rather well, I plan to do a recorded reading of the whole thing to make doubly sure that it works as it would also give me a chance to get a general idea for how long the video will be and if I should cut parts out.
19 & 20 / 04.21
Re-reading
And review
I started the review by reading out the entire script as written, I recorded it in one take so I could get a feel for the length of the video and how well it flowed in the scripts current form. You can find the video to the right, I didn't edit the audio at all as I just wanted to see a rough example of the length of the narrated parts, it all came out to 25 minutes and 30 seconds a respectable time and probably one of the longest I've ever written and recorded.
To estimate the length of the full video whilst working with the script in its current state, I added 10% of the time back on, to equate for mistakes being removed/edited out and the parts of the video where there might not be any narration, this came to be around 28 minutes and 20 seconds.
As I think that may be a little bit too long I'm going to try to simplify or edit down certain parts of my script, I hope this won't diminish the quality of the information too much, But the longer a video is the more likely the viewer will get disinterested, thinking of the advice The Shogunate gave me, to 'Try and sound clear and concise without getting overly detailed and risking losing your audience'.
19 & 20 / 04.21
Finished script
as I finished the re-write I also took the time to format the whole thing to make reading it a lot easier for myself, every few sentences I left a gap so I could properly concentrate on where to read from whilst recording.
When going through the script I relied heavily on my recording of the script to see where I needed to change parts in terms of flow and coherency.
I also reformatted and rewrote a number of whole sections of the script as I found out through re-reading some of my sources (as following Nick from The Shogunate's advice) that I misunderstood certain parts of the journeys of the first Mongol emissaries to Japan.
I had originally thought that the Mongols were guided to Kamakura and met with the shogun and his Bakufu, and not the emperor at his court in Kyoto.
It changed how I introduced the emperor and the shogun, as well as the pace of the quote from the Mongol letter, if you were to compare both you would find a lot has changed.
All of this was along with numerous spelling and grammar corrections and shortening of certain bits of information such as the section in regards to the Song dynasties trade relation with Japan, I figured the information about the persecution of Buddhism whilst interesting took away from the information that actually meant something to the story I'm trying to tell, It made the whole paragraph a lot more wordy than it had to be, so I changed it, you can see what it was like in red below and how I've changed it.
There are many more examples of this kind of thing happening all throughout the script, I would love to list them all but there are too many to count. If you were to read the first draft and then the final I think you would see a world of difference.
As one of my tutors said reading what you've wrote out loud really lets you pick up on things you might not have noticed, she was certainly right.
Recording bloopers
Some mess ups
