And the prize draw winner is… Monday, 2 November 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in News.Tags: feedback, prize draw, scottish chamber orchestra, storyboard, survey
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Congratulations to libertine101 of Western Australia – you’re the winner of our prize draw. The signed storyboard panel and CD are winging their way to you! Many thanks to everyone who took part in our feedback survey.
libertine101 factoid: libertine101 was the person who came up with the name Invisible Inc. for our secret society of bibliophiles, voted the best suggestion back in February.
Autographed artwork Thursday, 23 July 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in News.Tags: cora bissett, feedback, prize draw, sean biggerstaff, storyboard, survey
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Here’s the storyboard panel you could win in our prize draw – signed by everyone who was at the voice recording session on Sunday. To be eligible for the prize draw, simply complete our feedback survey. It will take about ten minutes!
Episode 6 – animatic Saturday, 11 July 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, composer, script, story, storyboard, video
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We’ve got a draft script, a set of storyboards, and an animatic so you can start to see how episode 6 will work.
First up, congratulations (and thanks!) to the people whose story ideas made it into the episode: Meg, for Kyle and Aileen’s date and for Aileen’s article; IndiaJones and Lulu for Watson’s evidence-gathering; Bookaddictus for Beryl’s arrest; Tom for Aileen joining Invisible Inc.; and Headlong for Aileen’s Mum getting released.
The animatic is very rough: storyboard sketches put together with a scratch track (a recording of the script as read by Adam and me). What it does for us is allows us to plan the timings of each sequence. This is a much slower episode than episode 5: although a lot of stories are included, they’re being recollected calmly. It takes the pace down from the frenetic activity of the rescue scene, so that we’re ready to leave the characters at the end.
We’re still discussing which library Otto is working in and what Professor Remi is doing (we snuck her story in on a magazine cover!) so there are some details that need to be finalised.
In the meantime, we’re working on the animation. We need to have all the animation finished by Wednesday morning so that we can hand a “rough” over to composer Alexis Bennett. It’s a pleasure to welcome Alexis back to the project – he wrote the music for episode 1 way back in January.
Lunch and storyboards Friday, 10 July 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: actors, bookcrossing, script, story, storyboard
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We really did have lunch at the Sheep Heid Inn, Duddingston. Many thanks to D.J., who didn’t just give us lunch but made us welcome, gave us a tour, a history lesson, and an introduction to the sheep heid that gives the pub its name (well, the 19th century copy – made when the original, presented by James VI, was sold).
The photos here show the sign and the BookCrossing shelf in the main bar area.
Adam and I have been talking about storyboards for the last several days, but today is the day they need to be finished. We have a script roughed out – I’ll post it later – and, of course, we know which stories need to be included.
Episode 6 is very different to normal, because it will be told using voiceover narration rather than dialogue. We normally record the actors before we start animation – typically we’d have had a recording session this week – so that we can match the animation to the dialogue. But, that’s not needed with voiceover so we won’t be going into the recording studio until the end of next week.
What this means is that we’ll be using a “scratch” voice track as we work. A scratch track is a rough recording we make ourselves, so that we have a guide to timings. It’s very rough – you’ll hear it on the animatic.
It also means that we can continue to tweak the script for a little longer than usual…
Where is the Lost Book? Thursday, 4 June 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: characters, story, storyboard
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We’ve been thinking a lot about the story for episode 5 this week (by the way, storyboards are available if you want to take a look).
The revelation that Otto Dafé is actually a good guy has made us realise we need to think again about what happened in earlier episodes. Otto had been working for book assassins KBE, hired by Beryl Potts to steal Sally Challenger’s journal – but it turns out that he was actually a member of Invisible Inc. (a secret society of bibliophiles) working undercover.
So, was it Otto, rather than another KBE agent, that stole the manuscript of the journal from the National Library of Scotland? And, if so, did he deliver that manuscript to Beryl Potts? Or, did he give her a copy (perhaps with a few crucial changes?) and keep the original safe? What do you think? Where is the lost book now?
Leave a comment with your thoughts. You can also still vote on Otto and Lyn’s ninja disguises – the poll’s in the sidebar to the right.
Episode 5 – animatic Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Posted by Helen in Making of....Tags: animation, story, storyboard, video
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We’ve finished the storyboard sketches for episode 5 and put them together into an animatic. (An animatic is a series of still images with a voice track – often a “scratch track” recorded by the animator, but in this case it’s a rough version of the dialogue recorded by our voice actors at the weekend.)
It’s been quite a tense few days here. It’s very unusual to record the dialogue before the storyboards are finished. We usually go through lots of iterations with the sketches, and the work on the storyboards inevitably leads to changes in the draft script. This helps to make sure we’re telling the story in the best way possible. It’s important to spend plenty of time on the story process.
We were planning to record the dialogue yesterday or today. But, Cora‘s very busy this week so we ended up recording on Sunday. We didn’t have time to go through the story process properly.
So, we did what we could. We acted out the script (quicker than drawing it!). We had the actors record a few lines we weren’t sure we’d need – it’s better to get too much than too little. We sketched some of the key scenes and put together a rough animatic that included a few sketches, a scratch track, and a lot of blank screen. We were as confident as we could be that the script was going to work for us.
But, we’ve been a bit nervous this week. Storyboarding when the script can’t be changed is scary!
The good news is that everything seems to work well. The pacing of the episode is interesting: it starts slow, but is fast and frantic by the end. Take a look at the animatic to see. You’ll have to imagine the movement and the sound effects!
Episode 4: script and storyboards Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Posted by The Lost Book in Story teamwork.Tags: script, story, storyboard, writing
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The script and storyboards for episode 4 are finished! Take a look and if you’ve got any thoughts or comments, let us know. Otherwise, we’ll be talking next about some of the smaller details for episode 4 before going back onto the main plot.
Thanks to Bibliomane for naming Beryl Potts. We loved the chemical link and agree that there’s something very sinister about a baddie with such a grandmotherly name. Thanks to everyone else for your suggestions, they all made us chuckle or think.
If you want all the details about how we developed the story for episode 4, and who took part, take a look at Plotting Episode 4. And, don’t forget that we’re still trying to decide whether Grazp Pharmaceutical’s logo is the dino footprint – vote now in the sidebar poll.
The Lost Book is an animated web series where you wrote the plot.
