Safe,

Yeah the thing with the energy ball was that it was going to be like a district 9/cloverfield type thing, it sort of just happens without any explanation, and creates curiosity whilst also going as far as to being a valid explanation of why everything is happening. I like the after effects becoming self aware, but i think something needs to trigger it, like a surge of electricity or people hacking Adobe and messing around with a new update for it. I think it needs some sort of reason for it to happen because otherwise the audience might ask questions like "surely the new adobe CS series was beta tested etc".

I'm glad we've agreed on the opening titles, everything is still early days at the moment so i expect a lot to change.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea because it does make life a lot easier then to record everything on one format rather than mess around finding all these different recording devices. I still like the idea of filming inside an actual News Studio though (just the background) and then green screening someone over the top of it, I think that could look really effective.

As for the meeting tomorrow, are you talking about doing the test shots? Or is there something else i've missed completely, it's very likely, i've been so busy the past few days it wouldn't suprise me if a few details slipped past.

If we are going to do test shooting, the clocks turning back might fuck us over a bit as now the days are going to be a lot shorter meaning we'd need to have finished filming by 4pm as that's when it's going to start getting dark and lighting will be an issue. If we get out a DVX1000 and a tripod we can get on it.

Other than that maybe we should both begin to storyboard some ideas of our own and then we can meet up at somepoint and go over them, compare and discuss what we like and what we should develop further. I think once we've done that, things are going to fall into place nicely.

Anyways, i've just text you about this meeting tomo, speak soon mate

Narrative Plans 2

I like a lot of the ideas you have written previously but i do think a few of them could do with modifying slightly.

The energy ball idea seems a bit vague, i do agree that we should really have some kind of explanation for what is happening but a mystical energy ball doesn't really answer any questions.

I quite liked the idea of adobe creating a new, much more powerful version of after effects which has become self aware.

I do like the idea of having the intro filmed like on cloverfield with loads of shaky footage cutting to black and silence with the opening title sequence in the black parts. Then we could say "5 hour earlier" and show the news report.

Also i like the idea of having different types of footage, for example mobile phone cam / handy cam / pro news cam etc. Instead of using different cameras we should just film everything as high quality as possible, then when the animations are composited render them out at low quality and enlarge them to size of composition.

This should give the effect of different media types and make the animations look even more realistic.

Hope your liking the ideas anyway,

Remember the meeting tomorrow evening.

Safe, Felix.

Narrative Structures/Possible Plot lines

Ok, I've just been brainstorming some rough ideas for the film and it's plot/narrative structure. All of these are just suggestions and as they're the first ones, they're gonna need to be changed. I won't mind if you don't like them or don't want to use them, even if you don't we can work almost as if by process of elimination and it'll allow us to focus on some different ideas.

Ok, so i was thinking about the opening sequence. I thought of two ways to do it (other than a normal news broadcast from a studio). Using a slow building fade from black title sequence with the piano and news reporter in the background we could then use one of the following:

The first could be the reporter doing an initial report after just arriving at the scene, explaining to the audience what is happening and establishing the setting, things have only just started to "animate" themselves.

OR

Join the reporter as he's manically describing what's happening as it's right at the peak/climax of the animations whilst in the background you can see it all happening, fade to black and display a "5 Hours Earlier" or something so we can give some sort of back story and explanation of how ths happened.

In terms of giving some sort of explanation of how this happened, i thought it might be quite cool to go back to that AEtuts tutorial on making a realistic district 9 composite, and instead of having a space ship in the sky, use this energy ball:

There's a tutorial on how to make it on videocopilot and i think we could make it look quite nice. We don't even have to give a reason for why it's there if we just jump straight in with the news report. The kind of emphasis behind it is that this mysterious ball of light/energy is causing all this weird shit to happen, animations start jumping off computer screens, the green and red men at pelican crossing come to life and jump down

As for your pacman idea, you could have someone standing outside the building you're intending to do it on playing pacman on their phone and they could look up in shock and see that

a giant pacman is actually on the wall in front of him.

For your speech bubble type idea, i'm not quite sure how that could fit in. Someone could be reading a comic book or one of the comic strips that you get

in like the Daily Mirror or the Sun and that causes similar bubbles of though to appear above their own heads.

One more idea i had was to maybe have like a missing dog poster, but the picture of the dog in the poster comes to life and starts barking. I think this

would be pretty simple, all we'd need to do is motion track a freeze frame from a video of a dog onto the poster, and then unfreeze it so it looks as if

instead of a picture on the wall it's a video.

Like i said at the beginning, these are all just rough/draft ideas for some sort of plot or narrative, there's multiple ways we could do this. We could

just do it as if we were documenting it, going around the city with a camera and filming all this weird shit happen or we could turn it into a sort of news

report, filming on handy cams as well to emulate the public capturing footage and sending it into the station (could also photoshop up some really nice

images of the ball in the sky and use those as if they've been sent in by members of the public also)

Don't worry if you don't like these ideas, i really won't mind and perhaps we can either modify them or use them to steer us in the direction of alternative

narratives. Either way, we need to get these down asap so we can start doing some test shots of the kind of things we're going to need to film and

also do some storyboards and perhaps a script.

Also, i think i told you but i won't be here this weekend, i'm going back to Norwich to DJ on sat night, gonna leave friday and come back on sunday so i won't be able

to do much over those couple of days.

For Felix:

Ok this is kind of what I had in mind, but not really. It sounds so melancholy and doom and gloom, as it stands it would never fit over what we're going to do because these animations aren't posing a threat to human life. I put an "Emergency" news report over the top of it (from a zombie invasion) to give some sort of feel to it. This would be used for the opening credits to sort of establish the scene and let the audience know what's going on.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/672854453d9ddb9b/

Early Ideas

Using bluescreen and an actor to create a realistic newsroom similar to anchor man with an urgent news bulletin.
"It is believed that Animations are attempting to take over the world. Sources say that the first sightings appeared in Lincoln, UK at around 10:40 GMT. It is has been reported that it looks like the works of After Effects, An Internationally Recognised Terrorist of Motion Graphics, However Adobe claim no responsibility for what is......"

Background animation explodes and cuts to live footage from around Lincoln showing the sightings of the animations.

IDEAS FOR ANIMATION/TRACKING

Thought bubble above a guys head whilst he's looking at a girl saying "Man, she's got a nice arse", which the girl sees and then slaps the guy.

On the large new apartment block near the engine shed, animate a pacman game onto the white areas of the front.

Change the Side of a Royal Mail van to "Royal Fail"

Welcome...

So here it is, the hub for all our creativeness.

Any ideas, pictures, animations and such, post them on here and we can keep track of where we are at.

enjoi.