Over the past several weeks since the creation of the white board storyboards, my collaborators and I have gathered together some reference materials and inspiration for our story. We chose some color palettes, screen grabs, and illustrations that suit our fancy. Here are some of our selections below.
When we think back on a lot of our favorite western films and television shows, there are several tropes and locations that we constantly came back to. For me personally, the show Westworld on HBO served as a huge source of inspiration and reference, for its remarkably high production value and dramatic cinematography. In our short, we want the action to be mostly contained within the town, so we included buildings such as old churches, saloons, and banks within our reference material. As we progress towards the climax, we then leave the confines of the town and break out into the “wilderness”. That is where the canyons of Utah and Arizona will be used, in addition to maybe some reference material from Santa Clarita, California.
Our most recent endeavor has been creating a more polished animatic from the white board frames for the pitch on November 7th. Here are some of the frames that I have rendered out.
This particular stage of development was undoubtedly the most challenging, simply due to the artistic habits of the team and I. Despite my artistic interests, my efforts are rarely spent on drawing. When I draw, it is typically for myself as a temporary reiteration of something I am modeling. It has been a very long while since I drew a figure or made a frame with the intention of it reading well to an audience. So the act of moving the pen on the paper proved to be a slow and difficult process for me. My collaborator Brentan struggled from a different kind of problem. His drawings were elegant and detailed, but so detailed that they were taking ages at a time to complete one frame. Every frame he made could have been a stand-alone illustration for the pitch, making it hard to create the 20+ frames each person needed minimum. Ultimately however, we created an animatic that is very fast but goes through every story beat with relative clarity.
Supposing that the pitch goes well, I hope to continue writing development updates regarding this short film concept. Should it not be selected, I will continue to share what new story I embark upon for the coming year. Thank you for reading, fingers crossed.
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