As I move all of my episodes onto the web, I’m finding that shots that seemed perfectly acceptable in a blog post just don’t look right when I format them into an episode.
I suspect a lot of that came from my one-episode-a-week schedule. I’d usually take a few shots that I loved, but, to finish the episode, I had to make do with a few shots that were just so-so.
Which is all to say that I’m doing a lot of do-overs. Not much for Underfoot, I find. Other than cleaning up a few of the masks in Photoshop, all of those photographs went straight to comic format.
For my Overhead comic, it’s not the shots themselves that are the problems – most of them are good enough for me. The problem is that I appear to have changed their wigs every episode (and, sometimes, within the same episode). So, now that I’ve finally settled on their look, I have to go back and reshoot a bunch of scenes with their final look. Which is too bad, because I really liked some of those shots.
For my Mia Fiorello story, I have to reshoot all but the first episode (which I just cleaned up) because I’ve made major changes to the plot and cast. I may be able to save a few shots, but I suspect it will be an almost complete redo.
Which brings us to In the Pictures – the episode I’m currently redoing.
I love the shots of the two sisters in their chair, both as they’re sitting bored (like here)
The girls revel in their summertime freedom
and as they’re watching Night of the Living Dead (as here)
The girls . . . enjoying, I guess, Night of the Living dead
But, when I got to the last scene, where they open the door and see the movie before them, I’d just totally run out of juice. There’s no setup, and the shot is simply my front door, at night, poorly lit. As here.
In addition to all of the aesthetic problems, how exactly is this thing going to work? Are they *ever* going to be able to go outside? How does the last thing they watched/read get communicated to the door?
Anyway, I found it all pretty unsatisfying so, this week, I’ve taken a different approach. Emily has bought a wardrobe, and she puts the DVD in the bottom drawer. Then their dog, badger, starts to get all worked up about the wardrobe, Emily opens the door to show him that nothing is wrong and BAM! – NOTLD is right there in the wardrobe.
Here’s a couple of shots, so you can see the progression.
Here’s Emily going to open the wardrobe door to show Badger he has nothing to worry about.
And here are the sisters holding the wardrobe door closed after seeing NOTLD inside.
I also have a tiny door that I might use instead. In that version, the door on top of the DVD/book/picture opens into that world. I’m going to take a few shots over the weekend to see how that works, but I might end up using that for the Betwixt cast to let them move between worlds.
So, anyway, that’s where I am. I’m going to clean up the Overhead shots, get the girls in just a single wig, and put all of them into one episode, and then I’ll either start tackling the Mio Fiorello redo or do the first Episode for Betwixt. If I get a moment, I’ll show you how the two Betwixt dolls look together. I think they’ve got great chemistry – now I just need a storyline and a pair of pants for the big guy 🙂