Extended Essay Initial Research

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As part of the Animation Research and Practice module I have to write an extended essay on a specific topic. This topic must bear relation to the main film project, it’s theme, subject matter or method employed. My initial ideas have included; investigating the use of dance to communicate emotions in film; examining the representation of female characters by male creators; the complexity of representing psychological challenge in a nuanced and respectful way; the hero’s journey told through non-traditional narratives.

Using the Wolverhampton College online library I began researching possible books and papers in relation to these areas. Some of the titles included; Understanding Animation by Paul Wells (2013), specifically chapter 5, issues in representation and Animating Film Theory, edited by Karen Beckman (2014). It was in this second title that I was introduced to the concept of the essay film form and for me it’s description aligned with my own main film project. 

Updated Animatic

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For this updated version of my animatic I have addressed some of the issues that I didn’t feel were working from the first draft.

  • I added a textured background wall to the first sequence to explore what it might add to the piece, I think it helps to give some context to the action.
  • For the sanding and painting sequence I had, before producing the first storyboards, imagined it as an overhead shot but I struggled to visualise this at first, wrestling with the idea of making it as readable as possible. With feedback from Ed, I returned to my original idea for this animatic and am pleased with the results.
  • From the first animatic it became apparent that for the film adaptation I would need to signify the learning that the Melancholic Wife takes on that enables her to overcome and access her power in the last sequence. In consultation with Sadhbh, we decided that we would explore the concept of her taking one of the ghosts with her, accepting this avatar of her teenage self into her arms as she’s swallowed by the blackness.
  • The final scene has also been changed for this version. Now the Melancholic Wife emerges from the dream space through a door created from the light of her self expression. She re-enters the ‘unromantic walls of her real life’, a space signified by objects and ephemera from the comic stories, ‘striving to hold on to the nuances of her transmutations’ by taking up a pen and journal.

McVerry Trust Film Treatment

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McVerry Trust


Dwayne – Home for Good

Short Film treatment


The screen fades in from black and we see a photo album sitting on a flat background. The front cover of the photo album is decorated in a key motif, an oval in the centre of the cover contains an illustration of a highly stylised key. A pattern radiates outwards from the oval in strips of warm colours to convey a sense of security and familiarity. The front cover of the album opens by itself to reveal a photo on the first page. Each photo in the album sits on its own page and has its own border evoking a physical picture frame.


‘I was in a hostel……..’
The first photo contains a cut away view inside a hostel, we see two floors of separate rooms in silhouette with a silhouette of a person moving around in each room. The silhouettes are all a single colour. The border of the photo is bright and summery, yellows and oranges, optimistic and hopeful.


‘I can have my family over here now…’
The page turns and we see the next photo which is a panoramic view of a room filled with silhouettes of people standing and mingling over food and beverages. The silhouettes of the people in this photo are different colours, jewel tones or pastel shades. Dwayne stands in the middle of the room taking it all in. The photo border is autumnal in tone; gold, rust red and brown, harvest festival feeling, people gathering to celebrate the positive result of hard work.


‘Cause when you’re in hostels….you can’t have anyone over’
The page turns and the next photo just contains Dwayne by himself in a bare, sparse room. The photo border is cold blues and greys, evoking winter, isolation.


‘I’m able to get me daughter and bring her over…It means everything’
The page turns again and we see a photo of a young girl. The frame is vibrant greens, yellows and pinks. It’s springtime, time for growth. Hands reach down and pick the photo with its frame from the album page. We zoom out and we see it’s Dwayne, he has the photo in his hands and he reaches up and hangs it on a wall containing lots of photos of himself and his family. He places the photo of his daughter in the centre of the arrangement.

Fade out.

McVerry Trust Dwayne – Home for Good

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This is the video of Dwayne and we’ve been asked to create a short animation from his dialogue, specifically from the twenty-second mark to the fifty second mark, excluding Christmas.

I wrote out a transcript from the video to get a greater sense of the meaning attendant to the words. Dwayne’s repetition of the phrase ‘having (someone) over (to visit)’ was very strong, which gave me the idea of trying to visually represent a form of overcoming, travelling over an obstacle.

A narrative thread emerged for me beginning in a hostel then moving to his home with his family then returning to a memory of isolation in the hostel then returning home but this time just with his daughter which to Dwayne ‘means everything’.

The Melancholic Wife Storyboards – First Sequence

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The Melancholic Wife enters onto a white screen and begins to dance. As she turns back on herself floorboards rise from the white space below her becoming a floor beneath which creaks and overwhelms her with their noise and darkness. 
The Melancholic Wife uses dance to cope with her dark and troubled thoughts. But within her is a memory of dancing that feels embarassing and challenges her coping skills and the film will chart the journey through this memory. The rising floorboards of this first sequence represent the difficult memory rising from her subconscious. She is unable to fight off the hard feelings and she falls, descending into the void of shame.

First Animatic

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This is my first animatic representing what the story could look like adapted for film. The first challenge that arises isthe timing for each scene within the film, how to tell the story in an effective but also efficient manner in order to make it realistically achievable in the timeframe I have to make it. I am happy with some of the transitions, the black to carpet to wooden floorboard from the first sequence to the next feels right, but the transition from the Wife being swallowed by the dark claws to the final sequence needs more work. I think that I was attempting to retain too much of the original comic’s aesthetic in this transition and neglecting the requirements and benefits of film.