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Closing Sequence

| garygowran

For the closing sequence we felt it would be potent to use visuals that illustrated the ‘unromantic walls of her real life’ These include representations of the Melancholic Wife’s furniture, bookshelves and many elements of her creative process.

Opening Sequence

| garygowran

For the opening sequence we have decided to try and use design imagery that already exists from the comic work.

Sadhbh had the idea of the camera following the line across a long pan which the character portraits emerge from and the titles sit above.

The Melancholic Wife Storyboards – Sixth Sequence

| garygowran

The Melancholic Wife re-emerges back into the real world, the ‘unromantic walls of her real life’. She moves through the room, giving us an opportunity to see the world she inhabits, the objects that make up her life. She turns on a lamp, she has gained illumination and she reaches for her journal to record it, ‘trying to hold on to the nuances of her transmutations’.

Sound Design – Music Soundtrack

| garygowran
Just as with voice over it feels imperative to be conscious of the power of music to shape the mood and reaction of an audience to the film. In practical terms, this being a student film and therefore on a limited budget, the opportunity to freely select music is limited by economics as well. We feel fortunate in some regards because we found that the tone and flow of the visuals married well with the Classical Music genre. But it feels important to note that this wouldn’t have been our first choice as in our minds the protagonist does inhabit a modern world with a modern taste in music, so compromise is necessary. The classical music genre has a longer history than most musical genres so there are more compositions that are license free with some performances coming under creative commons.


I used the website Musopen to explore options for the soundtrack. Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on increasing access to music by creating free resources and educational materials. They provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions.

For the first drafts of the animatic, myself and Sadhbh chose Reverie by Debussy for the first act of the film before the Melancholic Wife chooses her own music. We felt this gave a good sense of the initial journey she embarks on. For the change moment we chose Wagner music, for the sense of drama and a journey, specifically from the opera Tannhauser. These two pieces acted as a starting point a placeholder to help visualise the film.

When it came time to consciously examine and choose the music, myself and Sadhbh decided to attempt to find female composers to try and rebalance the gender representation given the narrator is a male voice. Using Musopen again we discovered two compositions; for the main body of the film we selected a piece called Three Dramatic Etudes by Pandora Selfridge; for the change of tone we have picked a section from 4 Sketches, Op.15 by Amy Marcy Beach. We feel that the first composition is working well but that the second one may need further exploration as it may not represent enough of a positive tone shift.

Digital Background Textures

| garygowran

I am creating the photo album page backgrounds digitally using layer styles; pattern overlay techniques, this involves using scanned textures in imaging software and managing the noise levels, blending modes and opacity levels to create as realistic a paper look as possible; drop shadows, enabling the illusion of depth and a gap between ‘paper’ levels, again using blending modes, opacity and also distance and softness levels; inner shadows, using a screen blending mode instead of a multiply mode to help create the illusion of the edge of paper standing out, augmented again using opacity, distance and softness levels.

Snowfall.

We have selected and scanned a number of different paper textures and colours for use in creating the backgrounds, main characters and background characters.

Paper Textures.
We have decided on using different papers for different elements in the film. The backgrounds will use wallpaper textures, the main characters of Dwayne and his daughter will be textured with tissue paper and the background characters will use mulberry paper. This will hopefully make them distinct while related. 

Dwayne Film Colour Palettes

| garygowran

For the group film, we have split the work for the production of the short into its different areas and agreed tasks between one another. This was greatly helped by the previously posted production maps. I have taken on the production of the digital backgrounds for each of the album pages. This involves the further development of the previous page concepts I posted including internal frame backgrounds.

For the colour scheme we have chosen jewel tone palettes.

Background palette. 
Dwayne palette.