I fear my forum posts are often the inverse of that.  :blush:
But I try to do better in my scripts and formal writings.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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It takes a lot of commitment and it is very expensive. :P Be warned, I am going to be very preachy and critical. 

This is a bit weird to say, but I have l picked up as much information making short films with machinima and iclone as my years in film school lectures. A big lesson to point out is what people do wrong and figure out what can be done to fix it.

I noticed, even to this day, people either do not utilize the close-up or they flat out abuse it. 

I'm backward in that I only use one camera, but I move that camera around a lot to keep things interesting.

Bad, very bad. Move the camera around when it is necessary to do so. That is the biggest mistake I have noticed with iclone people; people move the camera too much and quickly swing to another location. I call these Schenectady shots and they need to go away. To me, it doesn't make it interesting- it screams 'pay attention to the camera instead of the subjects.' You never ever want to have the camera pay attention to itself... it kills the shot. 

This is where visual literacy comes in.


An interesting shot has to focus on the subjects to make it interesting, not just moving the camera all around. But an interesting shot must tell the story all around. :) The right angle at the right blocking using the right lighting makes a huge difference. Think to yourself, 'what am I telling to the audience?'

Editing itself is a major thing. Have a look at the kuleshov effect. 



The same principle applies to any cut you do. Also sound, the sound is so important, but yet many here never acknowledge it. The right sound effect, even adding atmosphere or white noise is forlorn here. It's a huge shame. 

All these elements are crucial for the proper visual storytelling. If you want to to make a great iclone film, add these elements together and plan. If something doesn't work, you do not need to show it. 
 





iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

Great comments and discussion here, all I wanted and more.

Let me first echo what ani has mentioned --  I always say "Start with a VERY short project -- no more than two minutes".  In a one or two minute film you can't learn everything you need to know about every aspect of telling a story, and it's something likely to get completed and shown and (even more importantly) get people to watch and give you feedback on.  So many times people want me to watch their 20+ minute effort and after the first couple of minutes I already know everything there is to know about the things they need to improve, and there's no way I can spend the time to watch the rest.  Just like the clip I started this thread with, in the first three shots you can pretty well tell all you need about someone's skills.

Another lesson is it's just as important what you don't show as what you show -- Spielberg was famous for this.  Watch the opening of E.T. and you know all about "Keys" before you ever see his face.  Just for fun early last year, when I was just starting to use iClone, I tried a similar technique for a short for my cousin (who illustrates dinosaur texts).  It didn't come out quite the way I wanted to (I only had a few hours and most of the time was spent struggling trying to learn GI which, at the time, was brand new to me) but the basic idea is there:

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

This is something I want to do but find incredibly difficult. Subscribed to this because any idears might help
I did a free course on creating stories (which is the primary thing behind movie making I believe)

I had simple ideas (from google searching) when I got started with it that the course also started with.
1) Start story :- Somebody/something wants to do/get something 
2) The Story :- Something/someone makes it hard for somebody/something to do/get it
3) End Story :- Eventually the do/get something is achieved

Anyway, the point of saying the above is that I learnt a 4th point from that course that I never really thought about before.
Maybe I am too low level and this doesn't mean the same to more experienced movie makers but any way here it is.

4) What is it about the story that makes it interesting to watch.
That is what you need to work most on when making the story. I really need to highlight that thing (whatever it is) that makes the story interesting to watch.
That's where I need to spend the most effort on doing well. Any kind of story will be enjoyable to watch so long as what it is that makes the story interesting is done well.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone will agree with that as that is how I understood what was in the course. and I wouldn't be surprised if my understanding is a bit off ... LOL.
But, that's what I am focused on mostly for now and hopefully I will discover some extra's here.


Thank you for posting this Kellytoons.
I will be watching video's and reading this more when I get home tonight (and in the future I am sure) and this is something I definitely need to improve myself on.





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Interesting breaking things up as such. I enjoy forcing myself to do short films because you touch on all aspects of production from beginning to end... but it’s not as daunting a task as creating a feature length or even 30min film. Just create a solid 5-7min film.

As far as the script... it all starts with a story. Simply stated the story must have a beginning, middle and end. Funny how the bad scripts that I’ve written broke this rule. Seems obvious but goodness they can be terrible without a standard beginning, middle and end.

When turning that story into a script, many times less is more. In that keeping it simple moves the story along and keeps the audiences attention. If you watch tv shows, many have simply 3 acts. The first is an introduction with the plot, the 2nd is the protagonists take over and there is an apex of what do we do now, how can we solve this mess??? The 3rd act is the resolution. The 3rd act needs to have a payoff. You can’t leave it bland or so complex that you have to explain the ending. How many times have we left a theatre scratching our heads saying, that’s it??? When the credits roll. There should be a payoff; a happy resolution, an unexpected twist... something that leaves the viewers saying... ok I didn’t waste X amount of minutes of my life.

That quote of using 100 words to express 1000 is so profound. For me that’s the hardest thing to do. The initial script has so much “fluff” that isn’t really needdd. You have to ask yourself, does it add anything to the story, what is it trying to convey? If you delete it, can you still tell the story? Those rules help to slim down a script to more bare essentials which can help with pacing and clearly conveying the story. I was chatting with a filmmaker who was very proud of his film that was shot beautifully and acted extremely well; but after the screening he almost had to explain to the audience what the ending meant. Cmon... if you have to explain the ending, you aren’t some Uber genius thinking at an alpha level... you’re a poor writer/storyteller.

Fantastic links by Benjamin Tuttle... I could watch vids like those for hours!!! Thanks for starting this thread KT. Lots of really good info in here from people with many different backgrounds. My background is more of a film composer, so I see film in a totally different way. I’m just learning the more visual aspects and how they relate to story telling. It really is complex art. YouTube some of Robert Yeoman’s camerawork on Wes Anderson films. Both men are ridiculously skilled at their crafts. Wonderful stuff! Subscribing to this thread for sure!!!

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I like the comment about "fluff": when talking about the length of a scene, somebody said "arrive late at the party and leave early". Meaning, you don't have to show everything; you can leave things out, provided the audience doesn't get confused.

I've noticed with some feature films that the director (or however) feels that the film needs to be more than two hours long, whereas with some cutting it would have been a much better 90-minute film.

Although I'm not disagreeing with the story structure, it should not become an absolute. Sometimes it's better just to start jotting down ideas and see where it goes. Sometimes also, you can work in reverse: you have an outcome or final scene if you will and then work backwards to show how this came about.

I'm not great at comedy, but I try to insert things here and there to lighten the mood, if appropriate.

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Initially, animation seems like a 'simple way' to tell a story... until you are half way through and you realize that you need to find or create every single prop and set - then light the set, block your character movements and so on.  So, every animation, no matter how short, involves so much work that the temptation to "cut many corners" becomes a part of the story.  Most of us don't have anywhere near enough time to commit to realizing the story we want to tell.  iClone, the temptress, lures us into believing we can create something wonderful just by starting a "new project" - skip the script, skip the storyboards, skip the art direction, skip the camera blocking, skip the character blocking and so on.  Most of our favourite films, live action or animated, have had a year (or more) of pre-production before rolling camera.

The first live action "short film" I wrote and directed I "pre-made or PreVis" with a camera phone - it took a little more than an hour to shoot and an hour to edit - it was only a sketch, or animatic, of the film I was about to make.  So, before I even started "filming" I had a pretty good idea on pacing, camera angles, lighting and performers positions and movements - most importantly the "problems" with the dialogue and other "unexpected" gremlins that would've undoubtedly made me look like an amateur if I hadn't "done the work".  I highly recommend this technique for animations too... take an hour with a video camera and a couple of friends and "PreVis" the story you'd like to tell - once edited, you'll have a template to animate to... honestly, there is a reason the first three rules of making a film are 1. Preparation 2. Preparation 3. Preparation ;-)

When I was actually making "films" one of the more frustrating things was to end up at the editing bay and find that either the director (or, worse, yourself) forgot to get the cover shots you needed or even left out a critical scene.  I'm pretty sure most of you know the famous story about "Jaws" that editor Verna Fields basically saved the film, as there just wasn't enough that young director Spielberg had shot to make the edit work the way it had been storyboarded.

One of the things I like most about iClone is how easily you can put together alternate edits and "takes" once you've staged your scenes. This really excites me after so many decades of not having this luxury.  We can put together our scene without worrying much or at all about camera angles and timing, and then afterwards just play until we find something that works the best.  It's almost like having a time machine and unlimited resources (and as a director, I have to say I'm pretty happy I can factor out the actor equation to a large degree as well :>).

My own idea right now is to take a short story, perhaps no more than two or three minutes, and then edit it different ways to tell it differently.  I think it might be great fun to end up with perhaps a 12 or 15 minute "feature" that shows the same exact actions from several different emotional and thematic aspects (not quite "Rashamon" but similar).

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I seem to recall a discussion a while back about "structure" in a script.

PRO - More likely to ensure success
CON - Perceived as robotic and not creative

I fall into the "pro structure" group, but I do NOT say blindly following a formula will ensure success.  But I do believe that good scripts (movies) tend to fall into one of a few common structures.  That could because they followed a structured approach in the writing, or perhaps that is simply an attribute of good stories.  In lighting, the "3-point lighting" approach (key, fill, rim) is a favorite, and in painting/photography/composition the "rule of thirds" is often mentioned.  So why not a "tried-and-true" approach to a story?  At least until you are so skilled that you know when and why to break off into your own territory.

I also see a "structured approach" is a good way to avoid some pitfalls.  It's too easy (in my opinion) to focus on the 2nd act because that's where the "fun and action" is.  Typically that is where the hero meets escalating obstacles.  But if you don't have a "story purpose" for your action scenes, and they aren't connected in some way, and they don't move the story ahead, you're mostly just entertaining yourself.  Without a good setup, you don't care about the hero.  And act two needs to have the purpose of making the conclusion in act three satisfying.

So I'm not saying to be a slave to "this must happen at the 18-minute point," but having a framework in which to work will make success more likely than if you just write randomly.  Well, actually, you can write the story in a random order, jumping back and forth (after all, you'll do that when editing the script, too), but the story cannot be random or you'll have a confused and unhappy audience.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
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Yup! I think Ani mentioned the same thing as well. Structure is good, but you don’t necessarily have to follow it to a T. As a composer, music is ruled by so many structures. You write music in a certain key and the circle of fifths will ensure you’re picking chords that will pleasantly follow in the proper scale. That’s all part of standard music theory. If you stay within the rules, the music will sound pleasant. However an “accidental” is something outside of the scale and breaks the rules. Used properly it adds tension and gives new meaning. I’m a similar vein, if you switch to modal music which, it is still structured but not like the simple scales we are used to, it gives a totally different feel. Many film composers will write in a specific mode for feeling. So what does all this mean?

The same works for visual art and writing. Most of our favorite masterworks adhere to some structure, but many have some sort of clever deviation. The trick is learning what you can and can’t get away with. If you add an extra spice to a recipe it may end up tasting fantastic. If you try to be too clever and cutting edge... substituting vinegar for water, you may end up destroying the whole dish. It’s all about balance. Something I’m still struggling with!

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