Week 2 - Semiotic Analysis/Pitch Presentation

During this week me and my team started working on our pitch presentation for Wednesday, Amit was absent this week due to an emergency, so we had Rashed as our instructor for the week and to help us prepare for our upcoming pitch presentation. I continued working on the environment for the final scene I created multiple boxes to represent other buildings and also used displacement for the sand dunes, this is what I was able to come up with :

I also modeled the interior of our bunker, I did some research on how bunkers look like and also took note of my teammates input on how they would like the bunker to look like, and here are screenshots of the bunker I did:

After the rough models were done for the animatic, my teammates continued on animating the scenes. We then consulted Rashed after the scenes were done and he gave us advice on how the last scene can look better, he suggested for the camera to be under Burj Khalifah showing the destruction of the environment from below. I then modeled broken roads, road lights and road signs, and animated the final scene for our animatic, here is a screenshot of a preview for the final scene that Rashed wanted us to do:

After all the scenes were done, they were given to me to compile and edit the whole animatic and to add audio to the scenes, here is the video of our rough animatic:

I also compiled everyone's work and created the slides for our pitch presentation during Tuesday night to prepare for our pitch presentation on Wednesday.

During our presentation on Wednesday, our pitch presentation went well, and our instructors approved of our animatic, they mentioned that the final shot will look really good it's just they feel like it's a bit too ambitious and they will be discussing it with us after the class presentations.

We then moved on to our class after everyone presented, Amit and Helgi sat with us and discussed about the final scene, they mentioned that they really like it and want us to try for now to create this scene and see how it goes, for the rest of the scenes, they approved of it and gave us the green light to look for our casting.

Semiotic Analysis

During the weekend I went into research with the concept of our short animated film, because I would like to have a better understanding of what our film will be. We went with Dubai being overthrown by sand because first of, there is sand everywhere in the middle east, and for example when someone says Dubai to a tourist, I'm pretty sure sand will be in that tourists' thought. Sand is basically like a trademark for the UAE, that's why this country has so many desert safaris as well. That is why we will be using sand as being the major cause of the post apocalyptic disaster in Dubai for our short animated film.

We went with the title Desolation, because our film will portray how empty Dubai is after it gets overthrown by sand, there are a lot of signs as well that connects the character to the title, it can also meaning loneliness, through our short film we will show multiple emotions of our actress, like when she finally finds an area in the map where there might be supplies and her mood suddenly changes in the scene. In the start of the film it portrays the character waking up and also showing that she is alone, this itself explains a lot and with the look of her surroundings that we are planning to create it will show how alone she is.

The title can also refer to what our environment will look like because Desolation can also mean destruction, and the exterior of our environment is Burj Khalifa and a lot of other buildings destroyed and submerged in sand. Just by the title itself, it already delivers a huge meaning to the short film.

For our main character I went through and watched some clips from the movie Star Wars Force Awakens, there is one character in the film that really caught my eye because our character concept at the moment is a survivor from a post apocalyptic environment, and she is about to scavenge for her supplies, and the exterior environment for our short film is going to be Burj Khalifa and other buildings of Dubai submerged in sand, so Dubai is slowly becoming a huge desert. In the start of The Force Awakens, Rey is also scavenging for metal parts throughout the desert for her to sell and have supplies and food.

Our character concept and Rey from the movie has a great similarity, that's why I will be studying how Rey acts in the beginning of the film so we can also have a get a reference for our actress. So she can have an image of how she will look and act for our short film. That is why we will also have a scene of our character crossing off a list in the bulletin board, to give this feel and idea to the watcher that she is about to scavenge for supplies or either look for food. That action of marking something in a map itself is a sign that there will be something in that area that you need to obtain for yourself.

References:

Burgos, D. (2018, June 15). The Star Wars Fandom Is Divided Over This Mystery. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/p/who-left-rey-on-jakku-theories-about-her-parents-divide-the-star-wars-fandom-7603631

Dubai. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://specops.wikia.com/wiki/Dubai