June 29, 2005
Entry Two: The Screentest
Screentest is finished. It was everything I thought it could be and more.
I had loads of fun at my kitchen table wearing my pajama bottoms and Team Zissou beanie. GI*Joe toys before me saying I was a kid again, but the expensive digital camera and my bare, hairy chest betraying my adulthood.
Or something like that.
Special thanks to Amanda, who bought her silly boyfriend some GI*Joe toys to get him started.
First, I tried my hand at storyboarding the panels for the scenes I wanted. The resulting storyboard was a great help when I started shooting (and thanks to Andy and Alesha for scanning this for me so I can show all of you fine people). The camera (a loaner from my parents) worked great. However, I realize the necessity of keeping the batteries fresh because the display screen conks out to save power and I'm left with an off-center viewfinder. Not a big deal, because the display cuts back on to view fresh pictures and I can adjust as necessary on the spot, but something to keep in mind.
During editing I had to switch the dialogue to two panels because I worried about dialogue association. I knew who was talking, but it wasn't all that clear. Two things I learned from my multimedia classes: 1) if the user has to do any thinking, they loose interest, and 2) users are stupid anyway. Yeah, I learned quickly that the term "user" was a curse word. So I modified the scenes to be as simple as possible. I think it worked out better, anyway.
I had some concern over the special effects added post-production. Weapons fire started out with a comic book in mind; "BANG!" written across a red shout-box. But with live photography instead of ink drawings, it looked more like an episode of Batman with Adam West. (Not that I'm knocking 60's TV Batman, it's just not the bat-style I was going for in this bat-project.) So I kept the Matrix-y shot lines while removing the text and shrinking the shout-boxes. And I included color-size coding for caliber: pistols and small arms are small, yellow shout-boxes, machineguns and larger have large, red identifiers.
For the actual production, though, I think I'm going with on-site effects. Red syrup and sparklers. I want it to look as realistic as possible (given the overall concept) and a far cry from spandex-clad grown men filling the screen with "Pow!"
As an aside, I played with making Duke a little more villainous in the screentest than he may turn out in the actual story. He's a "good guy", but if the main character is an anti-hero, the antagonist can't be squeaky clean.
Finally, it was just a matter of coding the slide-show and putting the webpage together. And so, without further ado, here is the DESTRO: International Arms Dealer screentest.
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