Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Elderberry Blocking



Hey guys, here's my blocking (finally). Please go ahead and leave all the feedback you can think of. You don't have to make it enormous like I did :)

Thanks,
-Nelson

6 comments:

Josh Riley said...

First off, I really dig:
-Her pulling the huge jug of wine over to her when she mentions "Elderberry Wine"
-Her taking a drink of it at the end.
-Her rubbing her hands in anticipation. (at the begining of the shot)

All these movements feel good and are timed nicely
Crits:
The staging seems a little wierd. I like her grabbing the wine jug, but it seems like it should be in a more showcased position... perhaps right next to her, or slightly behind her. (not that the current set allows this placement, but you get what I am talking about).

Drinking the wine is a great gag, but I almost wonder if it would read better if the wine glass was next to the jug to really show that what is IN the wine glass is what is IN the jug... (or later... if they had the same color liquid).
OR
if she began by grabbing the jug, then each time she picked up an ingredient, she dumped it into the jug which she swishes around once or twice then pours into the glass, and then finally drinks. Sounds complicated, but I think it would totally fit into the timing....

Overall.... I think that if you polished this blocking pass, you would be totally rockin, but I wanted to throw out those ideas in case you felt like superman this weekend.

Nice job man.

El Snoozo said...

First thing I realy like is that there are props and some action before and after the dialog..Makes it seem like a real full piece. Seems like a twisted Martha Stwewart ( I make that sound like she isn't twisted already)

Some of the poses are really great too, especially when she breaks into the "And Then.."

The thing that I would change, and Josh mentioned it, is your timing in the beginning. There is a lot of movement from rubbing her hands, and then grabbing the jug, and then starting on the first spoon. The possible ways you can remedy it is by delaying your dialog ( to keep the hand rub) remove the hand rub and have her bring the jug in slower, or have the jug in it's final place and have her ( as Josh said )do a showcase gesture towards the jug.

Pretty nice blocking pass, the final is gonna look sweet!

Aaron said...

Nice use of IK arms in this one. Normally, I think it looks weird for gesturing and stuff, but it's used to good effect here with the hand rubbing, interacting with the bottle and leaning on the table.

Unknown said...

Agreed with everyone above. Though I must say I'm not a fan of the swig of the wine at the end - though it's well posed and looks nice, it feels out of character. I would think that a lady behind the voice would be a bit more feeble and take more of a wine taster's sip than knock back a whole glass. Even so, why is she drinking it? Is she committing suicide? Or is she tasting the wine before she poisons it?

Nelson Brown said...

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. Hopefully I'll have some time to incorporate some of your ideas before the mad dash of polishing AND facial (ahhhh!). To answer your question about drinking the wine, Dustin, the idea I was going with was, like El Snoozo mentioned, a "twisted Martha Stewart," or some other kind of tv recipe host. Often hosts like this will finish off by tasting the waiting "final product." The gag here being that she gets so into her presentation she forgets she's talking about poisoned wine. If you guys have any ideas of how better to sell this (other than what you've already mentioned) please let me know.

Unknown said...

hey!
great stuff you guys have on here!
I would comment but i am not totally familiar with how cg blocking works.
I turning in my thesis film @ SVA on april 13th - and so i'll have nothing to do for a little bit.
Do you guys mind if i join this club after this month?
I'm a 2-D guy and so i guess i would do a hand-drawn stuff (not sure if that is allowed?) - but i would love to get feedback and it would push me to do a nice piece of acting every month.

-Adam