We are all very excited in Brown Bag Films as our short film ANYA, which is being made to raise awareness for the charity To Russia With Love, has started coming together!

So we thought it would be nice to briefly outline the process involved in getting a shot from script to screen. In this case, we will look at SH016 (we don’t really go in for glamorous shot names here at Brown Bags!). Before it even becomes a shot, it starts life as a couple of lines on a script page:

INT. CORRIDOR – DAY

Anya runs down the grim corridor - peeling paint, cracked

windows. Broken glass litters the floor. She holds Pascha.

First stage - the script is given to a storyboard artist with detailed notes on what the director is trying to achieve – in this case the script writer also happens to be the storyboard artist and director, so no notes were required.

The board artist decides on the framing of the scene and the character poses. The storyboard is the first visual rewrite of the script. The script needs to be enhanced through the boards to convey what is happening visually and not just employ the script literally.

Whilst the script simply states Anya runs down the corridor, we realised at boarding stage that we needed to be in tight on the door, the bear, Pascha, plays a pivotal role in both Anya’s development and in the narrative, so we focused on him first; the nervous Anya uses him as a sort of periscope to check that the coast is clear.

We also decided on a low angle to show the world from a child's perspective.

The next stage is to build an animatic. We take all the storyboard panels and time them out to see how the film plays as a whole. This is the second visual rewrite. It is a crucial part of the process and allows you to embellish the story with relevant camera moves and editing. More importantly, it solves any issues that may arise. In this case, we had narration and a piece of temporary music to go over the film. It played quite slowly and the narration felt far too literal. So we cut the narration and swapped out the music for a piece with a faster tempo. Another edit or two later, and we had a film that we all agreed was working better.

This is also a great time to get as many opinions as possible. We are really fortunate in Brown Bag to have really high calibre talent working here, so we love opinions! Better to get them at the earlier stages than after the premiere screening!

Here is how SH016 looked at animatic stage.

Once the animatic is locked, we ship all scenes to animation. On this film we are really lucky to have Infinite Frameworks Studios in Indonesia working on the film. This is the third visual rewrite. Infinite’s brilliant team get the shot from the animatic and our animation notes. We then work with Quicktimes - shots are sent from Infinite, we watch and review and send them our notes and the shots are tweaked accordingly. This is a great part of the process as we can see the film starting to take shape. The animators really need to convey the emotion in the scene through simple gestures and movements.

Once the animation is approved the next stage is lighting. Whilst all of the above has been going on, the sets, characters and props have been designed and built (sets and characters need to be finalised before animation shipment, so it is always a bit of a race against time).

Once final animation comes in, we swap out the temp sets for the finished, textured versions. Then lighting takes over. Ideally they will have been working away testing lighting setups while shots have been away getting animated. When the final shot comes back in, the lighting department transfer the lights over to the finished animation file. They make sure everything is working exactly as it should, camera moves are finessed and character positions tweaked.

The characters have to integrate well with the backgrounds (this sounds a lot easier than it is!), shadows need to fall in the right places, eye shines need to appear natural and above all else, the lighting needs to embellish the shot. This is the fourth and final visual rewrite.

In SH016 the character of Anya is leaving her room for the first time. We needed a definite transition from the two locations so we have her going from a blue room, into a lighter brown environment. She is also growing as a character, her situation is improving, so we wanted to give the impression that she is running into the light. Sunrays were added to the windows, dust particles needed to be seen floating. A rim light was added to define the edges of the characters and to highlight the bear as it comes around the corner.

Once everything is working well, we send the shot to a render farm (this 9 second shot took 13 hours to render). We then take the rendered shot and finesse it in a composite - we tweak light levels, colours, apply soft focus to backgrounds to give depth, generally give it a final pass to make sure it is as visually impressive as possible.

And that’s it, the two lines of script have been transformed into a 9 second shot. The total time for all stages to be completed … 6 months.

We like to think it was worth it!