Finished dialogue scene

[CyberFilth]

This is my first completed dialogue sequence. It's not exactly epic animation, but after noodling around on getting this scene finished, it feels good to have completed something from beginning to end.
It's dialogue-heavy, but I still incorporated some keyframe and point animation. The next sequence will have a lot more bone animation, and actual.... you know, animation.



Some of the dialogue is a little NSFW, and the English accents may be impenetrable for some.
The biggest lesson that I learned from finishing this is that, although my scripts skew to having lots of dialogue, I need to find more effective ways to convey that dialogue.
There are only so many ways that you can frame 2 people talking in a field. Even changing up the camera angles only gets you so far.

[hayasidist]

IMO, the dialogue-heavy / limited shots are not issues if / as this is a 3 min segment in a 90 minute work. (I'm guessing that this was never intended as a stand-alone piece.) There's an echo of "Waiting for Godot" in the script - and that manages a couple of hours when, for all practical purposes, nothing happens except dialogue. The challenge is to make the dialogue compelling - always leaving the viewer wondering what's going to be said next.

if you **really** wanted to add to the screenplay as presented, you might like to consider flashbacks to some of their thoughts / recollections with the dialogue continuing as V/O (e.g. Dad in the factory, Mum fussing over her son...) although I don't think I'd bother. But maybe following one character's POV to an ELS of the "dirty old town" (and a train setting the night on fire?) as they sit by the fire????

There's a piece here on how one director / screenwriter addressed a dialogue-heavy sequence... might or might not help depending on what else is in your screenplay.

[CyberFilth]

That's a really interesting article, thanks for linking to that.

I do intend for this to be part of a longer piece. I like the 'Waiting for Godot' comparison, I'm animating this short with the feeling that it's 'as if Kes was made as a Saturday morning, kids cartoon'...