Chase Scene Storyboards

With my thesis still an amorphous blob formulating itself in my brain, I took Christine's advice and used this week to research chase scenes. I like chase scenes because they're fast, frenetic, and potentially fun to animate.

I watched a bunch of chase scenes, and then I went back through a few that I liked and drew thumbnails for all the different shots, trying to figure out how the choices the filmmakers made while putting the scenes together. I first watched a scene from The Thief and the Cobbler, a Richard Williams film that apparently suffered from extreme executive meddling, but still has this really cool scene where the cobbler chases the thief through optical illusions and geometric patterned backgrounds.

Those patterns were annoying to draw in thumbnail form.

I liked this scene partly because of the art direction. The backgrounds in the film are very flat and monochromatic, but the director creates depth by having characters that are constantly running to and away from the camera. He also gets clever by subverting the audience's expectations, making some of the geometric patterns flat, while giving some depth. The stair part at the end, when the camera tilts down and we see that the characters are actually running down a spiral staircase, is super awesome. I had to watch it a few times to figure out what was happening.

I then watched the hedge maze scene from The Shining:

Kubrick starts off with a pan so that we can tell the spatial relationship between Danny and Jack, but then, since it's a maze and we have no idea where anything is, he just cuts between Jack and Danny. The audience just kind of assumes that Jack is getting closer and closer to Danny, which then adds to our surprise and relief when we find that Danny has actually found his way out of the maze and into safety. Jack is initially chasing Danny from right to left, which is awkward to draw in a sketchbook and also kind of awkward to look at-- maybe he did so in order to have Danny and Wendy ride off to safety from left to right? Kubrick also uses POV shots from Jack's perspective to show him trailing after Danny's footsteps. It really gets us into Jack's head and differs from The Thief and the Cobbler's more comedic wide and medium shots. 

Next was the pale man scene from Pan's Labyrinth:

I started drawing really fast at this point.

Way different style compared to The Shining, and I think more conventional. We get a shot of the pale man coming up behind Ofelia, she turns, the pale man does some fairy munching, Ofelia gets a reaction shot, and then cut between Ofelia running, pale man chasing, and a reminder that time is running out. I like the cut between Ofelia's feet and the pale man's feet, and also the way the director added suspense by having Ofelia's chalk break as she tries to draw a new door. Super effective, and I can see how shots were only included that moved the film forward, with nothing extraneous.

So for my thesis, I'm thinking of keeping things cutty, but also to pace things out so the audience has time to breathe in between quick successions of shots. If I want to keep things funny I should keep some measure of distance from the characters; similarly, to make it more dramatic go for close-ups and POV's. From watching all these scenes I thought it would be fun to see how a chase would be affected by changes in lighting... maybe a chase scene through a chandelier factory?