 Welcome back! It is Friday and that means it's yet another F&A Friday and today we're gonna talk about how to take your exercise shots and then escalate them into something more complex. I'm a big fan of taking regular exercises like a jump, a gear change, especially a weight assignment like a box lift and just adding a bit more to it so it's less of an exercise but more like a shot, a shot you would see in the movie or out of a TV show, something that has a bit more character and feels a bit more aware of the environment and something where the character has an action and an objective and he or she wants to do something and it just happens to involve weight or a gear change or whatever it is. So in this case I'm gonna take a look at a jump. You can do a jump where a character just stands, jumps up and down or jumps from A to B, maybe with a step or two for anticipation and then on the jump and then a settle. So there are lots of ways to kind of trick out your exercise but it's still kind of an exercise. In this case I'm gonna show you how you take a jump but then you go a bit further and then you start adding different elements, multiple cuts, different cameras to make it more of a sequence. The length of the shot is always going to be the same and you can of course add and add and add and at one point it's gonna be way too complex and for you you might have done maybe half of what I'm gonna show but then maybe the next steps go oh that's interesting I can try that. So for you it's at any point you can say this is getting too ridiculous I want to stop here but I want to go through the full gamut of this is what you can do and this is how far you could push it which again you can push it you know in so many ways. So in this case I want to take a jump that is not up and down and not from A to B I'm just gonna add something a bit bigger. So in this case if you watch this that's it. It's about 10 seconds and the big change is that there is a gap here the character has to go from A to B there's a reason why the character jumps over this because there is a gap. It's very simple and the whole thing is going to be layout styles it's not going to be full animation so it's more about the principles of what the shot could be but this angle is weird the perspective is weird it's just the camera pulled back and the angles over the cubes it's all kind of weird. So I'm not a massive fan but still you can trick this out where it's about a canyon or something about some dangerous hole that an adventure has to jump over so there are many things so instead of just jumping up and down or just slightly from A to B give the character reason I have to jump over this because I'm playful I'm a kid jumping over a creek or again an adventure jumping over a big gap of whatever rock formations or whatever it is. So now it's up to you to kind of look at this character goes from A to B there is a hole why is the character jumping over this and now you have total freedom to create a character and create a situation where this would be appropriate. So now we're gonna go one step further character goes through okay we have some changes there still the same length. So now we have a surprise exit so you can kind of establish what the environment is and again this is very very simple you got whatever vegetation formation character comes in that makes very more interesting surprise appearance of the character and it's interesting because it goes from far away so you have full body mechanics to up close you have a bigger opportunity to show facial animation and then we cut to the actual jump so this is far away for a nice silhouette you can really push the body mechanics then we get to the landing for potentially interesting foot squash you got little you know you could add little pieces falling off just a bit of an interesting detail and complexity of a land so then we cut to this shot where you have character being a big closer to the camera and then further away and the complexities of a turn. So it's the same technically kind of the same animation while you're adding different camera angles so you can show off different elements full body a bit closer complexities of a turnaround so it's already a bit more challenging for sure but also a bit more interesting to watch now we're gonna look at this so we're adding more detail character escapes from a creature you got a few more elements and some camera moves so we adding a bit more interest you got a bit of a diagonal in here and you got a bit more interesting vegetation again this is still super simple but you got some more colors character still comes out of the bushes but now we are giving the character a reason the characters being chased by something and in this case it will be a creature so you can show off your four-legged animation skill set and we have a bit of a camera move where we are going to the right you're flowing to the right with the character and it cuts into this shot where the camera is also still going to the right it's a bit of a more consistency of camera energy and and the action of the characters going from shot to shot it's a bit more consistent there then we get to this shot where imagine the creature will be here this is what a creature is mouth open trying to grab this character who is going ah so you could have a really interesting action beat through here the creature doesn't make it falls down he can just escape or she can just escape and you have as you can see previously the camera goes left or right here the camera goes left or right and the camera falls down with with the characters there's a bit more energy that flows into this and before that we had an empty shot but here you can see some interesting elements this could be the last moment of the creature looking falling down and then as we exit here the new element comes into frame with whatever complex landing you want to add here into this where the character now has a reason to turn around going I made it the creature is gone and I'm safe so you can see more elements to it there is now a reason for the character to go from A to B it's an escape and he has to go or she has to go through whatever elements that might be dangerous and in this case there is a jump involved and again you can show off complexities of body mechanics for a human and now a creature and you have a bit more camera movement to make it a bit more interesting it's a bigger flow kind of supports the actions of the characters with the left or right and up and down but it's not too much and it doesn't feel like the camera does a crazy 360 or is in some way distracting from the action again it's one more step but let's go one step further so now we have this let's go through this version you have still character being chased by the creature lands it's safe now so so there's one more thing you could add so let's go through what I did here so you can have now a foreground element and you can show off different creature animation and flutters down is kind of scared off by the background action we get with focus change character still escapes the same creature same elements with the camera moves the landing all that is the same handoff between the focus here and as we think that the character is safe you have the surprise element of another creature coming in and grabbing your character and you can kind of play with camera conventions where if a character is here right looking this way there's not that much room there's more room here it makes it a bit uncomfortable you would expect potentially something coming in here but then what you do you turn around your character by 180 and you give this the classic look of right to left there's more room here it feels more comfortable which then sets up the audience for a surprise because now out of nowhere this comes in and it would be less effective if it would come in from screen left it would come in much faster it won't be that much of a surprise grabs the character and then exits so again you can add all kinds of things to escalate the shot make it more interesting make it more crazy this might be too much for you and you know this is more complex in terms of creature animation but it could be anything it could be some monkeys running through and grabbing character or whatever maybe there's a sinkhole that opens and the character falls down so there are different elements that you can add at the very end for like one more thing a little button at the end for that extra little joke but as you add those elements you want to make sure that you don't confuse the audience so there's one more thing I want to show you in terms of well as we add camera moves and as we add more creatures what can we do to make sure that the audience is always following and not going whoa what is this and freaking out and stuff is just coming everywhere so I added this little circle with audiences looking here to show you how we can connect the shots and connect the actions so that the audience is not confused hopefully not confused you can always tell me what you think in the comments but here we go so I have this little creature coming down we're always looking at the creature the creature ends up where the vegetation is moving and the other character comes in so it's not as confusing as imagine as a creature here and your character would jump in from the right big surprise for the audience maybe that could be interesting but it would also be potentially jarring and confusing so I'm kind of guiding the audience with that little creature to where the human character comes in now at this point we are switching from right to left this bit of a change but at the same time there are eyes of the character and usually for an audience member you kind of look at eyes the moment a character covers his or her eyes or turns around we're kind of losing focus we're losing interest and we start to wander so in this case I'm using that to my advantage so you see the eyes of the human and as it goes off frame we're kind of losing focus and yeah we're kind of not that interested in looking at a belly or you know legs and right when that happens I'm introducing this new character where the focus shifts and you can see where this character kind of ends we are again cutting to where this character is so it's not going from maybe we have the creature exit here and then the next shot the human is here that might be too much of a change for the audience so I'm trying to keep this pretty smooth for the audience in terms of where they have to look so creatures here here is the human again we follow follow follow and again as they fall down camera goes down characters go down everything goes down and I'm keeping that action consistent this creature goes down and over the cut it's still going down the camera's going down but in terms of where we're looking it's pretty much overlapping you don't want to be super 100 percent precise but then it feels potentially too artificial but that's just enough to go down and as we lose the focus there's nothing to look at this comes right in for handoff and we can look here and I'm cutting a bit sooner here it's not a complete exit you might argue maybe you want to exit completely with the feet now if the character is actually getting up you know it could be something where it's like this like who knows what the poses are of the legs but generally I'm keeping it on the right side of the screen and as we cut we are still right out of the screen at least that again there's just enough of an overlap it's not super confusing and we turn around we're looking here we settle like I said there's more room here it feels more comfortable and now I am using the surprise elements but because the distance here so short it's not super jarring but enough of something you wouldn't expect to create that surprise and the audience is of course taking it back and what is going on and refocuses it and that is also kind of the role of the camera the camera is not aware doesn't know it in advance so as they exit they break frame and then the camera person catches up to reframe until the very end so this is my approach in terms of how you could escalate a shot you just have an exercise or character does something but now you want to give the character a purpose there is an objective there's an action there's a want there's something that the character wants to do and usually what I like is to add conflict now this is going to be an fna in the future it's all about adding conflict because of many reasons but I want to go into that later but in this case again I have a reason for a character to escape there's a creature chasing there's something happening in the middle and a surprise at the end so there's more stuff that you can layer on top of each previous version to give this a bit more interest technically you could reshuffle the whole thing and just keep it to one camera I know in specific schools you might not have the freedom to add cameras sometimes teachers and mentors and myself included sometimes you just want to go listen focus on the animation only let's not add crazy camera stuff this camera movement can be tricky and it can make it look CG and kind of stiff and sometimes wrong so it can be distracting so I'll be very careful when and how you add camera moves or cuts but I still I'm a fan of sequences because you can have one overall action but you can show off separate details so one shot could be wide for full body mechanics and then you cut to closer to then show that action scene where someone is escaping so they're potentially panicked you know not very confident and then you can show off some close-up acting where you show off through the facial animation how panicked that character is so it doesn't always have to be one locked-off camera showing the main action it just all depends what your focus is you want to just show full body mechanics silhouette and a nice view of the action totally fine far away locked-off camera but even something where it's an acting shot where someone sits and then stands I'm okay with adding a camera tilt so you give the character room to get up and then change the posture the silhouette and all that good stuff so I'm not in the camp of always have a steady camera no movement it just depends on who attacks the shot so for any teachers listening you know just look at what the skill set is of the students and are they okay with doing a simple camera tilt to keep it simple enough so they're not overwhelmed but you give them just enough to add more dimension to the shot and some more elements or more freedom for the character to do something to take a step over or sit down we just follow with the camera so next week I will talk about more examples there's so much more you can do but I want to go through some of the classic exercises that I'm sure a lot of people are doing like a jump like a weight assignment like a sit-down what you could do to make this just a bit more complex so that your shot is a bit more shot like so it's not like a pure exercise where the potential person who watches the real goes hmm students that's an exercise where it feels more like well that was a cool shot with the character showing character and having emotions and just something where it's less of a to b I'm going through the motion of an exercise if you know of any type of exercises that have been transforming something more complex leave a comment I'm always interested in seeing examples that I can then show to my future students if you like this and it was helpful to you leave a comment hit the like button and if you want to get updates to all the uploads which are on a daily basis hit the subscribe button hit the bell button so you get notified for all the uploads and as always thank you for watching till the very end thank you for taking your valuable minutes and hours out of your life to watch this I highly appreciate it and I will see you next week for another FNA or Thursday for an acting clip or potentially some surprises at the beginning of the week thank you