Uninhibited
90 sec | Beauty / Makeup Advertisement
A treatment by Steven Phillips
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Contents
Introduction
The Idea
The Ecosystem
Our Approach
The Characters
Casting & Styling
Visuals
The Product
Cinematography
Art department
Audio
The Story
Storyboards
Post Production
Introduction
Hi there, I’m Steven. I’m stepping out from anonymously art directing in-house creative teams for the last 20 years to present some film ideas that I’ve had in mind for months, maybe years now.
This treatment is for an animated short that could also be pitched as a spec commercial for an unnamed beauty brand.
While it will still have the production values of an marketing piece, I think it will be stronger if we can free it up from the need for product placement or casting for a specific demographic.
To achieve commercial quality on an independent’s budget, we’ll need to establish a clear creative framework. This treatment steps out the key requirements so a plan of attack can be structured with whomever comes on board.
If it goes to plan then the resulting film should be pleasant to watch, but also appeal to brands as an example of how new approaches can make 3D rendered content not seem cold and technical.
The Idea
This film just bops. It’s fun, its bold, it’s cool. It’s the sister film to Unobserved, the inverse in terms of color, energy and atmosphere, but showing younger characters and their wilder side.
Our primary viewpoint is the bathroom mirror, as we see a bunch of Gen Z club kids get ready for a night out, the star of their own show.
The cameras are wide angled and fish eyed, the lighting high contrast and color gelled, the characters love eye makeup, glossy lips, big glasses and manicured brows.
All genders, all backgrounds, we rip through a dozen or more characters as the ready themselves for the night ahead.
We see selfies taken and uploaded, staccato edited pose montages, outfit changes and a pet or two being drawn into the mayhem.
The Mood
Our Approach
While I would like to explore this one as a live action shoot, I can see the production costs going sky high very quickly.
It could indeed be done in a more ad hoc / guerilla style where we put a wide angle go-pro in a dozen cool kids’ bathrooms in Brooklyn and let them bop it out to their own reflection. The catch there is there is a high chance of getting back footage that just feels low budget. Even when Apple ‘shoots on iPhone’ they’re using some pretty heavy duty rigs, lighting and file formats.
I would like to instead explore this one an animated piece, perhaps with reference footage for either keyframe animation or motion capture.
We would deliver it as a loose colorful and energetic style, not realistic, but not a cartoon, something like Alberto Mielgo has achieved with his recent animations and the Spiderverse look he pioneered.
The Characters
For this film the characters will only have one or two shots each, so we will need to design and create an ensemble cast of diverse, unique, natural and Gen Z folk.
Pictures tell a thousand words in this instance, I have created an AI generated casting lookbook for an idea of the vibe. They’ll all be recreated in 3D for the animated content.
Casting
Included here are a set of AI generated characters derived from a broad set of Gen Z models and artists.
These would form the basis of a casting process to find natural, charismatic and unique stars for our film.
Visuals
Framing will either all be portrait oriented, or with some exploration we could deliver at 16:9 but use some editing chops to do double/triple wide assemblies, or use motion graphics to fill out the screen.
Color wise it will be hyper saturated but not a cartoon. I want this to somehow live in the same universe as the Unobserved film. These characters are our extroverts, the energetic opposites to the introverted charm of the females at home.
The characters will all be front lit, from either the bathroom cabinet they’re facing, the overhead light or their phone screen. The backgrounds are ambiguous but show that we’re in the city, at night, and these people are eccentric - think out of focus neon signs on their wall, pot plants, fairy lights.
Their clothing and makeup is bold, their hair colors are numerous.
Animation Look Development
The Product
Without explicitly naming a product, this would be a spec piece for a modern youthful makeup brand. The characters will be using products to apply as we see them.
If it evolves to just be a short film spec piece then we can imply a brand association by using items that all fit within one brand’s offering.
Cinematography
Wide angle lenses, fish eyes, phone camera lens lengths will keep this visually interesting.
We will switch between the actual mirror’s view, as if we have a camera mounted behind the glass and the character is unaware and smartphone selfies.
It’s quite common to see influencers holding their phone up like the statue of liberty to get a great angle of themself in a mirror, so we’ll use that look.
In other instances it will be the self facing camera for the traditional selfie look, but these will be towards the end of the piece, indicating that their look is finalised and this is the shot they’re capturing to share on social media.
I think it’s best we limit this to characters who are home alone, and thus this is all either self-filmed or from static hidden cameras. There’s no roaming 3rd party camera operator.
Art Department
Seeing as this one is all 3D and animated, the art department becomes the 3D asset team. We will explore this as the project develops, as the Art Director I will lead the process here and explore some ways to get maximum impact for minimal effort.
As per the Unobserved film, my initial idea is that we simply do 3D scans of a series of apartments and lean into any artefacts or glitches that come from that process.
By scanning a room in relatively neutral lighting (actual technique tbc) we would then relight the space with 3D lights, opening up windows and adding sheer curtains.
The rooms then would have all of the visual complexity of a lived in environment, without the need to completely design and construct each space.
Audio
I see this taking one of two paths.
One - we use a banger of a modern track, Charli XCX or someone similar and the unifying theme is that all of these cooler than cool kids know the song, some sing along, others dance, others just nod and feel the vibe.
Two - there is no singular song, there is just a unifying bpm. A solid ‘next door through the walls’ bass thump drives the film. Each of our characters are getting ready in a room adjacent to the music, so we hear different melodies and the ambient audio is higher in the mix. The clink of metal on ceramic, hair dryers, humming and tapping.
To be explored as the animatic evolves.
Post Production
The majority of the technical hurdles for this project lie in the post production realm.
Previsualisation will be important to explore the concept and art direction as a whole, and there will be some logistical and technical requirements for capturing any video observations or realistic environmental sound.
With all of those assets gathered there will need to be a strong guiding presence to the post production pipeline as all of the elements are brought together. Currently I’m assuming that will be my role, but if an animator is brought on who is happy to work with unconventional techniques then two heads are better than one.
I am assuming Blender will be the primary piece of software used. Editing would be done in After Effects if I am personally doing the compositing, but I am open to using DaVinci or other tools if someone is committed to the project and more comfortable in those environments.