For this exercise, I stuck mainly to film and animation as reference. As instructed, the moment the film or animation begun, I started sketching out a thumbnail for the very first shot. Every thumbnail was the first and only version of it. The media used changed as per how much detail I thought each thumbnail required, as did the approach for each thumbnail. For example, for my first two thumbnails (right) from Casino Royale and Ghostbusters, I used the rule of thirds to more accurately compose the frame. However, I did not require it for the next two (left). Under each thumbnail I wrote a rough description of the shot, including the name of the film, the location, time of day, the context and the type of shot. For the first four shots, I used a fresh brush pen and an old, relatively dried up brush pen, the former allowing me to produce thicker patches of black, the latter to make mid-tones and soft shadows.

Casino Royale’s fixed opening shot takes place at night and is mostly dark except for the partially illuminated face of the man in the foreground (half of whose face is hidden in darkness to emphasise on the tone of mystery and the noir style) and the dimly lit buildings in the background.

Ghostbusters on the other hand is a downward panning low shot, which starts in a bright sunny sky and slowly pans downwards to reveal the entrance of a public library, thus setting an optimistic and pleasant tone and introducing us to the location.

Somewhere along the way I started to use oil pastels to introduce colour to the thumbnails.

Masaan (top row, first from the left) had a rather simple opening shot (medium shot) which provided context to the scene without overtly suggesting anything. The emphasis is on the woman who appears to be keenly but quietly watching some kind of pornography on her laptop while she sits in a relatively unlit room except for the little sunlight coming in from the doorway behind her, to perhaps emphasise on the secrecy of the action.

Rang De Basanti (top row, first from the right) starts a lot more dramatically, with a montage of shots of actions that seem to be in preparation for something. The shots are monochromatic so as to suggest historical significance. The opening shot (close-up shot tracking rightward) is of a man applying “kohl” or “kajal” around the peripheries of his eyes with his middle finger, usually something observed in Islam or even among Hindu women. The movement of the shots, which is basically a rightward tracking movement, perhaps adds a sense of time to them as the viewers move into and out of shots rather than simply cutting to and from shots. There is a tinge of yellow in the shot which may serve to set a tone of passion and energy.

Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (top row second from the left) opens with a wide angle shot of the silhouette of a person walking towards the camera in some kind of desert grassland area amidst a sandstorm. The silhouette cutting through the sandstorm right in the middle creates a dramatic sense of mystery and scale, similar to opening shots from many Western movies, where a cowboy is riding from or towards the horizon at dawn with the sun enclosing the silhouette, which usually serves as a way to set the tone and the locational context. Here I used oil pastels as they were ideal for creating a blurring effect on paper when smudged across the frame.

The last frame I talked about, which is the opening shot from Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the one I chose to work with for the next exercise as
1. It is composed rather simply but can be used to create a dramatic and cinematic effect due to the scale of the subject with respect to the location, scale being something I’ve wanted to play with for a while.
2. It allows me to get the ball rolling with story as a lot of details are introduced but can be further elaborated upon for the next few frames, thus giving me a lot to work with.