For dialogue scenes, what matters between storyboards and camera layout is capturing the right mood and expression while focusing the shot on a character based on what a character is speaking about or interpreting as they listen. As mentioned before in one of the posts about RWBY’s cinematography, this team was established during volume 3′s production and due to sharing a few of the same members as in the storyboard department, communication between the two teams and the director would naturally be constant. There was also a conscious attempt to keep things consistent in regards to which character was where on the part of the lead camera & layout artist, Kate Warner. For those unaware, camera layout artists are the ones that take the storyboards and animatics that establish the shot composition and timing of a scene and translate that into how the 3-D character and environment models will be placed through the “camera”, that being the way the viewer will see the scene.
That represents the bulk of what needed to be considered between the director Kerry Shawcross and Rachel Doda. The camera needed to get the feel of how characters would dodge and defend themselves against every close-range and projectile attack and get closer towards whatever part of the mech they could get to. Scale was the main idea between eight characters and one giant machine. There was one major thing that was the focus of how the visual direction flowed in the first fight, that being how Ruby and the others would each face Cordovin’s giant mech. As for who was responsible for which scenes, it’s not totally certain which segments were done by Cassidy Stone, but thanks to the 11th episode of Crwby - Behind the Episode, it is confirmed that Rachel Doda was greatly involved with the first half while Kevin Harger largely did the latter half. It is still unclear as to what the rhyme and reason is behind the amount of storyboard artists varying from episode to episode the way they do, though scheduling is a possibility. In this episode, only Rachel Doda, Kevin Harger, and Cassidy Stone were credited. I made an observation last week how the last chapter had six artists assigned to handle the boards which is the most this volume has had since chapter 2 (though not the most in the series, that honor goes to chapters 1 & 2 of volume 5). That being said, one thing made clear is the list of storyboard artists and to a lesser extent, which one them were involved with the boards for which scenes. No doubt such details will be reserved for audio commentaries in the eventual volume 6 blu-ray release, but for this analysis, much of what will be discussed is mostly educated guesswork. That means that there is a lot to break down regarding who did what and while there has been some confirmation, it’s not all specified from sequence-to-sequence. What is considered very surprising in hindsight is that despite its run time at only 15 minutes, it is the most action-packed episode since the volume premiere. So let’s try to make as much sense about everything that went down behind-the-scenes. Since the episode first premiered, a lot of buzz (pun not intended), debates and speculations have gone around across every corner of the internet within the fan base.
Previous Volume 6 Production Analysis Posts:Ĭhapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine & tenĪ lot of anticipation for this episode was built up by various members of the CRWBY and for a few big reasons. 2019 RWBY - Volume 6, Chapter 11 Production Analysis