Scripts and audio

Before I began animating, I wanted to get the script written and recorded to have that as a guide. I think audio in our animations is really important, because we want to take a more abstract approach and some of the things happening on the animation will be hard to understand without a narrative. Much of the sensory overload I will focus on in my animation has to do with sounds being distracting for an autistic person anyway, making the script even more important. Ally, Kate and I all met up and each wrote our scripts together so that we could  be sure they all flow together and have a similar feel. I based alot of my script off the information Ally had gotten from her autistic friend about why exams are difficult for her. Here is what she said;

• Explain to me what to expect in advance ....otherwise I will imagine all sorts of things that might not happen and I will get over anxious unnecessarily
• Don’t make me sit too close to other people ..I cant stand it
• I need to wear my headphones to listen to music and block everything out
• Everybody needs to know that I have to rock when I am concentrating ...I cant help it
• Switch the lights off...I cant stand the flickering....I will get obsessed by it and be too distracted
• I hope nobody is wearing smelly perfume or washed their hair with lemon shampoo

I used this and other information that I got online to write a script that flowed along with my planned storyboard. Along with advice from the rest of my group, I came up with the following script;

"Exams can be really difficult. I can’t stand them. I get obsessed with little things, like tiny sounds or even smells, and it becomes distracting. I need to block all the sounds out. I can’t help it."

My group and I booked out the sound booth in uni and recorded each of our scripts a few different times, Ally kindly voiced mine for me and I think it will work really well over the finished animation, with the timing coming up at about 18 seconds.