Fourth Wing Animatic: Target Audience
Investigate the audience/s that you will be targeting with your proposed role project idea.
Over my break from school, I spent a lot of my time scrolling through Booktok and eventually came across the currently relevant Novel 'Fourth Wing' by Rebecca Yarros. It took me a while to scout this book in local stores as it was sold out everywhere! I really wanted to read this book and see what the fuss was about. Eventually I found one last copy in Big W and snagged it as quick as I could, it didn't take me long to finish reading the book.
Come back to the beginning of the new trimester, I need to further improve my specialisation; which is character design and storyboarding. So, to save me more time on the development of an animatic, I went with taking a scene from Fourth Wing instead of coming up with an original story. Animators are generally given a script to then visualise into a storyboard, but as I do not have that; I'm taking as much information I can possibly grab from the book to create into a scene. The bonus is that the characters, storytelling, worldbuilding and location are already established (Becker, ). The main part that I want to achieve out of this is creating an industry standard level of visual storytelling, and place people in the moment of surrealism. To build that audience, there are a few steps I need to take.
To begin with, Fourth Wing already has a large demographic of young adults, a lot of them being woman who love the combination of romance and fantasy. Just before publishing, Yarros was already aware that her publisher was seeking ‘romantacy’ as you call it; in the ‘new adult’ genre as it hadn’t explored the period between adolescence and childhood (Cappadona, 2023). It was a good call, seeing how popular it is today. FW went viral through TikTok in the reading community, seeing as how that’s how I discovered it. It appeared in the New York Times bestseller list (Maas, 2023), and currently sits in the top 10 charts of Australian bookstores: including Dymocks and QBD Books. Most readers onto this book are seeking stories of hope, connection and love, and the scene I want to turn into an Animatic mainly covers the feeling of hope.
Even though it’s an overused trope where the main character re-finds their strength in a moment of weakness, it’s a super effective one. Violet (the main character) has a chronic illness which is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, so she gets injured very, very easily. When she is confronting the three men on her own trying to protect this golden dragon, she already has injured hands and ankle. This already raises the stakes for this character, Violet is at her weakest. She tries to find ways to talk the group out of it before she resorts to fighting. Following Ethan Becker's advice, there are two parts to a scene to keep it interesting. Firstly, the conversational part which helps alleviate the action and climax in the second part. It's the best way to keep the audience hooked, scene progression is IMPORTANT; if nothing is pushing for the story then it's clearly not interesting (Becker, 2019). Additionally, we as the audience want to root for Violet on this journey we have with her.
Artwork done by me!
I'm going to do multiple tests and try to get small engagement to receive as much feedback as I can before the final, polished output. It's the best way to see what did and didn't work; was it clear? engaging? effective? and relevant? (LinkedIn, 2024) I know that whoever has read the book will appreciate the animatic as well as anyone who is new to the series. I have more confidence in trying to get the message across once I received the input of film students affirming what the scene is going to be about without prior knowledge about the characters.
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