I have music! Big thanks to Graeme Watt for doing such a stellar job with the mixing.
And yes, I know the overall sound levels are wonky. No, I am not going to do anything about it at present. I will wait till I have a proper voiceover artist doing the narration.
Today’s meeting with Angus was interrupted by champagne (welcome) and two fire alarms (less welcome) but we still managed to talk about a lot. Mostly about the narration, but about a couple of other points too.
– The mRNA backbone is too thick, compared to the other organelles it’s really tiny so I need to fix this. There are also proteins bound to it at all times (“heterogeneous mRNA binding proteins,” such as hnRNP), so I should show them.
– Sometimes the animatic is not quite clear whether we are in the nucleus or the cytoplasm. The colouring and shading, therefore, should be very different to make it more clear (or introduce the environment in the narration).
A few amendments to the animatic narration:
– It may be worth mentioning that p53 is simply one of the most important in a great number of proteins responsible for tumour suppression. This is not imperative though – it depends on whether I can find a way to fit it in that doesn’t sound clumsy.
– What is imperative is that unchecked DNA damage does not always result in cancer – normally it results in apoptosis. Only if the UV rays damage the genes responsible for regulating cell division, does a tumour form.
– “p53 is now free to initiate…” is not technically correct. Rather, “p53 is no longer degraded and now quickly accumulates (Angus’ analogy was that of water draining away, being stopped by a plug).”
– It is worth saying (probably at the end) that the reason for many cancers forming is an abnormailty in the p53 (or the p14) gene.
Today we had part two of our scriptwriting workshop with the legendary Mark Grindle, for which I had to write a synopsis. Here it is:
The film opens with a live-action scene of a woman sunbathing in a deckchair. We are then shown a close-up of what the UV rays are doing to her cells, damaging the DNA (which, if the cell were allowed to multiply, would lead to a tumour forming). The cell reacts by starting to produce a special tumour-suppressing protein. We see the various stages of the protein production, from the DNA unzipping to the amino acids binding together into a protein.
The protein then resolves the problem by repairing the damage done to the DNA.
(If possible within the time frame, an alternative storyline could also be shown of the other possible resolution to the story: if the damage done to the DNA is too severe, the protein initiates the self-destruction of the cell)
One the damage has been healed, the protein is disassembled. However, the pieces from the destroyed protein are reused and recycled into new proteins. The CGI element ends with a scene of the protein production process starting again – the camera then cuts/zooms out to the woman sitting in her deckchair, unaware that any of this has happened.
Not much has changed since I wrote it last night in preparation for the workshop, except for the last section featuring the woman, which Mark thought would bring the story full circle to a more satisfying conclusion. I’m really happy with it. Can’t wait to get started on the script.
Cell Shading 