"Heart of Steel", Part One, Act Two (Part Eight)

This is a posting of pages 87 through 94. This section of Act Two is boarded by me.

The story transitions to the home of Commissioner Gordon. Gordon looks up from his evening paper to absently gaze at his daughter, Barbara, lying on prone on the living room carpet in front of him, lit by the comforting glow of a fire in the hearth.  This scene of domestic tranquility is interrupted by the doorbell; Gordon leaves to answer and is summarily subdued by Randa and the Gordon duplicant.

 

(B124) If I were board-supervising this today, I’d make me add a BG to this scene. It would be a view of the driveway towards the street down below, enough to show that this is a p.o.v. shot at the duplicant’s eye level. I don’t remember what they did in the version-as-animated.

(B125) Gordon and his duplicant are framed for a beat in an almost symmetric composition before the mysterious woman dressed in trench coat and face-hiding fedora (Randa) rushes into frame, attacking Mr. G. 

(B126) Close-up on Randa’s weapon, a stun-gun, as it zaps Gordon. (I think that’s my design, made up on the spot for the purposes of the storyboard. The board crew frequently got the script assignment simultaneously with the design crew and had to design for ourself in the board. These rough ideas were later spiffed up by the prop and b.g. designer crew).

B127) Gordon, unconscious, knocks off Randa’s hat as he falls out of frame, revealing that it is, indeed, her.

(B128) Gordon, unconscious, knocks off Randa’s hat as he falls out of frame, revealing that it is, indeed, her. We cut to a downshot of Gordon, lying motionless in his front doorway. Randa and the Duplicant step into camera from either side of frame. This was the quickest, easiest way I could devise to stage a rather complicated set of actions. I recall struggling with trying to play out, in long shot, depicting the various poses Gordon would undertake as his body crumples to the cement pathway. The strategy I chose requires very little actual animation.

In fact, this entire sequence requires very little actual animation. For instance, in scene B120, Gordon rises from the couch, steps out of frame and immediately walks back through frame in the B.G., his lower body hidden by the couch.