Collaboration: Research and Story Idea

I have read some of 'Ideas for the Animated Short: Finding and Building Stories' (2008) by Karen Sullivan, Gary Schumer, Kate Alexander. Here are some notes I made from the book.

3 primary elements necessary for a story:

Character

Goal

Conflict

Other story elements:

Location

Inciting Moment

Story question

Theme

Need

Arc

Ending/Resolution

Rules:

Story Is King

Keep It Simple

Know Your Concept, Theme or Meaning

Avoid Cliche

Create a Memorable Character

Emotion Drives Action

Show, Don't Tell

Create Conflict

Know Your Ending

Entertain Your Audience

Use Humour

Do Something You Like

I decided to explore 'Wrong response to I love you' as a premise for a single conflict that intensifies:

A character who is looking for love takes their date out to dinner and gives their heart to them, it could appear as something like a candy heart. Their date reacts poorly and they try again with a different date, the reaction gets worse each time. Location is single camera point of view of restaurant table. Could possibly change the date setting, or the season (different weather outside the window).

Possible Reactions:

Leaning back looking uncomfortable and apologetic

Being Disgusted

Laughing

Running away/climbing out the window

The response of the person our character loves gets worse, but so could their own approach to it. Our character could get so fed up they splat their heart down onto the table in front of the other person and cross their arms and try to glare the other person into submission, looking from the heart to the person and back. Eventually our character could get completely fed up and flip the table up to hit the camera.

Collaboration Project Blog

Arrowpark Studios Blog

Toolkit 2: Life Drawing 1

20 minute pose

5 minute standing poses and a 30 minute seated pose.

I am pleased with the movement in the middle standing pose, and the placement and strength of the shadows. I will try to improve this further. I am also pleased with the centring of the figure to the right of the middle and I think the strong action line and my attempt to slow down helped here.

30 minute pose

My main goals for this year of life drawing are to slow down and be more precise, to centre my figures better using action lines and different line weights, and to experiment with different materials, including ink.

Perspectives Lecture 1 - Kill Bill

Postmodernism in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' (2003)

The anime sequence partway through the film is very different from the rest of the film and Tarantino includes it confidently; he is not making bad decisions, he is intentionally breaking from traditional film making practices. Tarantino intentionally draws the viewers attention to the fact that they are watching a film, and increasingly so as the film goes on.

Non-Linear Narrative - the film is broken up into sections and they are not in chronological order. The viewer sees The Bride cross the second person off her death list before we see her write this list, and she writes the list after she crosses the first person off. There are also points in the film where we move more quickly back and forth in time than in others.

There is pastiche of film and music Genres. Tarantino combines different film genres and also plays music that wouldn't traditionally be combined with certain settings. Such as Spanish  and surfer music played over an action scene set in Tokyo that is influenced by Asian action films.