Film Studies and Cinematography - Project 1
INSTRUCTIONS
PROJECT 1 - DEVELOP SHORT STORY
All the project in this module are interconnected with one another. The first stage of making the short films is to develop the story itself. Here is how I did it. I first noted down five story ideas for my short films. Here are what I have:
These story ideas that was shown to Mr. Kamal and he expresses that the most promising idea is actually Story Idea 4. So from there, I developed the story further.
Here is what I have come up with:
A slice of birthday cake gets tossed into the drain/toilet and gets wash into the drain. The cake gets soaked with ‘radioactive’ sewage and playfully hops out of the sewage as a mutated being. The living being is simply named Cake. Through the bar of the sewage drain, Cake sees a lovely looking island right across that looks fun to be in. The cake tries various method to get to the island while avoiding various obstacle such as rats trying to get a bit out of the cake, humans trying to get rid of the cake seeing it as monstrosity and the ocean that would threaten to soak Cake up broken them down. Eventually Cake surrounded by hostiles, and the cake is about accept its fate when the heavy approach of the crowd causes the cake to fling towards the island. The cake eventually made it to the island but gets blown up by the volcano or save the the party people from the island.
Here are some of my thoughts during the process, my initial theme or morals
of the stories is to 'Sometimes taking things seriously'. This would
actually require to make some major changes on the initial plots of the
story where the Cake acts naive and don't really run away from danger.
Instead Cake would play with those dangers. This theme don't quite fit the
current story. Mr. Kamal has suggested that maybe I could used the theme of
not giving up.
In terms of character characterization, I simply named my character Cake
and make it a child-like, cheerful and fun seeking because it only just
started to come alive, kinda like a child who is young. As my first animated
plot, I decide to go with something more simple like going to a place in
order to have fun, which is why I came up with an island. The rest of the
plot connection, I tried to shaped it in a way to make it work. For example,
how Cake find out about Fun Island's existence. As this is a short film, I
want to try to fit it into the three act story structure and to avoid
unnecessary fillers so I came up with the drain having a grate that faces
'Fun Island'.
The next stage of project one is to write down the script to further add details to the stories. For this short, I decide that Caked would have limited dialogue with just screams and a 'Ta-da!'. I was thinking along the lines of how Tom and Jerry did the show without or with not a lot of dialogue.
The biggest challenge when it come to writing the script is to plan the middle part of the story. I know that Cake will be chased by dangers and it will have to by pass the obstacles like the ocean but I don't really know the full details of it. I simply went for a simple solution of Cake bumping into it's first obstacles. Initially, I wanted Cake to explore the sewer area and that is where it stumbled onto rats. Cake escaped, and once it escaped, arrived in Downtown areas where it's new enemies are the humans themselves.
However this does not really make sense to me especially when the ending involves Cake celebrating with other humans. I either could change the plot or the character celebrating on the island are some other being, maybe another living cake. This however opens up a whole can of worms and I feel a minor adjustment to the plot is much easier to deal with.
Cake will meet up with the rats in the Downtown area and the sewers don't really have any danger at all. Here is the resulting script:
Once I have finished up my script, I start to compile all the required information I have about my short film. At this time though, the only requirement I have yet to work on is the setting. According to the script, I split the world information into two places; Boring Downtown and Fun Island. 'Boring Downtown' is a last minute name to opposed 'Fun Island'. This changes things since in my initial thought, I picture Downtown area as a normal typical area and is also sunny. By naming it 'Boring Downtown', I figure I come up with an idea that the Boring Downtown area would be dull and gloomy.
Boring Down is split into different smaller environments including the Sewers, Stone Beach and Plain Pier.
After that, I compile all the information (including the script) into one file for the submission.
Final Result
REFLECTION
Although I am rather excited about making a short film, I can already anticipate the upcoming challenges of the next coming project. Specifically the final project, considering that I will be using 2D animation as my medium. The last time I did an animation lasted five seconds and it takes weeks to finished. I can only imagine how much it takes to create a four minute video would last. When we do reach that stage, I reckon that time schedule is the utmost important. As I mentioned previously, the biggest challenge for me in project one is to plan out the middle act in detail. This postpones my progress for a little bit but I manage to keep up in the end.
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