Storytelling Script to screen this week, was a self directed lesson for us to work on our chosen stories. However some of the group were having troubles with ideas and so we watched film called Ted Talks which gave a rather interesting talk into the world of story telling. One element that I picked up on was when the speaker said "Stories should give you a promise" which meant from beginning to end it would stick to the story. Upon watching this film it did make me consider some elements of my characters such as what drives them and how when writing the story as the film says "going in your gut leading us to places that were actually good".
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| Research board 1 |
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| Research Board 2 |
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| research board 3 |
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| Research board 4 |
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| Research board 5 |
I then proceeded with my chosen task for this afternoon, character designing for my short story, using research boards from pinterest that I had printed of previously for this lesson. I had already thought up an idea for Joseph's character design in my journal and I sketched from that into my Storytelling script book. To develop the design I sketched from my research into 19th century fashion specifically the working class in this characters case, being a working shoe maker. The research boards were very helpful in the design process by capturing the styles and texture of the time period and using inspiration from a film based in said time period for the hair style.
One element in my process of story development is working on possible scenes for my story idea to lead to future development (as shown below)
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| Scene ideas for The Artist and The Mermaid (c) A.Montgomery |
I sketched out an idea for the opening scene, of Joseph the shoe maker creating shoes in the back of the shop he works at. Though I had limited knowledge of shoe shops in the 1900's I simply went with my gut and improvised. Near lessons end I had a talk with Annabeth regarding my story, and she told me there was a way to fit my large story into a short minute film. This was based around a book recommended to us today called Writing for animation, comics & games. It was called story beats and this was something I should look at and she even described some aspects of my story that gave me some new ideas on how to write out the story.
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| Character design for Joseph |
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| scene ideas |
Feelings:
In this lesson I was feeling confident with what it was I wanted to do for the session and didn't hesitate setting to work upon finishing a work sheet about our characters. Sketching the character was something I enjoyed as it was the chance to put my concept art skills to good use and what I'd learned over the last few months. Listening to the Ted Talks video made me think about a lot of things even possible approaches such as " all well drawn characters have a spine" and how " Storytelling without dialogue is very effective" I felt inspired after listening to the speaker in the video. Whilst Annabeth talked about story beats in my work I listened to every suggestion and as she spoke I could see my mind filling with new ideas about my story and has made me consider re writing my story spine.
Evaluation
Looking on this session it was showing possible alleys of story telling to take in my story. I could see that the film was helping other students, like Axel who had found a possible idea to follow from for her story. The designing of the character went well as I considered the timeline and setting for my story and use of my research source on Pinterest. I was pleased with my first character design but this may develop over time especially my idea for Elise's design. One thing I to consider is the advice about story beats, and read how this could help streamline my story for the animation process. It makes me think about how the story tellers behind Disneys FROZEN had to refine their story from Hans Cristian Andersons original story of the snow queen to get to something that spoke to them on the inside.
Analysis:
In hindsight I realised that I wrote a lot of detail into my story and that it would be something I would write into a feature length illustrated story later in the year. I feel I should've taken the time to see if I could shorten this in some way, to do a short film rather than a written novel. This was certainly different, to how I would usually write a story but what Annabeth described to me about the storybeats could be a possiblity to look at shortening my story to the 1 minute requirement of the module.
Conclusion:
Looking on what I've learned I would think that the lesson has given me much to consider and think about for my story. The coming weeks tasks would be on reading what I can to help in my work and read the book recommended to the group specifically chapter 8 on story beats in story telling. I will look into rewriting my story spine to a more shorter version and show it to my tutor for feedback.
Action Plan:
In future I shall look back on my story work and consider the timing of the short story, and look into what was advised to me about story beats to get an idea of how to shorten my story. I may also look into designing and sketching more ideas for the production bible and work on a cover for the Indesign production bible using what ideas that I have so far. I would say that todays session was helpful and the video shown to us was truly inspiring to watch and has given me some ideas to research and look into for the future of this module.
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