Okay, so by the next meeting – we had nothing. We shot down every idea, and were very low on positive energy.

I brought up Post Apocalypse again, and brought ‘Saving Private Ryan’ as an example of the kind of environment I mean. Not totally ruined, but just damaged buildings in a city. When that movie is brought up, people immediately think of the impressive opening scene – the invasion of Normandy. I was actually referring to later on in the scene though, where they’re going through the war-torn European streets. 

I occasionally read script-writing guides and books, and it is usually said that as far as timing is concerned, it’s best to enter a scene as late as possible, and leave it as early as possible. Kind of like how people try to attend parties – don’t want to come too early, and don’t want to overstay the fun part. I think it’s really engaging to take this concept to the extreme – throw you in a scene of chaos, where you’ve no idea what’s going on. Lost did it extremely well – the first scene in the very first episode – the one that sold it to millions of viewers worldwide – is the chaos that ensues right after a plane crashes.  It’s also a demonstration of human fascination with destruction.  For some reason, seeing something built does not often give an audience the same sense of excitement as seeing something ruined and destroyed.

Another scene that I showed was Sarah Connor’s nightmare in Terminator 2, the one where she tries shouting to the families in the playground, but no words are coming out of her mouth. A moment after they all die in a horrible nuclear explosion. It’s a scene that stuck in my head, and has been there ever since I first saw the movie, more than 10 years ago.

Sigh. I miss Cape Town.. 

Anyway, the other idea was a post-apocalyptic city. 

As you probably know, this idea was reinvented and repacked, and this is what we're working on now. At the beginning though, it didn't pass. It was said to be too difficult to model, too committing in terms of scope and size.

 

 

After the first meeting, we all agreed to go back and try to work on the two ideas that weren’t ruled out: The one was the Ghost Town, and the other was Sarah’s Idea, a dressing-room, possibly in a theatre. Moulin-Rogue-esque, perhaps.

I went home and did this crappy, rushed little drawing.

My ideas for the Ghost town moved along the lines of a lone traveller or a family arriving at the city, to find out that it’s completely empty. I envisioned the city being quite deep-south USA, and heavy on the eeriness.

For the dressing-room, I kinda saw an old lady coming back to confront her past. In my head she was a dancer or an actress or a working-girl, something that required youth and beauty. She’ll come back, and it will mostly a play of her and her reflection through the room ( the room representing the past of course).

 

By the time we met up again, most of the group have decided they don’t actually want to do either of the projects. They said they weren’t excited by either of the two, and so we were back to square one. I think at this point I started to feel like the group dynamics tend to be a bit too negative, and the general mood – deflated.

This is something that has lingered for quite a while, and only recently is showing sign of dying down.  I can’t really put my finger on the cause, but it seems like every time we find something that we agree on and want to build on, the groups as a collective find reasons to dislike it, and get quickly demotivated again.

 

Here are some of the pictures I showed at the first meeting, when the idea of a post apocalyptic was brought up and shot down again. I thought  New Orleans might be a good place to look for pictures of destruction. the way I'd envisioned it first, we'd have one quite impressive ruined building, next to some less impressive ones.

Another early idea was a lighthouse on a remote island. I’ve taken some pictures in Cape Town, South Africa, of just that, so I’ve brought them along.

We’ve talked our way out of the idea; mainly because it would be a project that would heavily involve special effects and texturing, but little in the way of modelling. I also don’t actually like the idea of a lighthouse. Looking back though, trying to model/texture it can be an interesting experience. I’m already thinking cell-shading. Probably gonna give it a go when I have more time.

Oh, that last picture is not from cape town, It's actually from the movie 'Princess Mononoke', in case anyone gets confused.

Another idea I brought up was a market.  When I grew up, going to the market was always a pretty interesting experience. (I think that's retroactive imagination doing its magic here - It's probably just interesting now, in hindsight, and was just seen as a boring chore when I was a kid)

Unlike most European markets I've seen, the markets I used to go to (in Arabic villages in Israel) had no regard for ‘health and safety’ or any such things. It was messy, loud, and extremely colourful. Everyone was always shouting, arguing prices and greeting acquaintances. You always have 50 things going on at the same time. It’s crude and it’s fun.

It probably would have been hell to animate, but very satisfying if you can actually pull off.

I can’t remember why, but the idea wasn’t really discussed seriously. I take it the others weren’t keen enough on it, and I wasn’t passionate enough to advocate it.

Second idea was a castle. I've brought it up, but just as an off-the-top-of-my-head idea, not one that i was particularely fond of. In fact I can't stad it. There are a few things that in my mind that are associated with bad animation. Castles is one (I guess robots is another). 

Nevertheless, I brought the idea up. I'm not gonna bother with pro's and cons, because I think everyone pretty much agreed that they just really didn't want to do it. If I remember correctly, Dan was adament on not doing castles and cemeteries. 

Some pictures I've found on the web:

Idea no.3 was a ghost town. My initial thought was a rural remote place, where, for some reason, there were no people.  In my head it kind of felt like a setting for some creepy ghost story/horror movie.  Jared was talking to us about Dennis Seaver’s house, and I liked concept. A meal half-eaten; a sense of character that can be felt through an environment, rather than by actual characters.  Echoes of a place that once was, maybe companied by sounds and passing images so to not to create something wholesomely boring.

Pros and cons:

·         Again, a good sense of scale – doesn’t have to be huge. In fact, needn’t be too big, as to not ruin the atmosphere of melancholy.

·         Interesting enough visuals; a ghost town in not really restricting as far as modelling is concerned.

·         Narrative-opportunities aplenty here.

 

This idea passed at the first meeting and agreed on to be one of the two that would be furthered discussed and analyzed in the next meeting.

My group members have decided they don’t want to include characters and character-animation in the piece. This is something that I wasn’t too happy with – I like animating characters and think we could have done well, but I did understand the fears of time constraints people brought up.

We weren't too sure as to the specifics of the idea - american/european? Ghost town becasuse everyone left, or becasuse it's remote and quiet? we agreed to think about the idea, what we like about it, and come up with things for the next meeting.

Situation so far.

Okay, recap time. 

 

Animation course, second year, 2oo8, green group (I think). 

I'm in a team with Sarah, Dan, Khalid and Matt. 

 

First time around we agreed that we’re all going to generate as many ideas as possible, and then try to see which ones works, which ones doesn’t.  I will leave the others to discuss the ideas that they brought to the table, and will go about dissecting mine.

 

1.       The American Dream.

No, this is not about the fact that America has just chosen its first African American president (a moment that will go down in history, and that’s quite exciting on its own right). This is about the icky, sticky and tacky vision of perfection in American terms, as reflected through countless of movies, cartoons and articles.

 

A very funny version of the American dream is the one where everything is perfect. And by perfect, I mean – No poverty, no crime, and no anger. Also: no diversity, no individuality, and no humanity. The houses all have different, inappropriately loud colours, probably to disguise the fact that the people have all but the same colour of skin. Except for that one lovely darker neighbour.

It’s interesting to see how societies idea of perfection change,  along with their morals and tolerance. Interesting, but unfortunately not what this blog is about.

Some images I’ve found of the American dream idea, to bring to that first group meeting:

 

Did I mention tacky and icky?

This is also why this idea was shot down.

The plus and cons of it, were, in short:

·         Scope-wise, it’s quite convenient – a small enough neighbourhood can be modelled, and still get the idea of what we want across. So it’s not as committing as other ideas, and quite doable.

·         The idea, done well, can be quite funny and quirky an eerie. Amusingly uncomfortable. Everything is just a little too perfect.

·         Not done well, people will fail to get the point. Instead of intentionally tacky, it can just come across as plain tacky. Instead of having a tinge of irony, it would just look annoying.

·         Visually, not that attractive an environment to model – the houses are all the same, the area is too clean – it’s just boring to model.

Pictures and inspiration were taken from Edward Scissorhands, desperate housewives among others. 

The Script that would-have

Coming up is a long post explaining the work proccess of our group so far, from this individual's point of view. Until that, this is a short 'script' I wrote, that got canned along with the idea it came with.