Idea Generation & Thought Process

One thing I really struggle with & need to work on is putting my thoughts into writing, so here they are, albeit a few days later;

After being given the brief for the semester I began to run through different ideas in my head. Rather than seeing the live action requirement as a limitation, I tried to come up with something that made the most of the media type instead. The mediums are infinitely different and have their own strengths & weaknesses, so I tried to utilise this in my scene (even though Dane said story then technique, sorry). I've always found perspective cameras really engaging, probably due to my favouritism towards games over movies, but I felt like this would truly make the most of the live action medium.

Last year I made my short 3D animation using a perspective camera, there were some parts of this technique that I really liked the results of & others I didn't. I spent a lot of time working on the camera for that animation, but towards the end of the project I just had to settle for what I'd managed to do. I feel that the biggest challenge for me was making the camera seem realistic as it was either too smooth or disorienting & very difficult to find a middle ground. I then thought that If this were to be done in live action I wouldn't face that problem, as there's nothing more realistic than a real camera!!

With that thought in mind I checked with the tutors to make sure we would in fact be able to use the camera this way. After asking, Dane said it would be fine to use as long as the scene would benefit from the technique & it wasn't just used for the sake of it. I went back to brooding over the ideas I'd had but one stuck out above the rest. I wanted to make a short film in which a UFO or something similar fell from the sky & this was all captured in 'home video' style, the character operating the camera would then investigate & find a human in the wreckage, the camera would then cut to a reaction shot & show the character behind the camera was an alien. Kind of like a typical alien story except with the roles reversed.

When it came to group brainstorming I already had this idea for what I wanted the animation to be but still had no idea on what the lead up to it would be, only really the ending. Although I didn't really progress my story during the group brainstorming, as a group, we came up with some really interesting ideas. An idea we'd discussed previously (Gabe or Rhys' originally) was to have a character inside of a video game, I found it would be an interesting take on this using the same plot twist as my idea, possibly having the live action character inside of the game & having it pan out to reveal an animated character playing the game or something similar to that.

Another idea we'd settled on as our 'if nothing else is better' plan was a similar scenario but with a horror theme. The live action character would be watching TV whilst an animated character inside of the TV began to distort the program & cause the TV to glitch. The character would manage to get the TV off but then when they looked around the room they found the animated character there with them. After discussing these ideas & almost deciding just to go with this one we instead decided one person from the group should refine the idea whilst we all worked on our own, which was without a doubt the best decision to make because after hearing all of the refined ideas this one is no longer the stand out idea as the others have progressed to a similar standard.

After thinking over my groups ideas late at night, whilst I was trying desperately to fall sleep, I began to think over what they were missing & how they could be improved. At the time, none of them really seemed to have any story line to it, just kind of a 'It'd be cool to have this setting'. So that's when I decided to plan out some dialogue to take my idea from an idea to a story. I quickly jotted down some ideas so I could work on them in the morning. Come to class time I'd already planned out my script and it was super easy to write & visualise.

I wanted to make it so the humans were invaders, they were somewhere they shouldn't be at a time they shouldn't be. In it's current form the UFO has crash landed right in the middle of a farmer's field ruining his seasons produce. I really liked this idea because it really made the handheld camera make sense. Without it the unseen character wouldn't be in the scene & that wouldn't provide us with the dialogue required to establish the scene. The dialogue is needed to add to the suspense & to lighten the mood making the final reveal somewhat comedic..

As far as feedback goes I haven't really received any negative criticism, although I know I will still need to change a lot to come up with a final script.
The feedback I received from the tutors was very positive as they both seemed to like the idea. The main thing I need to keep in mind is to make sure it fits into the time limit, making sure to utilise each and every second allocated & make the most of secondary actions (make sure something is happening whilst they are talking). But overall I'm really pleased with my script in it's current state & am looking forward to seeing what the rest of my group have come up with.