Stories

We are getting closer to making our Senior shorts but first, we need to choose the stories we want to do. In class, we listened to my classmate's stories that they came up with. There were in total eight stories including the one my team and I came up with. Here is the synopsis for every one of them:

The first story was the one my team and I came up with. I can't find the titles but the synopsis is one that you heard where the boy plays the detective trying to find his missing teddy bear with the help of his not-too-sentient stuffed rabbit. There's a style change to indicate the boy's imagination.

The second story is about a man who is an actor, battling his demons in his dreams. After defeating his demons he comes to realize that he is in his way and needs to fix himself after experiencing failure. In the end, he gains the confidence to try and audition again even though he didn't succeed.

The third story is about a woman who thinks she can see ghosts and the things they do. She questions her sanity and in the end, it's revealed that it was a real person, not a ghost. The woman kills the person and their ghosts haunt her. Fun fact, the person who told this story said this was based on a true event; this happened to their grandmother

The fourth story is about a man fighting in a boxing match using his mother's guidance to help with the match. It cuts to the man winning the match, with a trophy, standing in front of her grave thanking her for helping him.

The fifth story has a title and it's called A Swing and A Miss. It's about a woman who is being pressured by their family to get married when she doesn't want to, by a man at least. She hears and goes to a party for members of the LGBTQ+ community where she finds confidence thanks to a woman named Ethel. She gains the confidence to stand up to her family and find future partners.

The sixth story is about Basil a witch who meets Dorian a prince and fall in love in her witch crafting shop. They face hardships with being ambushed by witches and wizards and having to deal with Dorian almost dying. In the end, they overcome the obstacles and end up together.

The seventh story is about a woman who is an astronaut named Jade and her crew land on an unknown planet. They take samples to test back on Earth and when they are getting ready to go to the spaceship they realize that the planet is alive. They manage to outsmart the planet and get everything back to normal. However, this reminds Jade of her childhood which she has to deal with once again.

The last story is about a boy who comes across a drummer whom he admires. The drummer breaks their sticks out of frustration and sees that the boy mimicked them by breaking his pencils, which he used for drumsticks. The drummer realizes that they are a mentor for the boy and tries to set a better example as the boy fixes the drumsticks.

Next, after people told them the stories we came up with, we voted on which stories to present in front of all the DAC professors. All the stories were picked except for the championship story and the one about a man battling his demons. We got to choose which ones we wanted to develop the story and present it to the class. All the stories that were pitched were wonderful and amazing. It was hard to pick just one. My two options were the story about the witch named Basil and A Swing and A Miss.

ClARIFICATIONS:

For visual representation and visual understanding, I will present the concept art of the characters. I did not make these but I will only present for visual clarification:

STYLES:

We had meetings about the story and we were thinking about making the style have a 2d animated effect. We would want to have a 3d model with 2d effects and animation style. To have a visual effect of this think of Tiana's palace scene from The Princess or the Frog or with a better example Paperman.

These are 3d models but they look like a 2d animation. That's the art direction we wish to have with this project.

MUSIC/CONSTUME DESIGN:

We were inspired by this Pixar short named Us Again. it's about an old woman trying to cheer up her husband and get inspired to dance again. The twists are that there are no words and the emotion is carried through the music and dancing. This is a powerful and interesting method of storytelling and we thought it would be wonderful being portrayed through this story. Also we want the clothing and music to be reminiscent of its era; that being 1920s. The music is going to be some form of swing music and the women will wear flappers; the men will wear suits and other similar notions such as that.

GRAPH:

We did a graph for the story measuring the arcs of the characters. We measured and recorded Lesile- the main character's name, the musical's energy, and the family's pressure. We also labeled the main themes of the story at the bottom. The family doesn't appear much so there isn't much development on them. The pressure decreases when Lesile enters the club and doesn't come back up because she gains confidence. The musical energy is slow at the beginning because she lacks confidence, and becomes monotone or depressing because that's what Leslie feels. However, it takes back up when the plot comes into its rising action and dips again. This is because of her anxiety taking over; It picks back up again because Leisle feels good again. The music's energy can reflect Leislie's confidence because they represent similar things.

STORYSPINE:

Here is the storyspine for the story, highlighting the main themes of the story:

Once Upon a Time: There was a young girl who was being pressured to settle by her family 

Everyday: She yearned to escape her expectations and dance with women

Until One Day: She dares to sneak out to a swing dance party

Because of that: She took a risk and asked a girl to dance

Because of that: She got rejected and ran crying to the bathroom

Because of that: She met Ethel, an older queer, who teaches Leslie to lead

Until Finally: She has the confidence to ask other women to dance

And Ever Since: She can be herself and pursue a life of joy, despite the social consequences.

BEATBOARDS:

We all split up the beat boards for the story equally these are my parts ( I based these baseboards on different concept art than the ones shown above:

For this first beat board; Ethel- the woman that will help our protagonist gain confidence is supposed to be looking at a picture of herself when she was younger. She is reminiscing about her younger days

For this beat, Lesile, the protagonist is supposed to have come home full of happiness and confidence as she spent the night dancing with women. She is happy; happier than she was than ever before.

Here Leslie is confidently walking to her room, ignoring her parents screaming at her. Because of the speakeasy she went to, she has the confidence to not let her parents get to her and not let them weigh on her anymore.

Here Leslie is sleeping happily because of the night that she had. She is having sweet dreams of her night and cant wait for more nights like that to come. We discussed something else to add to this scene. One of the members wanted her to turn around while sleeping and it revealed a kiss on her neck from Ethel or another girl she danced with. I loved this idea.

If you're interested in more of the story that I didn't discuss, feel free to check out the presentation we made for the story. I did the best I could to present everything about the story but the presentation has more information than what was presented. It is currently unfinished and some things need to be fixed. The link is down below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d1pGVjdG5H-7U6uFSoo4DiuwUNk92MDScFm8pgXUFkM/edit#slide=id.g2a2c989606a_0_5028