PACKAGE TWO: Character & Storytelling Development
Updated: Jun 16, 2022
Scripting
Beginning with the story, I decided to summarise a storm of ideas I had in my head. I wrote down a total of eight, all of which a) were stories I really was interested to explore; and, b) knew would fit within my animation and storytelling capabilities.
The eight loglines were:
‘While solving their puzzle, twins find one piece missing and race to be the first to complete it.’
‘Two spies, one poor and another greedy, race to find a puzzle: mapping a billionaire’s fortune.’
‘Jamie focuses on a puzzle box as her best friend Anna defends her from her surroundings.’
‘A reckless stuntman with rocket skates and a quiet boy with a knack for puzzles collide.’
‘Priya, an exhausted student, lives her colourless world but finds a box which may repair it.’
‘Yao, an expert in bombs and riddles, has to solve a complicated box or his entire building explodes.’
‘When a puzzle box could mean losing their family, Alex is determined to solve it.’
‘Stuck on the surface of a giant puzzle box, Richard must solve its giant puzzles to return back.’
Although my interest had a wide range, I knew I had to choose one to greenlight. Two of these caught my attention: the reckless stuntman and a quiet boy (Logline 4) and the one about a girl and her colourless world (Logline 5.)
I felt a connection with the idea of juxtaposition and contrast to showcase the difference between two points. Whether that was character focused (Logline 4 with the two characters) or visually focused (Logline 5 with the monochromatic lens against colour).
I have created two scripts for each of these and decided to ultimately go with Logline 5 based on how the visual contrast would be far more effective than a narrative focused contrast. At the time of creating these loglines, I was experiencing emotional drainage so I believe it played a factor in which I preferred to explore. Below are the two scripts I wrote for Logline 4 and Logline 5.
Creating a Character Synopsis
Beginning with Priya, I was conflicted on which aspect of her to explore: the adventurous side as a troublemaker, or the bored and low-energy side of her to show the difference between her personality in the colour and in black and white. Due to this conflict, I have decided to move forward in exploring both ideas, and which I prefer in the execution: the high energy Priya or the low energy one.
In light of this I have made a character synopsis for both to clarify the Priyas in my mind and to make sure I will not deviate from these characters when progressing on my final piece.
Priya No. 1: “Priya is a troublesome young girl, finding herself easily bored and just as quickly to be in detention. Priya knows the ropes: stay quiet, wait till the overlord himself Teacher lets her leave, and she’s good as day. How is she supposed to sit in the stillness?! Her adventurous side brings many activities, much annoyance to Teacher. She knows she ought to keep it down, but where’s the fun in that?”
Priya No. 2: “Priya is a silent kid who has a severe lack of emotions. She travels to school every day with her routine. Not craving change and stuck in her ways, she loses track of time as every day is the exact same and without much rhyme or reason. In detention due to often daydreaming of what her life could be, Priya knows the rule: not a word, and she’s home free. At this rate, she’s never going to change.”
I find these two sides of Priya compelling and I am ultimately torn of which to choose. On one hand, Priya 1 could cause great visual conflict with her body language with high energy making Teacher taking the box at the end more impactful since she pivots her bold, adventurous movement to a more sad energy towards the end heightening the contrast. On the other hand, Priya 2 develops the tension in an appropriate way: going from her low energy in the establishing sequence, to heightening the energy, to climaxing and falling action returns to the initial low energy and melancholy.
Ultimately the story beats will not change, but rather the emotional beats as Priya has different responses when choosing either one, which would flip the narrative on its head.
Story Beats Sheet
Timing out the story, I decided to go with a largely tense story as is necessary for this melodrama. The short film would be a quite tense piece. The beginning 5 seconds which would establish the world as colourless and dull, and would then transition into Priya interacting and opening the box. The tension would rise as she solves the puzzle box and when she solves the last part of the puzzle box, the tension stagnates at that high point as she reaches for the glowing object.
Just as she reaches for the object, the tension shoots very quickly in a short amount of time as Teacher grabs the object in the glowing box since she’s making so much noise. Priya becomes sad as this happens and the tension falls from its climax, as the world loses colour.
Set Design Planning
When designing the classroom, I decided to base it off of a classroom familiar to myself: due to the lack of my understanding of schools in the country as an international student. To have a rough idea of how I would stage the classroom, I made a sketch of certain props necessary for the set.
I particularly enjoyed thinking of many small details in the classroom: where each student would sit, what each of them would be doing in that situation, and how they would spend time in detention. In the classroom, the desks would be wooden so it would have low value orange and brown hues to match that. Similarly, to add to the scenery and clarify the room, I added props to the teacher’s table to give the impression of a classroom. Certain smaller details would then become important to the set to further develop the room: fans, air conditioners, etc.
For prop design, I was inspired by a puzzle box shown by twincitiesgolf on YouTube called “Magic Money Box”. It was a relatively simple puzzle box and solvable answer; I experimented with different ways to enhance the puzzle box and complexify its solving in order to allow Priya more ways to open the box, leading to a larger amount of ways the orbs could fly out of it. It involved separating the two wood pieces on the top and twisting/rotating them.
Camera & Staging
As shown in Package 1, I did my own personal research when it came to camera and staging concepts. I focused on a variety of ideas and concepts, noting them down as I encountered them and seeing how I could polish the shots in my mind to apply to a variety of shot sizes and label the movements accordingly.
I was particularly interested in the arc camera movement. I thought it would be a very intriguing and unique way of showing the colours floating around the scene while Priya solves the puzzle box.
Thumbnail Storyboard
I began sketching certain shots out of order, since I had a clear image in my mind. By taking quick sketches, I was able to concentrate on the overall story and how I could convey it to the clearest extent. The issues that arose was my lack of proper drawing skills, especially for storyboarding. The images were clear to me, but not clear to the audience. This was my first mistake as I believed a story understood by the creator was enough when I was creating the thumbnails, but I was not taking my audience into consideration.
I did my thumbnails in my storyboarding book and another issue arose: my thumbnails in my book were far too small to draw properly or interpret properly. I struggled a fair bit drawing in each small panel, and would also become an issue in the later stages when I would present this to people for review as I attempted to put too much detail into a small panel.
Animatic (edit)
For the animatic, I took pictures of my thumbnails using CamScanner and imported the images into Premiere Pro. I adjusted the timing by counting out the beats of three: if I counted to three and the shot was still going, it would have enough time for the audience to visibly see the shot and process it. I did this because I often struggle with pacing, and in previous projects have often done good work yet failed to convey it properly because of the pacing.
Due to a lack of clear drawing skills and a lack of time in my schedule, I decided for one of my shots (the arc shot) I would use Maya and a 3D camera to rotate around the character as the orbs were spinning. I didn’t have the clearest idea of the orbs as of yet, so I took to Photoshop and drew spheres travelling around her to represent the orbs.
Upon receiving feedback, I found the audience I pitched to found it confusing without context but with the context became much clearer. This wasn’t good as a creative artist wanting to tell a story, but it was great as feedback to improve my ideas and clarify the story: if the audience wasn’t going to understand my work, who would the story then be for?
Colour & Lighting
For lighting, I knew there was going to be a very large window to the left of the students, so I planned on directional lighting. Skipping forward to when I was creating my 3D set, I found the directional lighting created far too many shadows, and I deduced a classroom would have general lighting as well from the ceiling and experimented between area and ambient lighting. I found the area lighting to not complement the scene well, so instead decided for ambient lighting.
Colour was an incredibly important aspect of my work since my story relied heavily on its presence and absence. When creating the assets, I duplicated the file: one file would be the object in black and white, while the other file would be the object in colour. I used a certain dark orange hue similar to the colour of wood to emphasise the tables in colour.
I decided on colouring the corkboard in the back of the room pink to emphasise another object with colour. The characters would have a grey colour lacking any saturation, and would have their typical amber colour when the world becomes colourful.
I considered rendering the whole sequence in Maya in colour and using editing in post production to remove all saturation in the sequence when necessary. However, since my film would require specific objects to be coloured and monochromatic at specific times, I would have to isolate the object and then colour it. Since I was more familiar with Maya and applying visibility, I decided on that instead of editing the colour in post.
Sound Design
For sound, I separated my work into types of sound: diegetic and nondiegetic.
Nondiegetic sounds were rather necessary for the film: a pencil scribbling, a finger tapping on a counter, and more. I explored a variety of royalty free sounds for the beginning and ending of the film, since both of those were necessary for the colourless/boredom part of the film to highlight the silence of the room as the colours (or lack thereof) shined.
For Diegetic sounds, I found two songs: “We Will Get It” from Mixhit, and “Sad Day'' from BenSound. I used “We Will Get It” for the duration Priya is in the process of solving the puzzle box. The music was mysterious, adventurous and evoked excitement from me so I found it to be extremely powerful for what I wanted to accomplish. “Sad Day” was a bit more complex as I planned to use it for the falling action as Priya looks sad as Teacher walks away with the object.
I cut between the silence and nondiegetic sounds to the music and back again the other way. The music swells as Priya reaches for the object, and abruptly cuts out when Teacher seizes the glowing object. I felt this added an auditory contrast to enhance the idea of Priya’s world against reality. The slow fade in of “Sad Day” towards the end highlights the contrast in emotions between adventuring with the puzzle box, the silence, and itself. This especially helped due to the lack of facial expressions on the character rigs I would lack to further the story.
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