Fields & Frames #3: Idea Development

I knew my main issue with this project would be coming up with the narrative so this had to be something I needed to tackle first. I know I initially said I didn't want to focus too much on this but in order to continue, I need some solid grounds and ideas to work and build upon. 

1-1 Tutorial Notes:

- decided to go with stop motion animation

- explore more experimental filmmakers

- develop the narrative more: could the character be merging from luscious, utopian land to a dystopian nightmare filled with electronic waste? 

- Possibly add other materials such as old circuit boards and wires?  (could be found on FB market page) Could the character be? in a state of limbo trying to figure out who he is, hence the morphing transitions?

 

Narrative ideas:

1) Create a series of short animations, almost gif like that explores a character

2) Utopian to dystopian land delving into electronic dumpage 

3) Not have a clear narrative and focus on technique

Initially, I was drawn to the idea of using different materials like wires and a circuit board as I could add a 3D element to the piece. However, I decided against it as I felt I was adding lots of different aspects to the piece before even knowing what it was going to be about. Furthermore, using these materials didn't suit the look I was going for in this project. 

I had a look at Donwood's 'Bad Island' again and I was really drawn to the idea of how he looked at the bigger picture, creating an allegory of humanity. Because this is a rather big story, I liked how he was able to summarise it to key elements and depict it through prints. Despite all the ideas that I came up with from my little group tutorial with Ellie and Vicky and 1-1 with Jeremiah, I wasn't drawn to any of the main ideas. I feel as if I would be just making it for the sake of making it. However, I was more drawn to the idea of not having a massive made-up narrative and focusing more on the process of making, as this is what interests me. I want to create something that reflects the reality that people can relate to and look back on. 

I decided to focus more on the morphing/transitional aspect. Again, looking back at my initial research, the main theme going through all the artist's works was that it was all pretty abstract and this is the route I want to go down and explore. Again in reference to Donwood, I thought it would be interesting to explore humanity and life. However, I didn't want to replicate his works, but to create my own with reference to the recent events, especially in the past 2 years. I didn't want to make something up for no reason, I needed to make something with a purpose. I think it is important to reflect on the tumultuous events that we face and how they have affected us and how they will carry on affecting us. I think it is something that should be documented and interpreted in as many ways as possible too. Even though a lot has happened, there were moments where glimmers of light shone through.

- Australian forest fires

- Brexit officially happening

- the shootings in America that struck a chord in The Black Lives Matters movement

- Covid-19

- U.S. drone strikes 

- the stock market crashing 

- locust swarms 

- Weinstein finally being convicted of his sex crimes

- Beirut explosions

- conflict between Palestine and Israel 

I did some research of the events and created a little board of articles and images I could find on them I wasn't able to fit it all on here but got as much as I could:

I also found a Twitter thread that had a series of real images from 2020 and it very closely resembled a thriller or apocalyptic horror. The thread really reminded me of the 2006 sci-fi thriller 'Children of Men', directed by Alfonso Cuaron. 

Thread:

Children of Men Scenes:

Because 2020 was nothing like what our generation and past generation has ever been through it seemed very close to a dystopian novel, something so incredibly unreal was happening and we were living through it. Although different people were affected differently, in the end, we were all affected. 

Evan M. Cohen

http://www.evanmcohen.com/animation-1

https://www.instagram.com/evanmcohen/

I've been following the artist Evan M. Cohen on Instagram for a while and came across his work again on my feed and found it was a perfect reference for my work. Because I am approaching it as more of a concept idea and production pack I want to focus o the storyboard a lot more. 

Cohen's work is mostly illustrative but also engages in animated gifs too. I really love looking through his storyboard/ comic work as it each step is beautifully broken down. They are often abstract and use a lot of the same colour palettes and characters. They are his main form of art and they also use a similar style that I am going after, bold basic shapes but with patterns. His is more colour focused whereas I plan to use mainly black and white. 

For my storyboards, I want to have similar detail of drawings (but will probably have a lot of writing and notes alongside).

Donwood

As my project follows the route idea of Donwood's 'Bad Island' but for real life.  He has a very pessimistic take on mankind as throughout the book he explores the beauty of man's creation but then quickly shows the deterioration they cause to the island. It ends in the human-like characters bombing the island to absolutely nothing. I want my piece to be brutally honest as to the events which happened and some sections may become quite dark, but some of the thing which did happen wasn't exactly the most light-hearted of events.

There were many more events that happened and I know I won't be able to completely explore each one but I want to mention each one as I can't brush off the importance of them. I know it is not something I can quickly summarise and that is not what I plan to do. However, I want to show all the things that happened back to back because when you do so, it becomes more apparent how unreal and crazy it all sounds that all of this happened within such a short space of time. I want to display little aspects of each event within my potential piece and show everything we have faced even if it is not directly recognised. Because this is a lot and I have 2 weeks left to achieve this, I don't want to rush it. So my plan is to create a production pack for my animation and at least have a go animating some sections of it, even if this means only doing short sections and not having the fully developed video. However, this is something I want to continue to develop even if I don't finish the animation itself in time for the deadline.

My next step is to create a storyboard that explores these events so I have a clear documented idea of what I hope to create. I want to focus on the morphing element to so I also need to focus on how each section will transition to the next. I have written out the events I want to mention and depict (but not super obvious). I want these events to merge in and out of the frame seamlessly as I feel like this reflects how they happened; one after each other and like it's never-ending. I think it's important to have things reappear too. This would be relevant for BLM as the horrors that happened in both the USA and UK were continuous and have always been and sadly still is. I also think I want it to end with an unfinished and unsettling feeling because this is how people feel now. Because things have changed so drastically and it's almost impossible to predict how every event will turn out and whether it would be resolved. 

I began the story with just the marbled background flicking through and I plan to animate the title in this sequence. Throughout the animation, I aim to have the background still flicking through the marbled backdrop. A little head then appears from an overhead view with water ripples animated too. I then change what angle we are viewing the character from an overhead to a mid-shot of him/her in the water. This will also be achieved by having the marbled water slowly move down leaving a blank space as depicted on the first page of the storyboard. The character then goes on to wade through the water (marbled ink) and lily pads, a single flower bulb floats towards the character and they pick it up with their hands. The shot changes to a POV of the character picking it up. As they do this the bulb opens up and their hands morph with the flowing and become one with it. This section of the animation represents the normality and growth in life before 2020. When the character touches the flower it represents the effect humanity has on the luscious planet. We initially helped it bloomed and shortly lived in unity with the planet. However, we begin to see the negative toll they have on each other and on the planet. 

We then see buildings bloom and grow out of the flower and in the next shot, grows more and more upwards. Eventually the in the shot we pan down from the buildings and get on to a wide street-view revealing a scene representing the horrific event of George Floyd. Here I want to as some colour, only blue and red flashing from the siren of the police car to highlight their alarming presence and the nasty effects they had. I recognise that George Floyd was not the first black man to be wrongfully murdered by the hands of cops and the law, that of the US or UK, or anywhere else for that matter. However, His death sparked a flare and an uproar across the world. I tried to depict this by morphing the windows of the building into people of all colours which will float down. Because of social media and the widespread of content, people all over the world were able to see this through the window that is their phones. The people will float down from the buildings to form a protesting crowd with banners. As this happens, The buildings will morph into the road. In the next scene, we see the protesting crowd marching towards a crowd of blues with shields and batons. We then see the lives of the black individuals rise up into ghost-like figures which flow across the screens. These individuals represent the countless lives that were lost  and the names that should never be forgotten:

The ghostly individuals will then morph into the American flag, again highlighting they died by the heads of the state, country, and law. In this particular case for George Floyd, it was the USA. The flag will then rip in half and be pulled apart from either side of the screen. The rips will form the silhouette of Donald Trump's face to signify his second impeachment. As his face disappears, a little speckle will grow in the middle of the screen which will form what looks like the Coronavirus, and more and more will appear and bounce around the screen. This reflects the increase of covid cases. 

In the next section, a mask will fall from the top of the screen and land on to the virus strand and it will wrap itself around the virus stifling it. The mask will then spin around to unfold the character from the beginning who we see is quarantined in their flat along with the rest of their building as the images are zoomed out. The further it zooms out, we see in the background that there are many factories releasing heavy pollution which represents a human impact on global warming. We are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and farming livestock. This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming which is what I am trying to represent in this section.

After this, the drawings will be zoomed in past the factories to reveal two cities that are at war and are bombing each other. This section represents the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel which is a prominent issue now more than ever. We see a major bombing and a massive explosion which also represents the explosion in Beirut damaging ports and warehouses costing Beirut a loss of £8-11 Billion and resulting in 154 deaths and over 5000 wounded. 

In the animation, I want to have some rubble and papers falling down from the explosion and in this, we see some papers float past revealing information such as the loss of money through graphs and symbols, the pandemic death toll, and the locust swarms that ruined crops across India and East Africa. 

After this section, I got a little bit stuck as I ticked off all the boxes of events that I wanted to include and had caught up to date with everything. I realised that I was pretty stuck with how to end it. This was because there is not really an ending to reality and we are still going. It is all pretty unpredictable and right now it sort of feels like limbo; like I am waiting for the next thing to happen, this could be good or bad but just very unpredictable. I began to think about where we were right now and how things were going. And I know for myself I am always looking down at my phone seeing BBC 'Breaking News' pop up on my screen so I feel like it was relevant to have the newspaper with lots of headlines float down back on the character from the beginning. I chose to have a similar scene from the start as a year and more on we still face issues od coronavirus, but we have learned to adapt and wear our masks. 

Despite the story being very dark at some points, I believe it is important to stay true to to reality as many faced dark times. By collecting only some of these events and compiling it in to one video, it truly allows you to take a step back and realise how much has happened in such a short space of time. It also puts into perspective how destructive humans can be to the planet and to each other.

After I finished the storyboard, I went back and added extra detail with a different coloured pen to let me know which direction things are moving and to write extra important notes about the animation and its purpose of why I did certain things. If these events hadn't actually happened, and you looked at this storyboard, it just looks like an absurd apocalyptic mess.