LOG LINE
Don a
muscle gorilla from Coventry escapes out of his enclosure to confront
his keeper Briggy Only to find BRIGGY dead and buried .Angry and disturbed
he reaches his hand to pay his
respects and suddenly gets struck by a lighting bolt metarmophing him into a hologram .Don gets catapulted through a black
hole into an an alien galaxy where he joins Briggy as they adjust to their new planet.
SYNOPSIS
Gorilatopus is a story that has thematic spine of captivity, freedom, after life and mystery. This story will be told in a three act linear narrative structure in a traditional style narrative with added visual effects. This is a story of a gorilla called Don who finds himself right in the middle of a human world kept in an enclosure by an old man named Briggy.A chain of events will proceed where Don will find his keeper Briggy dead and buried. With added mystery Both Don and Briggy gets turned into a holograms. This is a story set in the modern real world and will transcend into the futuristic surreal alien like planet where Don and Briggy will continue their lives as holograms. The story will have limited dialogue and will be made into a stop motion film of roughly three minutes. This choice is entirely based on the fact I found stop motion animation quicker to deliver a convincing film form as in comparison to computer graphics.
TREATMENT
Don as a character represents what captivity, isolation, anger and death is all about. The demeanor he exudes in the Marquette and drawings of him evidences this. Don displays anger and aggression in various poses, his teeth bearing and a puffed chest does prove none the less. The broken chain Don holds displays the newly found freedom, and contradictory the tag that is still stuck around his neck shows his continued subordination to Briggy. This makes Don a complex character that will likely draw in empathy from the audience. The scene setting in Don's world depicts mountain backdrops with distant glint of lights to shows how isolated Don is from the human world.
These backdrops also symbolises the distant frosty like relationship humans have with animals. Don does not represent the archetypal gorilla like the one in king Kong or an ape like one in the Planet of the apes. His looks borders between a human, a horse and a dog. All this is in line with the fact that I wanted to create a mysterious creature with different attributes, strength and powers; hence I came up with the whole idea of creating a morphed creature called Gorilatopus. This story will be a fast paced one and to achieve that I will use a panning shot to introduce Don into the scene and then quickly resolve to a mid shot of him looking menacingly towards Briggy’s house. Also a Dutch angle shot will be used on Don as he approaches Brigg’s newly erected tomb. The reason being that it will tell the audience of something mysterious which is about to happen.
This film will use diegetic and non-diegetic sound. In Gorilatopus I will employ cricket sound scores to introduces the beginning of the scene setting thereby bringing in an element of a normality to the world the story is set in. The gorilla chest pounding sound score will be used to signify desperation and anger. These sound scores will be seamlessly edited in Adobe premier software to help in pushing the narrative forward. I have used mise -en - scene in my set design in the form trees, general litter, fallen leaves, a flowing river to help the audience visualise the mood of the scene.
Symbolically, the flowing river juxtaposed to a derelict house, a grave and a broken down car will throw in a message of an uncaring harsh world Don finds himself in. This message will be relayed more with the scene I plan to shoot where Don will hesitate to cross the river. The river crossing in itself signifies the midpoint of the narrative and the source of a new beginning in Don's life. I will employ different scene lighting to set the scene up. At the start of the scene I will use some warm colour tones. As Don display his anger and aggression, I will change the scene setting to bluish harsh tones to signify an element of uncertainty and frustration. At the point when Don reaches Briggy’s tomb I will use dark reddish, aggressive tones to show that Don has reached a point of no return. This will be made possible with the use of LED lighting.
There will be a close shot of Don touching the grave and getting struck by lightning and morphed into a hologram. This is all done to aid logic in the story's character change. This change in scene setting from the real world to some alien like planet made me thought of bringing the idea of trying out holograms and animatronics. This sudden jump in Don's appearance to a hologram was in line with creating some story logic in line with the scene setting. Aesthetically this film seeks to ask a simple question: where do all the creatures go when they die. And is there another world out there? I will create the holograms practically using a projector, a steamer and light. This is all down to my personal choice and having tried the computer graphic holograms. I found out that the effects of the sells better in the practical ones. This film will be a seamless one edited in photo shop and after effects because I have found these two programs handy when it comes to colour grading and adding visual effects.
THE SCRIPT
CRITICAL EVALUATION
LEARNING OUTCOMES-Production
If I could start right from the beginning of the whole
film idea. I could say, I wanted to create something that shows an element of versatility.
As a joint honours student most of the screen writing I tend to do is all about
coming up with ideas, stories and turn them into a screen plays, so coming up
with the idea of a gorilla morphing into a hologram was something that
interested me very much. With this excerpt from our Tutor I found myself immersed
into this idea of creating a morphed creature.
I have adopted a realist
narrative approach and fused it with some visual effects to add some mystery
to create some surrealistic film. I wanted to tell a story that has
a beginning at the end of the narrative. In don’s quest, I wanted to make Don
the embodiment of all primates and pets who find themselves abused and
used by humans. The whole idea of the story is to ask
the simple question. Where do all the creatures go when they die?
By doing so, my intention is to somehow question the logic of life, death,
heaven and religion.
I
could have gone for a simple realistic story where Don finds out that his owner is dead and he has to fend for himself
and finds his feet but I
Lighting
This is one area I have never
paid attention to, maybe the reason being that I never got a chance to get my
hands on it own due to the fact that the few projects we been working on I was
mainly assigned to the theory part of staff. Lighting plays a very key part in the
story telling. In relation to my story, I want to set a night scene to bring in a dramatic element to the story. It was
easy to manipulate light by switching on and off different lights during nighttime
shooting as in comparison to daytime. Also as I was working on the
setting, I started experimenting with LED lights and to my surprise I
manage to come up with different colour tones that aided the
narrative.During the production part of the film I will pay attention to the below aspects.
Editing
This is an area I seem
to enjoy working on, Having worked with Photoshop and after effects and having seen
how good these software’s are good at colour grading and bringing in good
cinematic effects.It sort of pushed me to come up with an idea of
a stop motion film with a bit of animatronics and visual effects. The editing
will be done in after effects. I will bring in act one and two’s footage
and marry it with the third act. Certain scenes like the one Don descends
through a black hole were decided on the basis that a lot of editing was going
to be done in postproduction.
Sound
Sound does play a crucial
part in this film’s narrative. This story will rely heavily on
sound effects to push narrative. The film will be fast and the narrative will
be centred mainly on Don the main character who is angry aggressive and wants
a quick solution to his problem. I intend to use sound scores of a gorilla
wailing and chest thumping. Also to add mystery to the narrative I will use
alien like, weird sounds as the story moves into the third act.
Story Narrative.
The theme behind this story is one of captivity,and redemption.In nutshell the whole process
will start from when Don appears on the scene free from his enclosure, walks to
his owner's house.Don will touches his owner's tomb, gets struck by a lightning bolt, and descends
into an alien like planet . In the end he will hovers around as an octopus like creature in the
company of owner (BRIGGY).
The filming
Act one and two will be done in stop motion and act three will be created using the method I have explained below.
b) I will be recording this
and take the recording on to a projector
c) I will position the camera
on 45-degree angle focusing on the projected image on the projector.
d) Will have a blue led light
striking the playing image on a 45-degree angle
e] A steamer’s hose will be positioned right below the playing footage turned on at the
same time
This will be all recorded
in time and in sync, the below is the setting of the hologram creation.
How would Don descend into
the alien planet?
a) I will video reverse some
of leaves falling footage I have recorded earlier to bring in mystery before
the sudden chain of events.
b) Will create a
lightning bolt in after effects.
a) Have already created cylinder
cardboard tubing, painted it with glitter and acrylics
b) Will connect a rig like
pulley system and stop motion animate Don sliding through the tubing descending
into the black hole.
In the final act of the
story I will be using front screen projection whereby I will pre- record the
alien planet I have created, bring in the footage of the hologram and fuse the
two together to create one seamless footage.
AESTHETICS-Influences,
Theme, Logic, Background and character research
The idea of Gorillatopus
came about after revisiting some of the old films I watched growing up which are Dawn of the
Apes, King Kong, American werewolf in London, king Kong, and Planet of the apes
and SharkTopus.These films gave me an insight into how people and
animals can metamorphose into powerful creatures that threatens to destroy
other living species and the world they live in.
Referring to Dawn of the
Apes and King Kong film. I wanted to create a character that deviates from the
archetypal gorilla or ape like creature as in these two films .A brief look
onto my character designs shows Don as a creature with physical features that
that mirrors that of a gorilla, horse and a dog. This was all in done to create
to mystery. Moving on, when I looked at the film Shark opus, it sort of gave me
another dimension to my story. I thought of turning Don into a hologram that
will have tentacles like that of octopuses. Also as an immortal creature like jellyfish.
This is also in line with the alien like planet where the story's third act will
take place.
As I was deciding on the story setting, I
have referred to pictures of the rain forest in Congo, farmyards, deserts
volcanic eruption sites in Italy and Congo. I also researched on the black
holes, galaxy like planets. This led me to a Disney Junior's Children program
called Miles from Tomorrow land where characters gets bolted into space. Also
the Star Wars film proved valuable when it came to the broad visual effects employed in it.
Some of
the artists’ work that gave me the impetus of creating
this kind of film are Eric Leaser and Anna Maria Nicholson and their work can be
found on these links you tube links https://youtu.be/4wdQZlh4tVY https://youtu.be/Z5xGYOK5wgUb
respectively.Another source of reference when it
comes to how holograms are used is the Jam and the Holograms [1885)
cartoon, where we see Jem being transformed from an ordinary girl
into a computer named synergy as can be accessed on this
link https://youtube/BWrmVEK43NQ .It is this visual trickery that influenced me in trying some I have never done
before using the physics of light and sound.
Also the colour theory exercises I did in my second year did help me in understanding the meaning of colour to the audience. Technically I feel I have developed in terms of being able to use different animation and editing softwares.However ,when it came to presenting my blog I got let down by the blogger website in the sense some of my video clips don't show up or appeared haphazardly and text in some of the blog pages resolved either smaller or bigger.
PERSONAL STATEMENT AND
THE FUTURE
I do see myself as
an abstract, surrealist film/animator and do intent to dig
into my cultural background, my screen writing knowledge and infuse in some visual effects such as
pepper’s ghost effect, Schuftan effects holograms and try to create
interesting content.Another option will be working as either as a colourist or set designer. From now onwards I would like to make
a short trailer of this film that will probably act as a calling card at film festivals
such as the Czech’s Anima Fest Zagreb or to garner funding from Creative England.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Holocenter on http://holocenter.org/projects/portraits-in-laser-light.
Portraits in Laser light
https://youtu.be/Z5xGYOK5wgU.
Jem and the
Hologram(1985) animation film accessed on https://youtu.be/BWrmVEK43NQ.
Introduction to
Holography article by Thomas G Smith published 1972.
Planet of the Apes film
on https://youtu.be/JDbwEQG2cqI.
Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes film on https://youtu.be/3sHMCRaS3ao.
King Kong film
on https://youtu.be/ZYZsJYZVt5g.
Colour Theory at https://sites.google.com/site/anim2003sm/week-6
Colour Theory at https://sites.google.com/site/anim2003sm/week-6
