STORYBOARDS

Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Toy Story/WALL-E) shares what he knows about storytelling.

Main points from his talk:

•  A story should start off with a well-told "promise", like a hook or sales pitch
• A story should give the audience the "2+2", not the "4"
• Change is fundamental; life is never static
• Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty
• Know your rules and know when to break them
• Strong unifying theme
• Sense of wonder

After watching the video we had a small discussion/critique on his way of storytelling. His ideas are very 'classic' and 'generic' but at the same time effective. I agreed with most of it, but it depends on your concept anyway, I don't think you'd follow his philosophy if you were doing an art house style film etc. and the thing to remember is he works for a HUGE institution - your motives are different. Hugo also mentioned some pointers for our own brief to make sure we cover the fundamentals. 
Check list:

1. Idea/purpose
2. Form (medium)
3. Structure (how to compose it)
4. Idiom (style)
5. Craft (how to create it)
6. Surface (polishing and appearance.

And a reminder of how the 3 narratives can be presented: 

• 3 different perspectives on the same story
• 3 genres/domains
• 3 set of actors /settings

Ah, there's a lot of things to think about. Have a ton of ideas just floating around in my head at the moment!

So for the second half of Hugo's session we got down to story boarding and discussed the purpose of them and how it differs from comics (basically 'finalised' pieces). The task was to watch the Citizen Kane (arguably the 'best' film ever - my media teacher suggested we watch it too - though apparently quite dull) clip twice, the first time whilst watching the clip try and storyboard to 6 scenes and the second time from just the audio thinking about camera shots/angles etc. 

Here's my first attempt. As Hugo broke down how he would of done it I was quite happy I managed to get some of suggestions/scenes/shots in the right order.

Here's my second attempt with just the audio. I did find this one slightly harder just because I've just seen the clip so it was hard to forget about all the characters/set up already in my head. I think I might of also focused to much on the characters too much as my shots don't really vary here.

This task was to storyboard James' narrative. It was actually a really fun task as you had to quickly come up with the most appropriate scenes that depicts a significant part.

For the afternoon, it was Thomas' session when we all presented our colour videos. It was really nice to see everyone's interpretations - some were literal to the abstract and we had a mix of genres of clips so it was interesting to see how colour was used to depict a mood/emotion/scene. 

I think Hugo's off for the next 2 weeks? But Thomas mentioned he'll be giving us all one-to-one tutorials next week which will be very useful to get some feedback on the direction we are all going. Better get cracking!