Monday, 12th March
This week we brainstormed our short film, and did some brief storyboards to illustrate our ideas. We all pretty much agreed to go for a comedy tone. Most of our inspiration was from youtube channels doing extremely short animated comedy skits, like OneyNG and PsychicPebbles. We agreed that they nailed the style we were going for, which was very quick set ups with a simple, punchy joke. This was our inspiration because the time limit of 20-30 seconds on our shorts means it's pretty impossible to do anything more complicated.
To start, we just decided to come up with random joke ideas. This didn't pan out though, since a lot of our jokes relied on convoluted puns, and weren't very funny. I think the problem was that comedy is based on making remarks about the real world, and making absurd observations about it. When we're just trying to "come up with a joke", it's hard not to default to simple comedy.
So I did some research on Jokes and creating jokes, and most of them agreed that comedy usually comes to people when they're thinking about something else. While making jokes is natural when in a conversation, it's really difficult to just create one with no basis. I also found that comedy usually only works when the audience isn't expecting the punchline. That punch needs to come at the end of the sentence for emphasis. At it's core, comedy is a reversal of expectations about a scenario, or an exaggeration of the situation.
A few days later, I talked with Emmet about the project, and, since we didn't have great ideas, we decided to choose a setting, and then to make jokes based off of that. since he was watching the YouTube channel Primitive Tools, we decided to set it in the woods. Our main character was then, naturally, a hunter. Me and Emmet came up with a few ideas.
My idea was to set a really intense mood, with a hunter aiming out of a bunker, preparing to shoot an animal. The gun goes off, and it's revealed he's shooting at a target at a sports competition.
Emmet's idea was to have a similar set up but not showing where the shooter is. We'd see the hunter preparing the gun, and then firing through the scope. The shot would pan out, and the reveal is that he's at a carnival.
Piers' idea was to have the set-up of the forest and the hunter, and when the trigger is pulled, the scene transforms into a child play-hunting with stuffed animals.
Emmet had come up with a second idea, and that was for the reveal to be that the human is actually the prey, and that deer are the hunters. when the trigger is pulled, the human goes down, and a deer with a gun is revealed. Ronan liked this idea, and expanded on it a bit.
That brings us to today. We came up with the storyboards seen above, and talked amongst ourselves about what to pick. I actually preferred the other ideas over the idea we actually went with. The majority decided to go with the reveal of the deer being the hunter, so we decided to go with that.
The final year's gave us a bit of advice, but overall they seemed to approve. They even suggested a few scenes from other movies as reference, like Jurassic Park.
Overall I think we've made decent progress, and that our idea is coming together. In terms of details, though, we're clashing a lot. I don't think we all have the same vision for the project, and since Ronan's idea hasn't been storyboarded, it'll take a while to iron out these problems. However, the deadline has been pushed back, so hopefully we'll be able to figure this stuff out.
I'm a bit disappointed with the prospects of the week. At the moment, we've agreed to all do a full storyboard by Friday afternoon, when we'll meet and combine the storyboards. I expect this to be a difficult meeting, since we still don't agree in a lot of ways. The other group members are all working a lot more on the Floating City, so we can't meet up much until that's done on Thursday.
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