A revision of my proposed script
as well as a step outline. The step outline felt surprisingly short compared to my actual script.
The guidelines on the Ucreative site suggest for each page to be representative of one minute of footage. While I have stepped slightly over this guideline I wonder if I have enough fluidity that I can fit it into one minute. If not I could always keep my intro brief, or perhaps splice it into an establishing panning shot of the plane's interior.
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteOkay - well, being very honest - I don't think you've got much of a story here; you've indeed got a chain of events, but it's not character driven, and somehow, the idea of both the marionette and balloon just being on the plane does seem as if your three components are remaining just that - three components.
The key to this is getting to grips with the goals and motivations of your marionette; a marionette is an object without its own agency/propulsion/destiny - a marionette might dream of greater freedoms; a marionette dream of slipping his/her bondage and escaping; alternatively, a marionette might equally prefer the idea of being controlled, its greatest fear being cast off, or cut loose.
Isn't it possible that your 'marionette' might in fact be a human character who we somehow see as being 'controlled' by forces/influences outside his or her control; might not we be introduced to a human character who, in a magic realism way, is shown as being controlled via strings - connected to responsibilities/commitments/dead weights etc. Might not your story - with its associated objects of balloons and planes - be a story about freedom and 'letting go'? It just seems to me that you're not thinking about your marionette in terms of its inner-life - and the lovely gift your three components have given you - which is the contrast between something chained and something free!
Other ways to inspire ideas; make the plane a 'paper plane' - thus giving your story a 'toy story' scale and remit; think about your marionette as a 'metaphor' (i.e. a character that isn't physically an actual puppet, but who feels/behaves/is controlled like one). Think about your helium balloon as a character - imagine a love story between a helium balloon that can't keep on the ground and marionette you can't get off of it - chalk and cheese.
What does your marionette want, Mark? That's the key to making your components combine satisfyingly!
I'm starting to really dislike my habit of thinking too literally.
DeleteOne of my early ideas was the marionette could be represenative of its owner, and that the story could reflect the owner's own struggle with feeling tied down to something like a relative or a lifestyle. The baloon being some form of freedom, a new life or a new location perhaps. And that the story would end with the owner arriving at an airport (either by car or by plane) ready to take on a new life.
I don't know how I ended up dropping this in favour of a more literal marionette character.