There are a slew of great comment threads and posts going on today, and instead of posting responses to all of them, I feel the urge to ramble here, and the word of the day for me is 'synchronicity'. "Plainly put, it is the experience of having two (or more) things happen simultaneously in a manner that is meaningful to the person or persons experiencing them, where that meaning suggests an underlying pattern. It differs from coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic that is being expressed through meaningful relationships or events." (Thanks
Jung, & Wikipedia) One of the things that I have come to rely on and love about blogging is the connection to a community (Scarlet Letters, Darkstrider, Halfland, and all the rest). I have so many seeds of posts in my brain that have yet to bloom, thoughts that come and go, weaving together a series of random ideas all tied to some deeper meaning that I cannot grasp or attempt to put into words...but occasionally a rant by a fellow blog brother or sister does just that. Which reinforces for me the notion that we are all connected not only by the physical process of creation of our respective worlds of artistry, but also by our thoughts and fears. The comment that rings most true to me today was made by Gretchin at the Scarlet Star Sudios blog: "One of the interesting dualities about blogging is that tension between casual conversation and archived expectation. i'd prefer it if the archives were viewed more as the archaeology of a project rather than a contract for it. that would allow uncertainty to be a valid component of the work and release a lot of fear about prematurely committing to an idea." Thanks for a great segue into a post that I was trying to organize for today...
I have been having an internal arguement about the story for the Jenny Greenteeth project, on the surface a simple element of character that has me stricken indecisive. As the story was conceived originally, the girl was an innocent, a victim of "wrong place at the wrong time", which has strong ties to what was happening in my life at the time. I think I've alluded to the outcome of the story, but let me just say it flat out right here. The little girl doesn't survive. This element of the story is non-negotiable for me. She is faced with an obstacle that is completely out of her league, spends the entire short trying to get out of its path, and ultimately fails. At the time, this seemed only natural. Horrible things happen to good people every day.
But as an artist, I began to feel a certain amount of guilt, the pangs I think of a responsibility that we all have as artists and filmmakers. As this girl's creator, the decider of her fate, I found myself attempting to make her demise easier to swallow. My first instinct was to make her a boy, because for some twisted reason I thought it might be less disturbing, more acceptable for a boy to die, but I've really planned to get a lot of expression out of those pigtails, especially in running or screaming mode, so I nixed this thought. Next natural progression for me was to make the girl bad. Not in an omen kind of way, just bad-natured. I ran with this idea, developed a whole opening sequence to set it up, which had me very excited as a storyteller, because there are some great additions to the story that I think would enrich it, add a little humor, but go against the original base concept of bad things/good people. Here's a breakdown of the story tweak...
Opening set-up shot, cave to cabin, all is quiet in the woods until we hear a crunch, a twig snapping, and again, getting louder. A tiny robot bursts from the forest. It is rolling speedily but clumsily, is missing an arm, and flashing red & shouting "HELPHELPHELP". It rolls out of view as the little girl bursts from the same spot in the underbrush, chasing the robot with a gleeful look in her eye. She stops, looks around curiously, never seen this place before. She walks over to the robot, now rolling in circles, still flashing and speaking "helphelphelp". She picks it up, looking at its back, where there is a piece of masking tape that says "Michael". We flash to a quick shot of the little girl snatching the robot from a crying boy with scuffed knees. Back to the edge of the forest and shoreline, she rips of the tape, and chucks the robot into the lake, where it sinks, hitting the bottom, and disturbing whatever lives in the cave.
In the earlier versions, she just sort of stumbles onto this lake, it has a much more magical, otherworldly feel to it, and is a little more mysterious because we don't know where this girl came from, why she is in the woods alone. Makes her almost a magical character herself.
So here I am, stuck in mid-movie-morph, a conceptual roadblock simmering in the back of my brain as I go now to do something more mind-numbing and physical, like continue to clean out my future workspace.
maybe I should call her version 1.5, since she is not that sturdy...tried to find epoxy putty at a few hardware stores this week with no luck, though its hard to find ANYTHING in a hardware store around here right now, with the rebuilding...so I got frustrated and used sculpey again for the bones, then latex buildup (she is a little bulky, a little 'Popeye' in the forearms :)...I got my completed set piece all ready for a walk test, and after two steps, her right foot broke AAARGH (the sculpey split and out flew the tie-down).....so I spent some time last night fixin' her up a bit (superglue always at hand) and I'm gonna have another go today and tomorrow, if she holds up (fingers crossed).....also realized it will be virtually impossible to animate a walk/run without a framegrabber, so these early tests will not be great, mostly just for me to get used to working with tie-downs...here is the tiny bit of footage I got so far, before the broken ankle...
