Animated Narratives W12

W12 – Storybeats

1. A kid sees a glowing dove, runs after it, and gets separated from his/her parents. "Sparkly!" shouts the child.
2. Kid excitedly jumps and grabs the glowing dove’s feet. Location: narrow city lane/alleyway.
3. The dove takes off and flies to the sky with the kid.
4. The kid is excitedly looking at his/her reflection on the skyscraper’s window glass. The dove reflection on the glass shows a phoenix bird, bright gold in colour.
5. The dove and the kid are so high, that they are going through the clouds and arriving at an opening, revealing a grand palace surrounded by rocky mountains among the clouds.
6. The dove, now a golden phoenix, lands at the palace’s front yard and says, “I’ve brought the child, my lord.”
7. A tall figure with long white hair, almost transparent in a white and gold robe comes and picks up the child. He stares into the child's eyes for a while and says “My child… finally…” and then carries the child inside of the palace.
8. The child grows up in the palace, taught and fostered by the mysterious figure for 20 years.
9. (After 20 years) The figure, not growing old, speaks to the now-adult child in the palace’s front yard, “You are ready, my child. Go back to the earth and save her,” while blessing the child’s head with his hands, glowing with soft, white-yellowish light.
10. The child lifts up his/her head and sees the tall figure, nods politely and jumps at the back of the golden phoenix.
11. The phoenix takes off and flies into the clouds.

Annotation:

This work examines the idea of character, light, and movement. I am using light to show a magical and otherworldly element into the dove, as it glows brightly. The glowing dove is a golden phoenix disguised as a dove, but being a magical creature, a part of its magical characteristics stays, shown through the glow. To tell the audience the secret of the dove before showing a full revelation or to avoid sudden confusion about the dove-phoenix transformation, a glimpse of the true form of the dove is shown through the reflection on the skyscrapers. With the tall figure, his otherworldly-ness is shown through his size and his colours. His white hair is slightly reflecting light so it seems like it's glowing, and his all white and gold robe indicates a godly presence. The child, a human child, does not have any special characteristic that indicates him as special. However, the speech of the bird and the tall figure indicates that the child is different: the bird says “I’ve brought the child” and the tall figure’s “my child…” and also the gesture of the tall figure: staring into the child’s eyes indicating that there is something he can see that we the audience can’t.

During the flying scene, the camera will follow the subjects, creating a moving camera moving subject movement. This is to invite the audience to move along the characters, to be a part of the journey. If the camera is not moving and the audience sees the characters going further, it would feel as if the audience is left behind, spectating from afar, creating a distinction between the humans and the otherworldly characters. The latter would create an unreachable feeling.

This way the true form of the dove is revealed through its reflection is similar to a scene in the series Merlin (2008) where a disguised witch gained suspicion from a citizen after seeing a glimpse of the witch’s true self in a mirror. Not only that, in the series, glowing eyes of bright orange-yellowish light indicate that the person is harnessing magic. This way of showing otherworldly powers through light is shown similarly in my work.

Through this practice and the practices I’ve done before regarding light, I reflect that I should be exploring how to use light outside of being an element of character design. I should work more on how to use lighting within the environment to indicate mood, which characters are ‘in the dark' or vice versa. This enlightens me regarding what I should learn further so that in my future projects, I can better utilise the element of light.