Premise Wiki Week 10
What if memories were like an ocean? // Yee Hui Wong
The story in Bullet Point
- He is under the sea.
- It is so dark that he could barely see.
- The only light source he has is the head spotlight he puts on.
- It’s so cold that he shivers.
- He touches objects that float in the sea and let go of them later.
- They turn into dust immediately.
- He wants to leave but he hasn’t found what he wants.
- The place the spotlight shines on is like touched by fire.
- They are warm.
- But after a short amount of time, they are back to the original state.
- He tries to look for what he wants in the seaweed, in the fishes, and in the bubbles.
- Out of a sudden, something hiding in a trash pile reflects the light.
- He is surprised and happy.
- He wants to go and get that object.
- The sea seems to disagree with him.
- The waves start.
- The fish stops him from moving forward.
- His spotlight is dying after being hit by a fish.
- The seaweed nearly strangles him.
- He inches forward.
- The whole world blacks out.
- The spotlight flashes, soft light is being emitted.
- The seaweed releases his hand.
- He grabs the object.
- It’s a family photo.
FOLIO DOCUMENTATION
This work examines the process of remembering the forgotten. By showing the character always searching for the one thing in the ocean but keep on touching other objects, I can show the mentality when human mind is trying to remember. We are often disturbed by other stuff that is happening and forget that we are trying to remember something. Moreover, I use trash piles in the ocean to describe the forgotten as human beings forget a lot in their life. Also, adding in the short moment of the headlight recovers and helps him in remembering, it shows that as long as we concentrate enough, we can remember. This project is based on a rather abstract idea and only the medium of animation can fulfill the requirement of providing an easier manipulated environment such as fire burning in an ocean.
The idea of remembering the forgotten or searching for memories is similar to the ‘Show Yourself’ scene in the work ‘Frozen 2’ (2019), which examines the idea of water has memories. A similar idea also exists in Inside Out(2015) where faded memories will eventually disappear in the Memory Dump inside a human body.
By reading ‘Brad Bird on Storyboarding’ by BradBird, I reevaluated my initial rough draft of my storyboarding. I changed a few compositions so that they have a more dramatic impact on the audience. I used a few up shots in the story to accentuates the location of the character and the distance between the character and the trash pile under the sea. I also thought a lot more about the direction of the character and sub-characters are heading in the animation and the meaning behind it. For example, there is a shot where the character is swimming with fish. They are travelling in the same direction, from left to right. When the character finds what he wants and is heading towards the trash pile, the fish becomes the obstacle and stops him from going. This time, the character is still travelling from left to right, the fish, however, is swimming from right to left.
Also, after receiving feedback from Kate, I decided to prolong the scene where the character is captured by the seaweed. I added a few more storyboards to show his struggle and his fail attempt of getting himself out of the seaweed. The additions are used to build up the climax. When the character struggles longer on screen, the audience will have more hope of him getting out, the bigger impact it will be when the character fails.
