In the first week, we explored “What is a story.” I came up with the idea: “Our negative emotions latch on people like monsters. As the pressure grows, the monster enlarges.” I developed the concept and drew a storyboard based on this premise exercise. In the storyboard, I want to convey that our negative emotions will impact or hurt people around us when emotions are uncontrolled.
A similar work called“Wind” (https://youtu.be/_hDVd3-kR7A) by Robert Lobel (2013) grasped the inherent properties of wind and exaggerated this setting to create a gripping story. Another example is a short animation named “Fears” (https://youtu.be/w1sHAGAuceE) by Nata Metlukh(2015). In this story, the feeling of fear is represented by a small ball attached to the man, who tries relentlessly to get rid of it. But in the end, this little ball helps the man avoid danger.
I learned from these cases that we could get inspiration from many sources and create stories with some invisible objects or a sense of feelings. Plus, contents closely related to our daily life are more likely to resonate with our audience.
Bullet Treatment: Original Dot Points
- A man is working in the office. Files pile up on his desk, and he is surrounded by some floating black mist representing his negative emotions.
- Boss walks toward him, and much more black mist is also around his boss.
- Boss scolds him.
- The mist is floating around the boss, which starts to transfer to him. A giant monster arose behind him.
- He returns home, exhausted.
- All sorts of negative emotions took over his mind, and he yelled at his family.
- The monster started appearing on his family.
