Premise Wiki Week 4
A dandelion longs to belong in one piece in one place.
ANIMATED SHORT FILM TREATMENT
TITLE
The Dandelion
THE LOGLINE
A dandelion tries to find a place he belongs to.
THE OVERVIEW
‘The Dandelion’ is a short animated film that aims to represent the theme of ‘home is where the heart is’. The audience will be able to watch the journey of the protagonist, the Dandelion, and the places to visit to find his dream place.
THE EXPLANATION
This animated short film will be created in a visually appealing style that shows no harmful or intimidating content to its audience. To engage the audience further, the dandelion will be designed with a pair of small and round bean eyes and a mouth to give it human-related features. In this animated short film, he is the metaphor for those who are brave enough to step outside of their original base and move around to find their dream place, no matter how much damage they might receive in the in-between.
SUMMARY (THE STORY)
The dandelion is alone. He lives in a desert. Flying is painful for him. Every time he files, he is met by harsh sand and a rough landing. He never enjoys flying and the process of being separated and reunited again and again, especially when he has to clean himself every time after flying.
One day he just starts moving.
He moves to a place without wind and sand. It’s in a deep deep forest. But there is no sunlight. He travels into the city area, living in a long and narrow alley. There is the wind, but it’s cold. He even moves indoors once, sticking on someone’s tracksuit and getting in. But he is scared by the kitten they own. He is getting more tired day by day and his body bows more and more.
He is on his move again when he sees a bunch of dandelion travels together in the countryside. The bunch of dandelions is resting near him. That’s the first time he ever sees so many dandelions together. He misses the lightweight feeling of flying. He tries to jump but fails. Another dandelion sees him and reaches out to him. They connect hand and jumps together again. This time, at the leading of the other dandelion, he loses all the burden for the past month and flies up high. The bunch of dandelion jumps with him as well.
They smile in the air.
FOLIO DOCUMENTATION
This work examines the idea of home is where the heart is. By using the medium of animation, I am able to animate the journey of a dandelion, which is something hard to do by doing a live-action recording. In this animated short film, the dandelion needs to travel to different types of places, hence, it’s better to use the animation medium to cut down the budget as well.
This idea of the work is similar to the short animated film ‘One Day’ that is released in 2012, which talks about a man and his house that changes location on a daily basis. A similar idea also exists in ‘Avocado Man’ that is created by Blue Zoo in 2017.
By reading ‘The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers’ written by Christopher Vogler, I reflected that the idea of having characters that have its own position, even though transferrable, is important in a film. Thinking through this, I decided to implement the hero, shadow and mentor character positions into my creating process. Also, by learning the ‘discussions of place’ in CPS this week, I want to create an animation that the environment plays a huge part in. Therefore, in this animated film, the protagonist (the hero) is the dandelion that lives in a desert, the antagonist (the shadow) is the environment, and the mentor is the other bunch of dandelions.
