Story: Once upon a time, there is a greedy god, who lives in the clouds. He likes to collect various novelty items. He uses a fishing rod to obtain these items. The god keeps collecting items regardless of the effect on the mortal world. He wants to collect more precious objects and creatures to enrich his showcases. One day, he sees a beautiful blue hexagonal star, then he realizes that he had never gained a star before, so he starts to prepare for the capture of the star. However, the star belongs to another, higher-ranking god, so the greedy god is hooked and thus becomes someone else's collector's item.
In this weekly class, we did a practice about making a conclusion premise to build up a story. I re-do the practice after class. This time, I used the bullet point to develop the story structure.
The story I made is about a greedy god who keeps collecting items regardless of the effect on the mortal world. Eventually, because of his greed, he ends up as a showpiece for the other. I interpreted the main idea of the story as Good will be rewarded with good while evil with evil. Through this practice, I understood the difference between story and plot. Changing the order of the plot allows the writer to decide how to tell a story to audiences, for example, I can put my premise as the first scene and then use the following scenes to explain how it becomes this ending.
The work that impresses me this week is Lost & Found, which is shown in class. It is a stop motion animation short film. It depicts a story about a string toy doing the sacrifices to save the other toy, who accidental drop into the water. The story idea is designed ingeniously, the string toy uses the string on its body to save his friend, in the meantime, he sacrifices his life, and this plot not only develops the story, but it also makes audiences empathize with emotion.
Premise: The fisherman packed his gear and looked at today's harvest with satisfaction, an island, a kingdom, and a dragon.
Bullet point:
Reflective Text
This work explores the concept of reality and hierarchy of knowledge. In the main character’s reality she is the one losing her Airpods, however they really have minds of their own.
By depicting my work in a storyboard I was able to begin visualising the layout of my narrative, as well as the key scenes. This storyboard was very much an overview and I will need to create a more detailed one moving forward. The storyboard also helped me explore the hierarchy of knowledge by asking these questions: when do we, the viewers, know that the Airpods are running away and not simply lost? When does the main character find out, if ever?
This work is similar to the work Slim Pickings (1998) by Anthony Lucas. This claymation short film explores the idea of a pot plant coming to life and a man befriending it. The man is starving and has to make the choice whether or not to eat his friend. Both of our works explore the concept of bringing to life items that do not have personalities or motivations. Lucas also explores hierarchy of knowledge, as the man does not realise the plant has produced food for him, however the viewer is aware from the beginning.
By examining the idea of hierarchy of knowledge, I reflected that the element of surprise should be a key concept in my work. The viewer should believe that the owner of the Airpods is simply misplacing them, however will then be surprised when the Airpods come to life and run off.
Lucas, A 1998, Slim Pickings, 13 September 2020, viewed March 12 2022, <https://vimeo.com/457389410>.