Name: Rebecca Banks Module: Story and Script Module Code: 5DM044

Our objective was to focus on developing ideas and writing for screen, to undertake an in-depth study of story and screenplay and engage in visualising ideas for proposing a moving image project. Forest Fever, my story idea follows two close friends on a fantasy adventure together. I worked through building up my story, by developing my character profiles, expanding on the meaning behind the story, as well as designing visuals to help to show my vision to the audience. As well as applying the morals and themes I had in mind.Expanding on my story, it is a fantasy drama, set in 1998. It is based on my home town of Atherton, with additions of magic and fantasy running through it. Following a young girl chosen to become a protector of a magical land, by Theo her teddy and protector. He is a resident of the magical land she is destined to protect. Generally, stories of this nature are aimed at 7-12-year olds, children of this age have big imaginations, magic and fantasy draw them in to a new world to explore. It can also appeal to a wider audience for those who love escapism.

Influences for my story came from personal interests, some of the programmes that I am interested in, which include a theme running through them of friendship, family, and fantasy, a focus of my story idea. As well the influences from my own childhood, my home.

The child/bear friendship was influenced by my love of Winnie the Pooh ‘“Pooh, promise you won’t forget me, ever. Not Even when I’m a hundred” Pooh nodded. “I promise,” he said’ (Milne, A., 1958) [1]. In A.A Milnes case he uses the boy’s imagination in my case, I was drawn towards magic. The Magic inspiration came from Cardcaptor Sakura, a magical girl anime centred around a young girl. and the Magic Faraway Tree, a book centred around mystical creatures living in a tree, an opening at the top to take them to different lands. Finally, the location and idea of the forest was influenced by my childhood, there was a bamboo field behind my house, which I explored as a child and felt it was an appropriate spot for the original forest entrance.

The main characters are 10-year-old Penelope Davis and her beloved friend her teddy bear Theo. I wanted my characters to represent different meanings, Penelope represents adventure, the ability to have fun and the freeness of youth. Theo represents the non-reality of my idea, a bear coming to life. Finally, the forest (Lux Silvam) is set in a fictional world,

again representing the non-reality and the endless possibilities you can explore.

I wanted to portray a 90’s setting as children where about going out to play and where less concerned about technology as phones where not the big hype, children could also go out at 10+ for a few hours around the area without be overly bothered. When children where in fact children and where not trying to act like adults, they loved stuffed toys, outdoors and adventures, which are the themes within the story.The setting of Lux Silvam, is the bases of the fantasy of the story, the way I designed it, shows it does not depict reality, examples of this can be seen in the art visuals I created, showing: constant warm glow of light, fruit growing bushes, portal/transportation into the world, transformation the characters undertake, powers the characters have. Some of which in the image below -

It was important to me that the story had themes and morals running through it, the morals in this story are: ‘no matter how small/young you are you can be as strong as you want to be’, this is represented by my strong female lead, going against the male will save female persona.

‘Good always overcomes Evil’, if you are bad or cruel to someone else, eventually Karma will come back to bite you. An example of this would be when the Tenebris take the light magic, Penelope battles and defeats them and they are destroyed.Magic is a running theme throughout this story, magic can be represented in different ways, such as spoken spell, emitting light and fire. I wanted a light source to be emitted from something, in the case of the story I chose the characters hands. I didn’t want to focus heavily on spell casting and felt light beam visuals would portray this better.

Discussing the art style for my designs, from character design through to Concept Art pieces, I researched into art styles one of which was Whimsical Art. This style works well with the background designs of the forest and existence of Theo and the Tenebris, – “Whimsical art is characteristically (but not necessarily) bright, colorful, and fun. It is the art of childhood and innocence.” “basically, anything that the imagination can conjure.” (McArdle. T, 2002) [2] An Artist using this style is Alexander Jansson, his work can be seen in the image below -

(Shannon Associates LLC, 2012)[3]All the research and preparation I did, led onto my script and story structure and visuals. During the beginning of the module we investigated a variety of different scripts from both live action and animation. I learned a lot about the layout of a script particularly from ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them’. However, as we were tasked with writing for a short film, later in the process I looked up alternative scripts an example of which was an extract from ‘Shaun the Sheep’

(LA Times, 2015) [5]This helped a lot, as my script isn’t dialogue or visually heavy there is a good balance between both, using both Shaun the Sheep and Fantastic Beasts helped me with the structure and the use of language.I feel my script has a good setup leading the audience through with action, feeling and suspense. My script concludes with a revelation, I wanted it so that it would end well but also have the potential for more. Wells said - “In animation, visualisation is essentially a design-led concept and operates as an expression of thought, feeling and emotion in its own right” (Wells. P, 2007) [4] this paired with the animation matrix chart, shows how the visualisation is at the centre and is of great importance to the concept idea. That all the research, writing, planning and developing leads to the creation of the ending product.

I used the animation matrix and created a chart of my own, revolving around my project –

In conclusion, I was tasked to develop ideas and create visuals for a concept for screen. I feel I developed my story well using research, morals and themes to develop both my characters and then apply this to the script itself. By exploring different scripts wrote out in different ways, this gave me a great understanding of the structure and layout my script needed. The creative matrix helped me to understand the visualisations importance to my work, leading to my decisions on art style and the use of language throughout my script. To make it all come together in an understanding way.

References1) Milne, A., 1958. The World of Pooh. 1st ed. London: Methuen & Co.2) Thaneeya McArdle. 2002. Art-Is-Fun. [ONLINE] Available at:

https://www.art-is-fun.com/whimsical-art/. [Accessed 22 April 2018].3) Shannon Associates LLC. 2012. Alexander Jansson. [ONLINE] Available at:

http://www.shannonassociates.com/alexanderjansson. [Accessed 22 April 2018].4) Wells, P., 2007. Basics Animation 01 Scriptwriting. 1st Edition. Thames and Hudson, London:

AVA Publishing SA - http://files.animation.ir/video/BASICS-ANIMATION-Scriptwriting(animation.ir).pdf

5) LA Times, (2015), ‘Shaun the Sheep’: What a script with no dialogue looks like [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-shaun-the-sheep-script-with-no-dialogue-20150804-htmlstory.html [Accessed 1 May 2018].