Animated Narratives - Week Eleven

My response for week eleven of Animated Narratives

In this week of Animated Narratives we a pitch for our narrative concept. Describing the medium and style of the project, who the characters are, what do they want, where is the story taking place, what obstacles the characters face, what will the character do to achieve their goals, what happens to bring a resolution to the conflict, and what do the character’s gain or lose?

Throughout this process I found myself being pulled in two directions. Am I pitching my idea in its two-minute short film form, or am I pitching the idea as a full television series? In the end, the answer becomes ‘both’ as even if I were to pitch the two-minute short film, that short is designed as a small view into this larger world. The story for the short isn’t nicely bookended; it leaves questions unanswered. The short throws an audience into the world without explaining who the characters are, what they’re doing, or why things work the way they do.

As I was writing out my pitch in class I found myself being overwhelmed by these details. A pitch should be brief and catchy, every word should be used effectively, and it should grab the attention of whoever you are talking to. What I had written was a dense paragraph trying to connect multiple tangents. I was panicking that I didn’t have a simple single sentence tagline to summarise my story.

• My project is a 2D animated short film, with a narrative and character focus. It is a television series that could be suited for Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or Disney that is looking to engage with a teenage audience.
  The setting is a mix of contemporary and fantasy styles. It is set in a modern-day world where magic and monsters exist and are a part of the usual everyday life.
  In this world there are Guardians, people tasked with stopping large, angry monsters from rampaging and destroying everything.
  The main character is Molly, she is in her late-teens/early-twenties (This changes depending on who I’d be pitching to), and she is an apprentice to one of these guardians. As such, she is tasked with dealing with the smaller monsters that are being a nuisance.
  There is a connection between the magic and monsters and an apprentice’s emotions, and sometimes Molly isn’t completely mindful of herself and her insecurities and sadness can escalate an annoying monster into a dangerous threat.
  This is compounded through the character of April. April is also an apprentice and is paired up with Molly when they’re out dealing with monsters. April is highly skilled but has little patience for mistakes. If she’s not being careful herself her frustrations with Molly can cause a monster to grow larger.
  In the short Molly is preoccupied with a friendship issue. She had made a mistake and is worried that her friend, an offscreen character Sam, hates her now. She is currently on the job dealing with a monster, but she is desperate to get back to Sam and apologise. April is trying to calm down a monster, but Molly tries to rush things and causes the monster to get aggravated. As the two try to handle the monster Molly’s phone gets knocked out of her pocket and smashes on the ground. Molly ends up in a stake of sadness and is overwhelmed by everything going wrong. Her lack of control starts drawing in magic around her, which the monster starts eating up. April tries to pull Molly out of it, but the monster ends up merging with Molly in an attempt to keep the magic coming. Molly becomes this large monster consumed by her depression. As April struggles to maintain this situation that has spiralled out of control, Molly receives a message from Sam confirming that everything is ok between them. Molly realises her friend doesn’t hate her and starts to feel better. This allows April to pull the monster out of Molly. The two characters are back to where they were at the start, trying to control a monster causing mischief, except as Molly had summoned in a bunch of magic there are now five little monsters around them.

I gave this pitch in class, and I could feel how dense it was. It took a few minutes to get through everything, and I find it ineloquent when I introduce more characters throughout the pitch as they become relevant. Some people in class did confuse April and Sam as the same character, an outcome of Sam being an offscreen character that is only referenced twice.

One person did point out that the story would flow better if the relationship conflict was between Molly and April instead of Molly and Sam, as this would allow the two to work out this conflict through their actions and dialogue whilst there’s this monster problem going on. Which, I absolutely agree with, but is amusing as I had been discussing this exact point throughout Studio Three with Jeremy Parker and Chris Barker. If this were just a two-minute short then keeping the conflict confined to the two characters on screen makes sense. What I’m juggling is the goal of developing a television series concept in which Molly and April are major characters but their relationship is like two work colleagues, they don’t have that close personal relationship that creates the kind of conflict used in this short film. My original script did involve Sam as an on-screen character, and there was communication between Molly and Sam as they try to resolve this miscommunication between them and fix their friendship. This script was seven minutes long, and I needed to cut it down to what I have now to become an achievable project for Studio Three. In the end I felt that whilst this friendship issue creates the narrative conflict I wanted to focus more on the character archetypes and visual elements of the magic and monsters that would grab a viewers attention.

The best feedback I got for my pitch was from Nicholas Flanders-Farmer summarising the concept as ‘A visualisation of teenagers learning to deal with their emotions in healthy ways.’ I was very relieved after all my rambling that someone came to that conclusion. During the development of this concept that idea has been a focus of mine. The monsters are designed to be like toddlers. They suddenly exist in the world, they have emotions but don’t have any way to speak or communicate what they are feeling, and so they lash out and throw tantrums. I wanted to be specific that the best way for the characters to deal with a monster is by calming it down and giving it space to express itself safely. When I’m focusing on writing a pitch I tend to put aside these thematic ideas as I focus on what is the medium, target audience, and why is the main character engaging.

A show that has very much influenced my design choices is Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, 2015). The show is a 3D animated series about a teenage girl named Marinette who has a secret superhero identity that she must hide from her friends and family. The episodes tend to follow the same plot: Someone in town is having a problem with a relationship or with a personal issue, the Villain homes in on these negative emotions and turns that person into an evil personification of their problem, the heroes come in and emove the evil energy as they help this person come to terms with their issue.
The show is a great influence in its visual style and super powered characters with special abilities whilst also providing a mature and healthy deconstruction of relationships for a teenage audience.

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. (2015). TF1, 1 September.