Thursday 27 October 2016

Minor/Major Project: Clip Ideas Re-post + Character Heights


I have drawn this to show the difference in height between the characters - the tall character's height wasn't right/realistic at first, so it needed a bit of tweaking. I have also put them into some new clothes and have added colour for this picture. Below is my previous clip ideas post, with a few more ideas that I have come up with since.

Clip #1
 "And there are people who say that you're involved.
That you might be responsible. That you're a very dangerous man"
Story Ideas
  • Interrogation Scene, with a toy being the thing that's being interrogated.
  • Similar to the previous idea, but having a zoo-keeper talking to an animal at a Zoo.
  • A trashman who likes to talk to the rubbish that he picks up off the floor.
  •  In the bath.
Clip #2
 "Wait a minute, you're wearing black! That's my colour. I'm the Bad Guy!"
"But you're not wearing black, that's dark blue."
"It is not!"
"It is so. It's navy"
Story Ideas
  • A married couple getting dressed
  • Getting ready for a stage performance that leads to a fight.
  • With the dialogue being slightly different, it's two decorators arguing over the colour of the paint, and they get other people's opinions involved.
  • Political debate.
Clip #3
"He said he was going to do it, and he's doing it now.
The most stupendous, the most incredible crime of the Century."

Story Idea

A man is saying the quote from the clip to another character, who has just asked him about his worried expression on his face - the camera slowly zooms in on his face, while he is saying the quote. Once he has said it, it cuts to someone doing the something very minor and not at all illegal, like walking on the grass, where there is a keep off the grass sign. (This is just an example of a minor crime, and will be thought about more).

Clip #4
 "What do you want from me?"
"What do I want? I want to play a game?"

Story Idea
A man and a woman are in bed, and the man starts trying to wake up her, like a child on Christmas day. The woman annoyingly wakes up and asks what he wants. The man replies saying he wants to play a game. The woman is confused. The man then pulls a Spider-Man mask over his face and then grabs two cans of web spray cans from under the duvet.

Clip #5
"I had a friend. I was with him yesterday, but we got seperated.
Have you seen him?"
"Marshal, you have no friends."
Story Idea
  • A man talking to his therapist.
  • A boy/girl talking to their teacher.
  • In the Jungle

5 comments:

  1. The height chart tells us tall guy is 6'8". I think you could bring him down to maybe 6'3" and he'd still be fairly tall.

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    Replies
    1. I know, I used a PNG. image file of that chart, which I found on Google, and so it was a bit difficult to get all their heights accurate, based on that existing chart, but I've sorted it out now. :)

      Delete
  2. Clip 1: None of these ideas quite fulfil the dialogue in terms of 'clever set up vs funny outcome'. For example, a guy saying this to himself in the mirror as he gets ready for work (although we don’t know that at the start) might be a simple enough set up. You could also play with the job he did for example the ending would be him putting on a hat, badge, or similar that revealed his actual job...like a lollipop man. Overall it leaves the audience with the questions ‘what was he involved in?’, ‘what has he responsible for?’, and ‘what is he about to do?’.

    Clip 2: I think this one should be told ‘as is’ meaning that you could bring in a pop culture reference. For example ‘Darth Vader’ is being told that what he has always thought was black is in fact Navy Blue by Luke Skywalker (Return of the Jedi / Black Outfit) who is now trying to be better than his father. I wouldn’t normally recommend a pop culture reference but seeing as this is a sketch show format you can have fun with the designs…eg a costume version of Darth Vader and a bad wig for Luke Skywalker.

    Clip 3: Yes this is along the right lines. I like the idea of close up and serious and cutting to minor crime.

    Clip 4: We have discussed this one.

    Clip 5: Yes the therapist could work. Marshal could also indicate the Wild West or USA police too. Perhaps generate another couple of ideas using those starting points? Another thing to consider is that there is no second character saying ‘You have no friends’, perhaps that’s in his mind too. For example, if he were talking to a sock puppet and then he replies to himself via the puppet and then last thing we see is another sock puppet (his other hand) rise up into the shot to show a different character whilst the first puppet (and he) become shocked by its sudden presence. All of this works as a joke because ‘hands are pairs’ and why is his brain separating them in that way.

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  3. I take your point that some of these feel similar (psychological etc) but for now explore these ideas as visual exercises. Comedy is in the telling (execution, staging, timing, design etc) - the how you do it vs what it is. These jokes may feel different or infact change with further visual thinking.

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  4. One other thing to consider regarding storyboards and animatics - You could simple 'pose test' these jokes instead of drawing. Use the character (link below) to pose out your joke using stepped key frames to the audio. You could very easily see if this joke then works and explore getting the timing and staging correct. In terms of other assest you could quickly model rough stand in objects too. Think of it as a 'pre-viz' animatic.

    Character...
    https://www.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8b71648a5f676daa71a1

    Select All (Body and Face)
    https://www.filesanywhere.com/fs/v.aspx?v=8b71648d595f71b7a6ae

    ReplyDelete