The last few weeks have just been working on solidifying my idea and making sure I had good concept art to show in my formative last week.
For the disability topic I considered what sort of questions I should be asking as well as doing some research on the topic as I didn't want to come into the interviews completely ignorant.
I also worked on art to show what sort of characters I was imagining and the style I'd be wanting to work in, drawing on Midnight Gospel's trippy colours and textured line, but using my own character design.
I was really starting to get into the concepts and designs, thinking about what sort of backgrounds could be used and how to include the disability in a realistic way whilst still maintaining the sci-fi/fantasy setting.
For my gender non-conforming topic I worked on similar artwork, but less research as I don't have to interview anyone and have prior knowledge to the subject as I am non-binary myself, and know several other gender non-conforming people.
I had the formative last week, which was super useful. Seeing everyone else's ideas was really interesting, there's such a variety within the class and it will be awesome to see them all come to life! Whilst sitting through other presentations I realised that if I wanted to do my disability film I would have had to have started the interview/crafting process a couple of weeks back so I just presented my gender film. I had mixed feelings about this, I was happy to have a definite idea, but the reason I was so torn between the two in the first place was because I loved different aspects of each of them. I still feel like the essay for the topic of physical disability in fantastical genres could have been so interesting, and could even be a topic of my dissertation if I thought it linked with the film I end up wanting to do. I was anxious about the idea of interviewing multiple people and even more anxious about asking the wrong questions as I come from a place of very little knowledge on disability. On the other hand, I have a lot of feelings about gender identity and there are thoughts about it that go around my head every day that I want to put somewhere. I'd like to be able to express what my personal experience of gender dysphoria, euphoria and just general difference to people who don't get it, as well as potentially make a character in the 'other' category who is actually non-binary rather than just generally perceived as such by the community. I know that it's not good for the only representation of the non-binary community to be in the category of 'other' as well, but I feel like I can tie in lots of genuine experiences into that of the robot, too, and that characters like Double-Trouble in She-Ra will not have been as explicit in their experience of gender, as it's not what the show's about.
I've started thinking about what the overall feeling of narrative is going to be in the film, I don't necessarily want the whole of the film to be the robot character talking about gender, so my plan is to record myself on that subject, then build a script from there and record myself again but more refined and zoned in the the character being a robot.
I know what I want the visual style to be so once I get the recording and script going I'll be able to make an animatic relatively quickly whilst I'm making my puppet too. I've been collecting scrap bits to make my puppet and set out of from places like the free-use hub, charity shops and the pound shop so have a good reserve of interestingly shaped things to make my film with.
Comments