Plausible Impossible

About a week ago I dug up an old story idea I had from years back that I wanted to try and flesh out. The pitch was that it would be a James Bond style intro to a western film that would be two parts Sergio Leone one part Quentin Tarantino. Our “hero” Duke is a gunslinger who finds his way into a dusty western town. When he arrives, he’s met with a young bratty boy named Max who is chasing a group of birds through town. The boy spooks the bird, resulting in it “pooping” on the cowboy… the calm, calculated gunslinger cleans off the mess and turns to the boy who continues to chase the birds unaware, and really, not caring about the results of his antics. The boy and the bird race around the towns dusty road circling back towards the gunslinger. They approach the cowboy, cutting back and forth between the boy and Duke building tension as the two move closer and closer together like two trains about to collide. Finally right as the bird closes in on Duke he swiftly draws his gun and fires… resulting in an explosion of blood, guts and feathers that lands all over the bratty kid who is in shock. Duke removes the handkerchief that he used to clean the bird droppings, places it into the kids frozen fingers and trots off to the saloon in the distance. The camera dolly’s up revealing the title screen.

I spent the last two nights work late on board after board, exploring interesting camera angles, fun compositions and ways to build up tension while playing with the juxtaposition of one calculated quiet character to another that is a loud chaotic rascal. I put together an animatic using my sketch boards and felt pretty confident I may have a fun action sequence that would kick off a wild western film.

Cut to my 8am class, running on fumes and 5 hour energy shots I marched into class, set up my animatic and prepped to get feedback. The boards played on the large projector screen and the gag got a collection of laughs and squirms with people sounding off gross followed by a chuckle. My classmates were kind in their feedback, some layout issues (as it is now when the gunslinger shoots the bird the bullet would likely hit the kid next, an easy fix) the feedback was overall positive. I was feeling pretty good… The teacher asked if there was any other feedback… I smiled and prepped to sit back down knowing I have a few issues but was well on my way. Before being dismissed my teacher turned to me and said… That was a mess! He went on to point out the fact that we could care less about the characters. Aside from the setting and the gunslinger the bird and the boy don’t have story tie ins to the period of the piece, they are just there… doing… stuff. Instead of focusing on great characters who we bond with or root against I focused on all flash and no substance. He went on to tell me after class that this was magnified by the fact my feedback to other students was always based on the characters, cutting the fat and making sure we care about those in the scene and understand who they are and what they are doing. Along with that my previous stories have always focused on heart in the story. Whether it is a persistent dog who will stop at nothing to eat his food, an old man who is self conscious about the effects aging has had on his looks or the Grim Reaper who is so happy with the results of his job that he loses sight of the trail of unintentional destruction he leaves behind him; they all focused on the characters and how they would react to the obstacles in their way.

I was definitely feeling a little shell shocked. I was ripped a new one, and every item he listed was spot on. But today’s class was also a great lesson and a reminder that I have come far in my march towards a career as a full time storyboard artist. While I will always be self conscious about my ability to draw, my mastering of composition and layout I was able to look past the shock of hearing my project was crap and heard loud and clear what the issues were. I left that class, not heartbroken (as I may have been in the past), but determined to fix the story and take the seed of the idea and perfect it. I wrote page after page of notes about who the characters are. I looked at this bump in the road not as a knock on my abilities but a challenge to push myself to take a mess of a project and find a way to get it back on track.

The whole situation reminded me of a conversation I had with Mark Andrews, Pixar story artist and director of the upcoming film Brave. When asked for a few words of wisdom for a storyboard student her told me “always remember its called “sto-RE-boarding”. You should love your idea, it should be the best idea ever… but the moment someone, the director or another team member gives you a better idea fall out of love with your previous pet. You should be twice as excited for your next idea then you were the last one. Never get married to a story”.

So back to the drawing board I go. I am ready to fix the story, find my characters and do something a bit out of my story comfort zone. I am just happy to have a teacher who cut through all the BS and pushed me to find the core of the story allowing me to right the ship.