Thursday 17 January 2013

Project 3: Story Telling Ideas

I've been trying my best to think of an original idea with my project for a while, and generally, the same story where a character wants to become something comes out. This bothered me a lot, as I was determined to create something original, with my quite fitting words.
But although the story I favour at the moment is not exactly original, and has some weak points, here it is so far.

A small colony of penguins in Edinburgh Zoo, who feel detached from the rest of the penguins in the rookery, collect various bits of litter of interest from visitors in their nests, like band badges, chains, and other things like roller skates, bags, which they often decorate them selves in. (Appear "emo" :D)
They hear a sound from afar, and through the wire walls, can see a flock of puffins land upon some rocks, dressed in gowns made of thistle, heather, fox gloves, scottish primroses, all being herded by an impatient Scottish terrier dog.
All the penguins of the group shrug it off, and mock the flamboyant puffins, but one young female penguin, who clings to the wire wall and watches with awe and amazement.
The terrier orders them to practice their routine, and the puffins leap off into the sky, swooping and crossing, preparing for a show.
The young penguin imagines her self being able to fly and be dressed in such a beautiful way, but the other penguins notice she's still paying attention to puffins, and pull her away, reminding her how flying and such things are lame.
She nods and goes back to her nest alone, where she takes off her silly band badges, and pushes all such things alike aside in her next box, to reveal under a bunch of necklaces  hair ties, flowers she had been collecting in secret.
She stares at them, sighs and wishes for such life. She goes to re cover them with the other litter she has, where a pair of skates on top of a skateboard rose from the pile of collectibles.
She looks at them, ponders, looks back to the fence. Her eyes fill with awe again, and then with determination. She sees scrap pieces of paper with famous skateboarders jumping through the air, and has an idea. She goes running with the paper to her friends to propose the idea of creating a ramp for skateboarding, all the penguins agree, with the thought of being a cool skate boarder.
They build the ramp together at night, and after it was made, they all rested.
She woke at early morning, when all the birds and puffins wake, before the penguins, and she tries to mentally prepare her self for what she is about to do.
She lovingly puts on some of her collected hair ties around her flippers, happy with finally being able to do so.
She brings out the skateboard, and takes a deep breath at the beginning of the ramp. Once she has collected her self, she stood back, and gained speed, and eventually off the ramp, over the fence.
The herded puffins who are there for their routine show practice look in horror as she flings her self over a wall with the skateboard, and mask their eyes when she quite ungraciously lands into the bush on the other side.
The puffins rush to help her, sit her up, the penguin now embarrassed of what just happened
The Scottish terrier waddles up after, bouncing in excitement  to have found a new act, the skateboarding penguin.

Sorry to make it so wordy.
But the idea of having the penguins decorated in local Scottish flowers excited me, and I chose to have them as puffins and penguins, to really stress the idea of trying to become what you're not, or can't be, but discovering your good points when trying. Cheesey but this story idea has been the most exciting to me, yet.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Lucy,

    I'm loving the penguins/puffins thing - cute; not sure about the Scottish terrier however - seems like clutter to me; surely the idea of a flightless bird envying the puffins is clear enough in terms of establishing the penguin's alienation? I'm not even sure that you need the 'emo' penguin element, because the bird's estrangement from what its heart desires is inherent in its flightlessness. The zoo setting - essentially a performance space for animals - is a nice way of establishing the idea of the circus; and I can see how, with just some clever staging and some suitable music, you could 'evoke' the penguin and puffin enclosure as a circus without the addition of lots of other circusy stuff. My advice to you is to pare your story right down to its new essentials; write in single sentences and keep detail to a minimum. You're nearly there!

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  2. Hey Lucy,

    See link!

    http://ucarochester-cgartsandanimation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/fao-cgaa-years-1-2-uca-student-survey.html

    Cheers! :D

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  3. Hey lucy, big thanks for the comments on my posts they are really going to help me :D. I really like the notion of 'not being afraid to hide who you really are'. Its simple yes, but don't forget in it's simplicity it can really stand out and put that message across to the viewers. over complicating it could detract from the message you want to put across. Secondly I love the way the animals take on human characteristics wearing and utilising human objects and prop on the protagonists mission to individuality. I agree with Phil, maybe make this a birds world and look into the sterotypical traits and characteristics of different birds if you want more to go on? Looking good and I can't wait to see how this rebel penguin evolves!

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