Abby then realized she had left the saran wrap on the fish
fillets. Now she would never impress Chris.
The past week, in which Jake had no right foot, had proved
difficult. Stupid Piranha.
Amidst all of the chaos Lucy shouted, “At least I proved
Sharknado could actually happen.”
Sean threw another punch. He hadn’t wanted to get involved,
but now his Finding Nemo DVD was scratched. There was no turning back.
300 PSI. 150 feet deep. Barracuda. Joel’s feet were already
tingling. “Just one more picture,” he said to himself.
Brevity
is something I appreciate. When a feature film is 90 minutes long, my opinion
of it automatically goes up. However, it has never been one of my
strengths—which is probably why I love it so much. Consequently, this assignment both
challenged and fascinated me.
I began with inspiration from what
we viewed in class. I specifically enjoyed Tim Burton’s stories. I loved how
what he said at first seemed implausible, and then left the reader itching with
questions. Why did the clam boy dress up like a boy for Halloween? What is a
clam doing celebrating Halloween anyway? I felt that the genius of his stories
was that he made no pretense to say anything more—it was like a
teaser-trailer, calling for the audience to speculate and fill in the blanks. I
tried to incorporate this teasing into my own stories.
While reading I also looked for good
techniques. I noticed that in the @VeryShortStory, the author played off of
universal human emotions and experiences. Using these experiences in his stories
add contextualization and description that he then did not have to write out.
When I turned to write my own
stories, I started by writing out whatever came to mind, for practice. In class
we talked about how an object could be our unifying theme. I loved this idea
because of the versatility. I went back to my favorite stories I had written,
and simply replaced some of the objects with fish.
However, in the end, “fish” wasn’t
my only universal theme. After writing my stories, I realized that my favorites—the
five that I chose—all involved characters who, amidst chaos and adrenaline, had
made stupid decisions. The adrenaline came from all sorts of emotions, and
whether their decisions were life-threatening or just embarrassing, they
created a great story. This adrenaline also involved the basic human emotion I
found in @VeryShortStory, and provided a nice amount of questions to use Tim
Burton’s technique of teasing the reader.
As for my illustrations, I decided
to go with something simple. I felt like both the simple nature of the stories,
as well as the raw, out-of-control emotion applied well to a children’s
illustration type of image. Additionally, I took inspiration from vintage
children’s books and ads—kind of a “Dick and Jane” feeling. I liked the vintage
flair because I love the irony of taking those innocent, stereotypical images
and using them in bizarre circumstances.
Overall, I loved this assignment and
the experience. I felt like I learned a lot about mystery and brevity in
filmmaking. I had to pack meaning into everything—whether it was color, word
choice, or allusion.
