Poster Task and another Story Direction.

In the lecture on Monday 10th October, our class were asked to create a poster design for our film. The exercise helped us all focus on layout which was helpful. We will be doing this task several times throughout this year, so we can all develop the right image for our films.

As it was only a short task, it was done loosely in pencil. I wanted to show Mollie sitting beside Babbit, back to back. Mollie is looking at Babbit in an inncoent way, making her looks as cute as possible. Babbit is shown smiling, and Mollie looks somewhat surprised, so this poster gives the clue that this will be Mollie's story of Babbit. Or at least, I hope that's what it says. As stated, this poster design will change within the next few weeks/months. I want to create a slightly more dramatic poster next time, perhaps not showing Mollie or Babbit's face at all, and play a bit with silhouettes and good posing of the characters to show a clear action/thought/inclination.

In the last post, I had just seen Leonie and had begun to develop a new story idea where Mollie is feeling lonely, sad and upset when a new baby brother comes along and the parents are too busy to pay much attention to Mollie. I drew a few more images..

 I was finding it hard however to really develop this story without having to bring in a sub-plot of the parents reacting to Mollie's loneliness. (Babbit was going to appear visible only to Mollie and the audience, but the twist at the end would reveal that Mollie's parents knew about Babbit the whole time and had asked him to look after Mollie/be there for Mollie...) This would put more strain on the film, as I wanted to keep the number of characters to a bare minimum, and with the parents and new baby as well as Mollie and Babbit, I really couldn't think of how I would be able to portray all of the relationships and story well without going over the recommended time of 3 minutes.

On Tuesday 11th October, a few friends on the course and I asked to meet with our tutor, Matt Gravelle, to go over our story ideas with him. Matt pointed out the difficulties I would have developing the story with so many main characters saying it would require a far more complex story, which I agreed with. He liked the idea that Babbit grew smaller as Mollie grew in confidence. He told me I should definitely focus on their relationship. Mollie needs Babbit. Matt suggested some ideas such as, Mollie is being bullied, or Mollie needs to win a contest of some sort and needs to build in confidence with Babbit's help. He also liked the picture books I bought for inspiration and wanted me to definitely keep to that style.

I liked the ideas that Matt suggested, so I then started developing ideas focused on Mollie and Babbit's relationship in a new situation.

---jkl