Let's talk about Plot!

This year I am making a short film, and the first place I decided to start at was the story. This seems obvious, but it's actually not considering that most professional animation these days happens in the span of 3 seconds (think instagram stickers or filters).

When the attention span is low and the movement short, narrative can be an afterthought, which is why I was so excited to dive into it for the short!

Learning from the Masters

The first thing I did was watch roughly 100 hours of masterclasses on screenwriting. Well, maybe not 100 but a lot!

My biggest take-away was that my film doesn't need a traditional script to have a strong narrative. By sticking to a traditional plot line, and keeping the action simple and clear, we can hint at communication without actually having any. In terms of animation: show and not tell.

A Classic Structure

Which brings me to... the classic plot! Or, more accurately, the Syd Field Paradigm. Not being in the film world, this was new to me, but it seems to be a standard in most classes. It's a timeline that's used to plan out action in screenplays or, as Judd Apatow called it in his lecture, a clothing line to hang plot off of. It looks something like the graphic here.

I spent this first month of the project slowly "hanging" my own actions on the timeline and now I'm ready for the next step- storyboarding!