Formal Story Pitch: The Wizard of Stupid

My story pitch was a bit rough for me. We were supposed to act out the idea as much as possible. But since I was on a bit of a vacation while working on this, I got the opportunity to doodle some thumbnails. Some are good, some not so much, but all are small and quickly made, so that is a victory in it's own right. Not to mention, I drew the drawings in my pitch over the course of three or four days whilest sipping mojitos. Well, not exactly mojitos, they were margaritas. Ok, they were Coors lights. Fine, half a Fanta out of a Styrofoam cup. Thanks for killing the dream.

The upside being that I didn't have to act out much as I could hide behind my storyboards. I kinda know that school is for getting better at this stuff, but I also kinda know that in a real world situation, I'd have a pointer and legibly sized storyboards tacked up to the wall. Not to mention, my pitch most likely wouldn't be put on permanent record and published for all the world to download, youtubed, mocked, altered, re-youtubed and blogged about. Although, the paypal pity would be nice.

DISCLAIMER: I'm still a bit hesitant to put this out there on the internets because I seem to have no end of hatred for watching myself on anything, mirrors included, but quite simply what you are about to witness is nothing short of me in a compromised position on the internet. I know better than this. Did Star Wars kid teach us nothing? Not only am I wearing an uber-cool pair of headphones with the microphone built right in (think Kathy, the friendly customer service representative in India) but I'm also trying to sound enthusiastic and not my usual monotone deadpan. So surprisingly, for some reason, take after take I had a strange cadence and intonation to my voice. I got this sing-songy-sort-of-thing going on that can only remind me of Jack Horkheimer. This is not how I normally talk. Usually I'm much more effeminate with a subtle touch of mucus.

Sigh. It all reminds me of why I'm an animator in the first place. Being in front of the camera gives me pleasure equal to deworming cats. I spent the last 10 years hiding behind drawings for a living. So please, I beg of you, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and this time no dogs allowed.

I just got that carpet done.

No one said Haiku couldn't rhyme.

Blog Haiku apology,

Long time, no sign on
Was too unsure to pine on.
Please forgive me, mon.

No one said Haiku couldn't rhyme.

Well a whole semester went by and I barely posted a thing. Can I be depended on anymore for consistent blogging sustenance? Is it worth going through the 18 hour process of fighting html code and browser compatibility issues to establish a solid RSS feed to my bloggy blog? Most likely, no in all cases. I can promise however to post more frequently than last semester, once. That is to say, if I post just slightly more than never, I’ve held up my part of this bargain.

So, how was last semester you may ask? Well if you were there in AM, then you already know and you should quit reading this instantly and get back to work on your short, you slacker. If you are a visitor from the outside world, than Google must have failed you to dead end you at this html-hole. But so it goes.

Last semester was…how do you say…difficult, to say the least. But refreshingly, it was difficult in a completely different way than before. Instead of cramming in long hours on animation between pesky “life” we had to come up with pitches for short films. I found that there was nothing tougher than committing to a single idea that not only will dominate my lives for the next six months, but will also be the primary staple in my demo reel. So it was “hurry up and think” for a bit. I’m certain now on hind sight that the harder you think the worse you are at coming up with original, witty ideas that will only take a minute to represent.

For the informal pitch, I came in with six ideas. Most, strangely enough, had to do with the main characters getting in wrestling matches with inanimate objects. Actually to try to keep the projects in scope, we were told to keep it to one or two characters and a single prop and ideally under a minute. So I tried to stay by those guidelines in my thinking.

As it turned out, my least favorite idea was the one that seemed to hit with everyone in my Q&A session. So that was the one that I was to move forward with and work up a more formal story pitch. I was unhappy with all of my ideas, truth be told. To me the perfect example of the one minute or so animation without too many characters has to be Luxo Jr. I wouldn’t even know how to sum that short up in a pitch and make it sound nearly as great as it turned out to be. I imagine the pitch would be something like this…

"Ahem

So there’s this lamp right. And it’s just sitting there, um, on. And then there is this ball that comes in a bumps it. And then…another smaller lamp comes into screen after the ball and then pushes it off screen. You with me so far? O.K. good. And then it, the little lamp comes back on screen and jumps on the ball and, um, pops the ball, yeah that’s it. Then the lamps are sad until the little one finds another ball and the big lamp is like, lamps will be lamps.

So what do you guys think?"

[insert cricket chirping here]

But it’s one of the best freaking films on the planet and is many's inspiration for getting into all of this in the first place. I was trying to keep this in mind while thinking on an idea for my film. I tried, with all of my might to stay away from the space army attacking the deep in stellar outpost of snot-bugs. Most of my ideas kept developing into three minute stories. Or five minute mini-epics or full blown trilogies with special extended versions and small statuetttes.

So what was the pitch that won the hearts and minds of my fellow AM students and Mentors?

There is a boy with a radio control plane. He is flying the plane in a big blue sky. The plane swoops past the camera and out of frame, but when it returns, we see that it is the boy that is flying instead.

I had/have a lot of work to do.
Stay tuned and I will post my formal pitch in a few.

Thanks.