This year in my final year of studies, I am creating a VFX based short film for my capstone project. I will be working on this project with my classmate Emily Liu. To ensure we started our project with a good foundation, EmiIy and I took note of what we wanted to achieve with this project, challenges we may face/ things to consider and some actions that would help us start to achieve our project goals. Our main goal is to get nominated at a film festival, therefore one of our ‘actions’ to achieve this was by studying previously nominated projects or ones that have been successful.
We also set ourselves a weekly schedule to follow to ensure we always have a goal for each week and stay on track. It also means that if we follow our schedule, it will allow extra time for us to fix things if we run into issues.
From our research we managed to find a bunch of influences for the possible aesthetic we want to explore (the use of 3d models with a 2D aesthetic/ toon shaders) and how narrative was portrayed through the use of editing, composition and design. One of the main similarities between the short films was that they usually have something that links the beginning to the end - whether it be the use of a reoccurring item or using the same shot in the first and last scene.
After gathering some inspiration from our research we started to come up with our own concepts. I managed to flesh out two ideas. My first one focuses on the negative effects of perfectionism. It starts out with a girl (a design student likely) who goes through her day-to-day life and we see how her perfectionist habits affect it. We start by seeing her discard a lot of her work due to being a perfectionist and this eventually starts to affect her relationship with people - she starts to distance herself. Then once she hits rock bottom she gets transported to a dream-like world (which will be 3d) and we see her go through the journey of pushing past her perfectionist habits and finding inspiration. Hence at the end of the film we see her resolve as she starts drawing without letting the imperfections bother her.
My second idea was inspired by a personal experience I had when a good friend of mine passed way at age 16. Sometimes I wondered if there was a bucket list or just some things she never got to experience - hence it sparked this idea. Basically it starts out with a girl who has just started her summer break and documents her summer through a film camera aesthetic. We see her, her friend and a big friendly CG creature go out and do some fun activities together throughout the Summer. Once she gets her photos developed at the end, we can only see the two friends in the pictures (the creature isn’t there). Then the last shot will pan over to reveal a photo of the 3 friends (taken when they’re friend was still alive) and sitting next to the picture frame is a little toy or keychain that belonged to their friend which looks like the creature that accompanied them throughout the Summer. This link is made to convey the idea that their friend was with them in spirit experiencing all the things they didn’t get to do when they were alive.
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