From here we picked some of the story arches we liked the sound of such as 'quest', 'voyage and return' and 'overcoming the monster' because these were quite similar in nature and quite broad in what we could apply them too. They also coincided quite well with out idea to interview children and create a quest like piece regarding their interpretation of every day life as essentially a new adventure. When we were coming up with initial ideas I was trying to keep in mind that the limit for the short moving images was between 10 and 20 seconds long. Furthermore they had to work as a type of set, but also be good as stand along pieces, which was another obstacle in terms of the story and how we were going to present it. The brief did mention not being too literally however, which was a positive in the sense that we could take the concept of the story arch and use it on a broader scale when it came to generating ideas.
Below is a sample of the document containing the information and questions Ian sent out to his friends, using this they could then ask and record their children replying to the questions listed for us to use.
Ian and I made some mind maps of various ideas in order to see if anything stuck out as being particularly good or relevant to the brief that we could use. When trying to come up with ideas, we weren't trying to make sure the narratives abided by as many of the requirements as possible. We wrote down the first idea that we had come up with which was the concept of interviewing children using specific questions based around the themes of quests, adventures and 'overcoming the monster' whilst also trying to relate it to everyday life in the hope that we could get something we could potentially use to fuel a narrative. As we starting thinking of more ideas, I came up with the idea of looking at three parallel days in the lives of three different people from contrasting cultures around the world. This could entail looking at three people who do a similar job and have a similar profile, but through the different films we would produce, show the differences in their lifestyle because of where they live and what they do. The aspect of a story arch would have to fit in somewhere but I think this would be relatively easy. The first that came to mind were perhaps a job such as a shopkeeper or a chef, in say Hong Kong, North America and South America. That way we could show the different levels of stress they have during their job, or perhaps 'overcoming the monster' could be the hard work and long hours they put in. I think visually it would also be good because you could show things like different cuisine and clothing, or buildings and all types of contrasts within the culture as a reference to the everyday lives of people, not necessary living the same way I or many others do. Another idea similar to the one about interviewing children was on the other end of the spectrum, in that we could interview older people about their lives, and we could animate a day in their life when they were a child looking back. However, we soon realised this wouldn't meet the brief requirements in in the sense that it wouldn't be set in modern day and wouldn't represent a modern, everyday situation. Next we thought we could have an everyday scenario or situation playing out from three different perspectives of three different parties involves in the event. The example we thought of that could work would be a crime, so you would have the crime playing out form the perspective of the criminal, a bystander and the police or a victim. I thought this would be an interesting take on the everyday aspect whilst also looking at the way people view certain actions. Alternatively it could be a story of misinterpretation of events, where at the end the truth is revealed and the scene and event were not as straight forward as it first seemed to the audience at first glance. The final idea we had was to shop three segments from someones life as they're growing up. So, a moment in the life of a child at school, then a young adult then as an older person. Each of these different segments could then have one for the story aches as a theme. We did have some more less developed ideas too such as representing some of the story archs in a more sinister, non-obvious way, such as addiction relating to the idea of 'overcoming the monster'. I think at this point we have a lot of potential ideas, we just need to choose one to really develop further and start working on. Hopefully, by our next meeting we will have decided which route to take and we can make some good progress after this.
Ian did in fact manage to collect a few samples of questions from two different sets of children he knows that were really good in terms of what they were saying. At this stage we're still thinking of a way to approach the recordings and how to use them in the project. One idea we had, because it wouldn't quite work as a narration is to have a certain section of the recording quoted at the beginning of the animation and then base the narration and subject matter around the quote.
On the 4th February we had a peer review. During the peer review we got into small groups of varying size depending on the size of the table but I was in a group of around five. We each took it in turns to go through our ideas for our collaborative briefs and discuss our progress so far whilst also gathering feedback that we could apply to the progression of the brief. At this point it was around two weeks after we had formed our groups and began the brief so I think it was fair to say that everyone was in a similar position of still trying to come up with an idea. The general consensus seemed to be, at least with the group I was in, that people were trying to come up an idea and that ultimately once they had an idea they liked they were going to run with it. From this experience so far I can say that this is probably the hardest part of the project, working with other people to come up with an idea that everyone agrees to and likes is quite difficult, especially in a short amount of time.
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