- 2 Uncles are teaching golf to their niece.
- One man is all about strength, he thinks forcing it is the solution to any problem. However, this tends to cause the ball to go all over the place.
- The other man is extremely cautious, fearful and overly anxious. His solution to problems is to over analyze, minimize risk and go slow and carefully, which results in a straight shot but no power.
- The little girl, faced with two conflicting approaches attempts to imitate both and gets frustrated with inevitably poor results.
- This is when they come across the old duffer. He is teeing off, doing his wacky swing, oblivious to the fact that the uncles are laughing there asses off at him. He is content to do his own thing. The little girl watches on without judgement.
- When the old duffer's shot lands inches from the hole, the uncles are shocked.
- The last scene will be of the girl, imitating the old duffer and finally getting some decent results. Then the camera will pan to the two uncles, also imitating the old duffer swing.
This little summary would probably count as the first step in pre-production. I have nailed down an idea, and given a brief synopsis of the story/film. My next step was visual development and scripting, although because "Duffers" is dialogue free, scripting in the traditional sense isn't as important, particularly since I am working alone. If I was working with others, then I definitely would have done a more detailed script, but making sure to focus on action first, then dialogue.
However, I did come up with a visual equivalent of a script by drawing up a set of quick thumbnails sketches that outlined the scenes and action. I should point out that at this stage, the sketches do not need to be in order, mine weren't, it was more about getting the ideas on the page. For example I had the old duffer tee off done first, then drew a scene where a bird is getting cleaned up by the strong man's loose ball. The idea is to keep everything flexible, don't get tied down, you can always change stuff, that is what pre-production is about. It seems easier by far to change a sketch then it does a cleaned up animation scene, so for the visual development stage, keep an open mind.
Now it seems to me that either one of these approaches could have been worked on first, script or visual development, and I guess if you are working alone, the choice would be up to you. Whichever approach helps you to visualize the scenes and action then that is what you should try first. Personally I have always found it a bit of struggle to do sequence drawings, mainly because I worried too much about how they would look, but for some reason it was actually pretty easy this time because I knew that it didn't really matter what it looked like. These sketches were for me, and as long as I understood them, that was enough.
Recap:
- Pre-production
- Idea
- Synopsis
- Script/Visual Development
