Halle - ETNA conference

Morning One of the ETNA (European Training Network for Animation Schools) annual conference. Good presentations by Richelle Wilder (script development for animation) and Keith Hopwood (music and sound effects for animation).

011013 halle


Richelle Wilder

animation has the widest demographic
animation isn't limited by cultural or social boundaries...

katzenburg 'the idea is king. if a movie begins with a great, original idea, chances are it will work...'

great ideas are rare...

the strongest ideas can be encapsulated into a logline, or 'hook'...

chicken run 'great escape with  chickens'
flushed away 'african queen with rats'
shrek ' greatest fairy tale never told'

when i ran the development department at aardman...
it was a creative forum for generating ideas...

sometimes the original idea FAILS when you try to expand it...

Scorcese said 'there's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.'

pitch: plot, characters, world, tone...

now we're talking about leprechauns...
but Katzenburg didn't like it 'and all our leprechaun ideas left with him...'

hitchcock 'all you need is a great script, a great script, a great script...'

the technical differences between writing for live action and animation are negligible...

writer needs to be hugely imaginative...
all the projects I've worked on have featured multiple writers... a lead writer certainly, but multiple writers...

we follow the three act structure...

it's important the bg designs and char designs are shared with the writer, to make sure he's on the same creative track...

andrew stanton... the first draft is nothing more than a starting point, so be as wrong and as fast as you can...

rewriting can be twenty paces back and five paces forward...
rewriting is about 'getting the story right'

rewrite is about making creative ideas the best they can be...
often multiple stakeholders involved in rewrite - all opinion is valuable...

however, multiple voices (if they're not managed properly) can destroy the script
in indie productions, this role is rarely managed...
managed, not dictated... Dictatorial no...

ideas often get put in the script to please the money people, to greenlight funding...

DEVELOPMENT HELL - the rewrite black hole...
caused by the writing process being poorly managed...
Many scripts get put into development hell, very few scripts get out

dev hell becomes an illogical dance, with lots of crap and random ideas being built into the script...

remember the project's potential, remember the hook...


billy wilder - an audience is never wrong. an individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles sitting in a darkened room - that is critical genius...

end


show don't tell

anim scripts are approx 80 pages in length, live ation are usually 100 to 120 pages...

character world themes and audience demographic

screenwriting is an art
screenwriting is also a craft

lasseter 'the art challenges the technology and the technology inspires the art...'

act 1 who is the main char what is the story about what is the conflict? (this is the inciting incident) first 10 pages, first 10 minutes
the suspension of disbelief must happen in act 1, the audience must buy in

want versus need is the character arc
the char want needs to be established early

drama is conflict...

act 2 longest in length
develops the action (A plot)
develops the main char
develops sub plots

it's essential to have more than 1 storyline

A plot is the action storyline
B plot is the emotional storyline
then subplots

there must be multiple plots, or the story will be completely linear

there can be multiple multiple subplots, adding texture and charm to the storyline

moving between acts is done by turning points - twists

act 3 is the climax
the central premise of the plot is resolved...
shrek gets his swamp back, but with an unexpected twist (fiona)

tv script format...
single drama
mini series (multiple eps)
returning series (many eps)


script development TV:

development workshop
bible
premise
outline - fleshed out without dialogue
scene by scene - again fleshed out without dialogue
drafts x 2 - dialogue in, story structure, basic structure is movie structure with beginning, middle and end (this is usually where finance is greenlit)
polish - final draft, often done by the script editor - script editor ensures continuity across the series

development by committee is a staple of modern TV script development
broadcaster
co producer
series producer

each of the stakeholders will want an active input in the series development (includes financiers, co prod partners and broadcasters), all coordinated by the script editor

all opinion is valuable, but all opinion is. 
an effective script producer or script editor offers the writer creative support and managerial guidance.


katzenburg: every single thing you see onscreen came out of somebody's creativity. It doesn't exist. Nature didn't deliver it to us. Everything had to be dreamed.

end

Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment

The day has arrived - after a seeming lifetime (3 years) through my Teaching and Learning study journey, and following successful completion of my AIT Capstone module (Reflection, Action and Analysis), I have now completed my LIN Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment! A postgraduate qualification! As Mick Mc Grath says 'we are now PGDippers!'

Thanks to all my T+L learning network - especially Marion Palmer, Mary Anne O' Carroll, Laura Venables, Cliona Flood, Muiris O' Grady, Thelma Chambers, Barry O' Donoghue, Mick Mc Grath, John Ryan, Fiona Fulham, Eloise Tan, Anne Spencer, Nuala Harding, Miriam O' Connor, Sean Moore, Sarah Moore, Teemu Auersalo, Keith Foran, Damian Byrne, Ron Hamilton, Shirley Casey, Sherra Murphy, Elaine Sissons, Mark Riordan, Rebecca Roper, Ian Ginn, John Parry, Geert Vergauwe, Hannah Barton, Donald Taylor Black, Andrew Power, Jim Devine, Cormac O' Kane, Annie Doona, Joan Mannion, Anne Marie O' Brien, Kevin O Rourke, Leonie Sharrock, Frances Boylan and all the 'elss girls', the IADT Academic Council and the IADT T+L Committee. I know I've forgotten to mention crucial, obvious people here (I've already updated this list eight times) - apologies and thanks to you too!

Thanks most of all to Katy, Sophie, Thomas and Daniel and to my DL041 Animation students - for teaching me everything. Love to all! My learning continues.

LIN Capstone Presentation!

My LIN teaching and learning journey, begun three years ago with the AIT T+L Cert, reaches a significant milestone with Thursday's AIT T+L Capstone presentation. I found the Capstone a very useful and engaging module - far from a formality. The opportunities to map learning gaps and to plan ahead, strategising my professional development, were especially welcome, timely, necessary.

Key learning from the day - Anne Marie O' Brien's 'teaching and learning has been like learning a new language'! Great presentations from all and great to see my buddies Mick Mc Grath and John Ryan! Thanks to Marion Palmer, Nuala Harding, Miriam O' Connor and UCC's Marian Mc Carthy (and Joan Mannion in the background, organising everything)!

The 6 2013 LIN T+L Dippers - Carmel, Anne Marie, John, Sinead, Mick and DQ

The 2013 LIN T+L Capstone staff - Marion, Miriam, Marian and Nuala

The Animation Compendium

A link from Marion Palmer - The Animation Compendium. Inspiration, Explanation and Procrastination.

http://theanimationcompendium.com/

AIT Capstone Progress

I've just finished my first draft of my AIT Teaching and Learning Capstone Assignment One - the core of it is around 4,200 words (target was 3,500), and the entire document is over 10,000 words. A very useful reflection on my Teaching and Learning journey from 2010 - my how our ideas have evolved over three short years (seems like a lifetime).

Document needs some drawer time now. I need to focus on my Research Masters.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity

Postman, N. and Weingartner, C. (1971) ‘Teaching As A Subversive Activity’ Penguin Books. London

‘Teaching As A Subversive Activity’ was a seminal text for me during the earliest stages of my Teaching and Learning journey. Though rather old, somewhat outdated and primarily aimed at primary and second-level teachers, the book contained some persistently relevant ideas – most notably the concepts of ‘selective forgetting’ (page 195, bottom para), the idea of ‘learning to learn’ (page 204) and the essential development of students’ ‘crap detectors’ (page 204).

'Survival in a rapidly changing environment depends almost entirely upon being able to identify which of the old concepts are relevant to the demands imposed by the new threats to survival and which are not. Then a new educational task becomes critical: getting the group to unlearn (to forget) the irrelevant concepts as a prior condition to learning. What we are saying is that ‘selective forgetting’ is necessary to survival.' (page 195 bottom para)

One of the most wonderful notions in the book was ‘the intellectual strategy’ for survival in times of disruptive change… 'Intellectual strategies for nuclear-space-age survival – in all dimensions of human activity – include such concepts as relativity, probability, contingency, uncertainty, function, structure as process, multiple causality (or non-causality), non-symmetrical relationships, degrees of difference and incongruity (or simultaneously appropriate difference).
The learning of such concepts will produce the kinds of people we will need to deal effectively with a future full of drastic change.' (page 204 (para 4 and 5))

'All of these concepts constitute the dynamics of the question-questioning, meaning-making process that can be called ‘learning to learn’. This comprises a posture of stability from which to deal fruitfully with change. The purpose is to help all students develop built-in, shockproof crap detectors as basic equipment in their survival kits.' (page 204 bottom para)

Still great learning for today's environment of disruptive change!

Simpsons Storyboarding...

Great link from Teemu Auersalo...

http://www.slideshare.net/cheszter/strybrd-the-simpsonsway