New Amelia Rotation

Pitch Poster Competition!

So, myself and a few others from SCAD had their senior project pitch posters selected for the SIGGRAPH issue of Animation Magazine. Had no idea it was even considered, but for some reason the old version of my poster was submitted, not my shiny new one. Oh well, I can't complain, it was submitted, and that's awesome! So go vote for me and my classmates! http://www.animationmagazine.net/pitch_party_09_vote.html

Story

Amelia is a young girl who has a dream to fly. She wears her pilot’s cap everywhere and at every moment, even when she sleeps. She also loves to play on her tree swing, the closest feeling she can get to the exhilaration of flying. One night when she falls asleep, she gets an even closer encounter.

She finds herself in a whimsical and colorful dream world where her tree swing is on a floating island high among the clouds. She’s enjoying her swing as usual, swinging higher and higher as she goes until she jumps clear off her swing. To her surprise, she doesn’t fall – she flies! Amelia takes great advantage of this and soars to new heights, getting a birds eye view of her surroundings. While she is enjoying her flight, a canary flies up beside her and chirps merrily at her. Amelia takes great enjoyment in her new company until the bird does something odd. Somehow, the bird’s chirps start sounding more and more like the bells of an alarm clock chiming…

Amelia wakes up the next morning, sleepy but still happy from her pleasant dream, and turns off her alarm. She looks out her window at her beloved tree swing and gets a crazy idea – what if her dream could be real? The idea excites her and she sprints out of her house and jumps on her swing.

Everything is going perfectly and she’s about to get her swings high enough for sure lift off when she hears a loud crack. The branch her swing is on suddenly breaks from the tree and crashes down on her. She is unharmed, but extremely disappointed, and finds herself pinned to the ground to her family’s, the Earharts, farmland… for now. 

Treatment

            The idea of the film was first based on the actual story of my own kindergarten self somehow thinking that a dream I had about flying was the real deal, which in turn led to a slight accident on the swing set at school. The story has since evolved into a tale not about myself, but of a young Amelia Earhart taking the steps to achieving her goal of being able to fly someday, but going about it perhaps too early and in the wrong way. The story is completely fictional when pertaining to her, but is applicable to any child who has done something somewhat foolish and learned from it.

The first part of the film is Amelia’s flying dream, and I want the audience to be able to share in her enthusiasm. The colors will be saturated and warm, while some of the elements will be whimsical in design. The tree swing island, for example, will be surrounded by nothing but white fluffy clouds and will feature a spirally trunked tree with cloud-like leaf clumps. Amelia will consistently be dressed in her usual brown attire to keep her linked between the dream and the real world and also to help contrast herself from the brightly colored dream world. When she wakes up, she’ll be on an early 1900s Kansas farm setting, where everything has a dusty coloration to it that she fits into well.

            Amelia is obsessed with flying, and hopefully the audience will be able to gather this subtext. She has a dream about flying, which helps for one. But to drive the point further, she is constantly, even when sleeping, wearing a pilot’s cap that just manages to fit her oversized head. Her room will be decorated with posters and images of early model planes, much like her real-life version, Amelia Earhart, flew as an adult. There will be some slight references to her real life as well. The real Amelia Earhart slept in a leather pilot’s jacket to make it look more worn in, kind of like how this young animated version of Amelia refuses to remove her cap for sleep. The canary present in her dream is a reference to the first plane Amelia Earhart owned, a yellow Kinner Airster biplane that she nicknamed “The Canary.” Her crash landing at the end of the film is also a reference to her real-life counterpart’s mysterious end, how simply something just went wrong and things went awry.

            The film is to be done in 3D, primarily everything being done in the Maya program. The look I am hoping to achieve is as close to feature quality, such as done by Disney and Pixar in their 3D films, as can be done. Amelia, the Canary and their settings will be stylized to an extent while having a softer texturing applied. There will be no dialogue, save the Canary’s chirpings, and the animation will have to be driven on subtle expressions and movements from Amelia.  Overall, this should be an enjoyable and happy film with a slight twist at the end that shows that some dreams should just wait till later.

Animatic

Storyboard

Shotlist

SC01SH01 – Establishing shot. Truck-in through clouds to see floating island with a tree with a swing that a little girl, Amelia, is playing on.

SC01SH02 – Mid shot, three-quarter view of Amelia enjoying her swing.

SC01SH03 – Profile shot , Amelia continuing to enjoy her swing, each swing getting higher and higher from before, till she jumps.

SC02SH01 – At first confused and startled, Amelia floats from the lower left of the screen. After a few moments of realization, she decides to enjoy her flight and zooms off screen right.

SC02SH02 – Far shot, Amelia zooms in front of a cloud

SC02SH03 – Through the clouds, Amelia flies in from screen left and views the tree island from above.

SC02SH04 – Far shot again, Amelia flies to screen right.

SC02SH05 – Amelia floats in again from screen left, enjoying her flight, until she hears something to screen left. A canary flies in.

SC02SH06 – Close-up of canary, chirping

SC02SH07 – Close-up of Amelia, amused by the bird

SC02SH08 – Mid-shot again, Amelia enjoys her company with the bird until the canary’s chirps turn into the sounds of alarm clock bells ringing.

SC03SH01 – Amelia’s bedroom. Alarm clock is going off, about the same position the bird was in the screen just before.

SC03SH02 – Amelia wakes up and turns off the clock, smiling slightly from afterglow from her flying dream. She turns to screen right.

SC03SH03 – Slow truck-in to window. The view looks almost exactly like from the dream.

SC03SH04 – Slow truck-in from last shot continued, onto Amelia face as her expression changes from contemplation to happiness.

SC04SH01 – Elliptical shot. Camera is focused on the door to the house, which Amelia bursts out of, and runs to screen right.

SC04SH02 – Just like SC01SH02, except shorter

SC04SH03 – Just like SC01SH03, except instead of jumping at the last swing, she looks up in surprise at the sound of a crack from above her.

SC04SH04 – Camera angle like SC01SH02/SC04SH02, except quick truck-in to the tree branch the swing is on.

SC04SH05 – Branch cracks open then breaks clear off the tree, falling down. Leaves fly up from the bottom.

SC04SH06 – Amelia is pinned under the branch. She looks up with a face of disappointment.

SC04SH07 – Truck-out to show more of the farmland and a mailbox with “EARHART” written on it. Canary flies in from the left.

SC04SH08 – Amelia looks at the bird, which looks back at her. Fade to credits.