thoughts on storytelling

Everyone wants to succeed, no matter what they pursue, but the secret to success doesn't lie in the how much you want to succeed, it lies in how hard you are willing to work for the success. You will never change where you are by continue doing what got you there. You must be willing to sacrifice your comforts and do what the people around you aren't willing to do. This is all common sense. Yet there always seems to be something holding us back.

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel Story Rules Part 3: Story Is Character & Character Is Story Story Rules Part 4: Lacuna - Create Space the Audience People often confuse lack of clarity and being hard to understand with being deep and intellectual. Nothing is further from the truth. If you have a message that you want to communicate, you need to make yourself understood. To make yourself understood you first need to make your audience want to listen. To make your audience want to listen you need to make it clear for them what they have to gain by listening to you. Remember that your audience never owes you anything. They have already invested either time or money or both to listen to you. If you don't repay their investment it is your own fault if they get bored and don't want to listen.

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel Story Rules Part 3: Story Is Character & Character Is Story Every storyteller loves subtext. Subtext is what takes a story to a new level, and does so by creating a synergy that lets 1+1=3. I believe it does so by adding a hidden number to the equation 1+1(+1)=3. This hidden number is the audience. Or with other words: Subtext is the part of the story told in the audiences imagination. To let the audience participate in the story they need to have room to do so. A gap needs to be created. I like to call this gap " Lacuna ".

For the previous parts in the story rules series: Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel The story, and its message, is revealed through character choices. The characters choices reveal who she is, her strengths and weaknesses and her weaknesses is what creates the struggle, what reveals the solution, the message.

(You can find " Story Rules Part 1: Kill your ego " here) Storytelling should be easy. It is something we do everyday. It is something we've taken part of since we where born. It is something that comes naturally when we speak. So why then is storytelling so hard? Some how we start "unlearning" what we know when we start over-thinking on a subject. Just as when we try to walk perfect and natural we end up walking stiff and unnaturally, when we try to tell a story perfectly the story often ends up being stiff and unnatural. Often the reason we do this is because we try to reinvent the wheel as a cube.

While walking the path of improving my storytelling, walking down several paths that led to a dead-ends, I've today have a few rules I try to follow as my main strategy. Always trying to improve, some of these rules probably will change in time, but I feel that they are fairly universal and apply to other areas than just storytelling. First of: Kill Your Ego Everybody wants to be successful in what they do, but we focus more on ourselves and on how we will be perceived rather on what our goal and the quality of our work. What we seem to forget is that it is only by being good at our craft that we will be seen as being good at what we do.

In the previous parts of this series I have first written about how animation isn't about creating movement but about creating life , how as an animator you achieve this by using only three tools and the basics of how these three tools, the pose , the timing and the spacing , work. But knowledge is worth nothing without experience. It is by combining knowledge and experience that we get the wisdom that we need to be able to start to master the basics of our craft. As always, saying this is one thing, doing it another. Although the animator only uses three tools, the usage of these tools gets complex. Not only can they be used in several ways on their own, they also always influence each other. Change one and you chance the rest.

In this series I've already explained how animation is the art of giving life and how this is done by using three tools . I've gone through the basics of the first two tools: the posing and the timing , and now it's time for the last of the tools: the spacing. Compared to the pose and the timing the spacing probably is the tool that is the hardest to understand how to use efficiently.

Previously in this series on the basics of animation I've talked about how animation is about revealing character and how the animator only has three tools to do this . In the last article I talked about the first to: the pose , and now I will get in to the second tool: The timing. The timing is the time, or amount of pictures/poses between two key poses, or two breakdowns. The timing can also be the time the character takes to react to something. Or a simpler way of putting it: The timing is what creates the rhythm of the scene.

Previously in this series I've covered that we as animators always need to remember that our job is not to create movement, but to create life , and that we only have three tools to get the job done . In the animators toolbox the tool that is the easiest to grasp probably is the pose. The poses are the individualpictures in the animation. There are the "key-poses" (sometimes called "storytelling-poses") which are the poses that are the most important to communicate the message of the scene or WHY the scene is in the film, then there are the breakdown poses which are the most important poses needed to communicate HOW the character gets from key-pose to key-pose. Last but not least are the inbetweens, the poses in-between the others, the poses that creates fluidity in WHAT the character is doing. Although the inbetweens often are seen as the key-poses illegitimate younger brother, they are just as important as the key-poses and breakdowns.

Animation = to give life, as I wrote about in my last article . Saying this is one thing, doing it is a whole other matter. This article will cover the basics about how animation is done. When we first get in to animation, and have learned how to make things move, I think we all always try to take a too big leap forward. Instead of mastering the basics of our craft we start looking at small technicalities, like worrying about if the inner or outer part of an eyelid that moves first in a blink. Although we theoretically may know that we need to learn the basics, we yet often need to take these leaps to learn this on a deeper level and understand that we need to take a step back. But at times, instead of admitting that we need to learn the basics, we continue to work on things out of our reach. The irony here is that it is our fear of looking incompetent that keeps us incompetent. To develop as animators, and as people, we need to develop humility to see that we always have a lot m...

People often misunderstand animation as making characters move although proper translation of the word "animation" is "to give life". Movement does not equal life. We don't see life in characters that only behave as robots controlled by the animator. For us to interpret life in the character her movements need to be motivated by the character herself, her psychology, her emotions, wants and needs. Movements not motivated by the character herself is bad animation.

The storyboard is a universally accepted step in the process of making an animated film. But how often do we question why we actually make the storyboard? Generally the answer is that the storyboard is a tool to make the plot of the screenplay visual. In my opinion this is not a good reason. Everything in a film, from the screenplay down to each individual shot or sound, should be there to help convey a message or theme. If we, while storyboarding, focus on the plot, which itself also is a tool to convey the message, we're only focused on illustrating a tool that tries to convey the message and not on illustrating the message itself. This may seem like nit-picking, but in my opinion, if we want to make a film that really moves our audience, we need to use every possible chance to improve on the how the message is conveyed. If we only storyboard the plot of the screenplay, we don't take the storyboard as a chance to improve.

We value knowledge. As group living animals we feel that knowledge moves us up the hierarchy. But what we fail to see that our knowledge often makes us narrow-minded. We may say that we seek to learn more, but we mainly seek to strengthen our opinion and seldom to disprove it, fearing that disproving it may make us seem stupid. We act as solid rock instead as moldable clay and by doing this we stop to develop, stop moving forward. To develop as people we should learn from those around us that are wiser. Those who accept that they don't know everything and those who aren't afraid asking questions will make them look stupid. Those who allow themselves to develop. We should learn from children.

Here in Sweden there is an over reliance on voice over in animated films, and its done to the degree that, if you would turn of the sound when watching them, you'd have no idea of what was going on. All of the story is told in the voice over, the animation and visuals are only in the films to give some visual stimulation to the audience while they listen to the voice over telling them the story. You could say that most Swedish animation is illustrated radio rather than film.

This is a continuation of the article Subtext Through Metaphors and Metonymies. If you haven't read the previous article, please read it first . I learned a new and shiny word the other day "Lacuna", the word meaning a missing segment in a text or a silent part in music. Lacuna is a word that I think nicely describes what this article will get in to, how 1 + 1 can equal 3. The answer lies in the missing part...

We have all heard that great stories are told through their subtext. But what is subtext? Generally it's said that the subtext is what is not being said, but if this is the case, why doesn't a TV, that's been turned of, communicate a lot of wonderful subtext? Saying that subtext is what's not being said is just explanation using empty words and has no practical value. Subtext is the part of the story told in the audiences imagination . To use subtext optimally we need to influence and control our audiences imagination and do it with out them noticing it. If they start noticing the tools we use to try to influence them they will be paying attention to the tools and not the characters and the story - with other words: We've lost them.

On Concrete Babylon as on other films, after I've found what I feel is a story idea/concept that is good enough that it may be developed in to a film, the first step, or milestone, for me is to make the one-sheet. A one-sheet is a short description of the film containing a key image, story pitch and project description. The reason behind creating the one-sheet is that it sums up the project in a short and easily digestible way that can be used both for external parties, to help get funding, and, more importantly, for the creators to create a stable base to build the rest of the film on top of. The one-sheet also helps in defining the goals of the project and making them more concrete which allows the creators to work more focused and make faster decisions by being able to see if the different choices actually works towards the goals.

When starting of as filmmakers, a lot of people confuse being unclear with being deep and sophisticated. I used to think the same, now I know nothing is further from the truth. By trying to be different and deep by making a story hard to understand, not wanting to follow "traditional story structure", using over the top metaphors, telling the story non-linear and telling the story in a way that is often considered more "advanced" storytelling you are actually telling the story exactly as what you'd get when asking a five-year old to tell you a story. Behaving like a five-year old isn't as sophisticated as people like to make it. People tend to be afraid to give out too much information, especially at the beginning of the story, thinking that it will ruin the tension of the story, but the opposite is true. Not giving out enough information is what will ruin the tension.

The way I've planned the Concrete Babylon project differs from how I've worked previously. I used to plan my film projects very linear where I started with the story, decided on a theme and then wrote a synopsis before moving on to the outline to the treatment and to the screenplay, then I did the character and set designs, storyboard and the animatic before moving on to do the animation and, after a huge amount of time, when I was done I moved on to the editing and sound design. On paper this always looked good. One element building on top of the other, constructing the film one step after the other. But the problem was that nothing in the world works perfectly linear.