We had this great workshop with Lucy Lill yesterday! 😀 It was all about stories and character archetypes and the things to think about when making stories for our graduation films next year.
She got us to do a really fun exercise – which made the usual day of just sitting in front of a computer that much more exciting and interactive! I got to see the faces of my classmates, whom I’ve not seen for a while due to all this online learning during lockdown. So the first game we played was, imagining a picture in your mind and then each person adds something to it. Lucy began with a sunny day on the street in Rome, with a boy holding a fish standing next to a fountain. By the time this got around the group, we had the boy licking an ice-cream statue outside a gelato shop with ice-creams mirroring the colours of the rainbow that was formed because of the water from the fountain and the bright sun! I did miss the end because of wifi issues, but it was fun!
She then told us a story from Grimm’s fairytales called ‘The Seven Ravens’:
So in short here is how this story goes –
There was a farmer who had seven sons, but he longed for a daughter. Finally on a wintery night, his daughter was born, but she was frail. So he sent his sons to the village to bring back some water from the well and a priest. His sons rushed off to get some water, but on the way they slipped and the jug broke. The sons came back empty handed to a very angry father, who cursed them to leave and fly away; so they turned into crows and flew far away. The girl however, lived and grew to be beautiful. One day whilst in the village, she overheard some women talking about her now sad family. So she went to her father and learnt the truth. That night, she slipped her mother’s ring off her finger and while her parents slept, journeyed to the very edge of the world, where the sun scorched her and the moon froze her until she jumped. The stars however, caught her in a net and laid her onto the ground. When the girl woke she saw a crystal castle at the end of the field where she lay. She ran to it and found a keyhole, but she couldn’t find a key. So she cut off her little finger with a stone and used it as a key. She finally got in to see seven bowls of soup on a table. She slipped her mothers ring into one and hid in the cupboard. Soon her brothers appeared and one of them found the ring. She then ran out to them and cried and her tears turned them into humans again.
Lucy put us in groups and got one of us to tell the same story in 3, 2 and 1 minute respectively. The point of the exercise was to realise that we can’t get out every detail in a single minute, so by nature we condense the story down to main points or ‘bones’. The audience would still understand the story without all the unnecessary details! So as an exercise we just picked what we thought we the bones of this story.
- Sick daughter
- Father curses sons, they leave
- Daughter discovers the truth
- Goes on a quest
- Makes a sacrifice
- Brothers recognise her
- Curse is lifted
Then we spoke about what would be the beginning, development (middle) and the end. For me the first two points would be the beginning, then 3, 4 and 5 would be the development or act 2, with 6 and 7 being the climax ending.
Lucy then gave us another exercise, where we break down a film we love/watched and I picked Harry Potter (the entire series, which was probably an oversight on my part).
Here are the bones for Harry Potter:
- Orphaned baby boy is sent to live with aunt and uncle
- Grows to learn he has magical abilities
- Goes to magic school and makes friends
- Faces challenges presented by an evil lord
- Learns the truth about his past
- Goes on a conquest with his friends
- Destroys the evil lord and lives happily ever after
Okay that felt a little weird to say the least as I love Harry Potter (both books and movies) and was obsessed with the series when I was a teenager, so it was strange and hard to have to leave out so many important details that make the story so much better!
I also tried to do the same to Ratatouille, another one of my most loved Pixar films! So here are the bones:
- Rat that loves to cook
- Gets separated from family
- Lands up hungry in a restaurant’s kitchen
- Meets a clumsy boy
- Becomes his confidant and helps him cook (literally)
- Boy finds out he is the heir to the restaurant
- Fame gets to him and is challenged by a food critic
- Everyone finds out about rat
- Rat opens his own restaurant
She then showed us these two films:
I thought that the animation techniques in Lucy and the Limb were great, especially the combination of what looked like either puppet/stop-motion with 2d characters. I however, did not quite understand the entire story. At first I thought the limbs belonged to the boy who is revealed at the very end, but then the boy discards his body and just becomes one with the limbs. I did understand that it was a story about an unnatural friendship.
The second film Nuggets however, I understood straight away that it was a film regarding addiction and how that has a toll on the birds body as it continues consuming it. The point came across clearly with the repetition in the animation and as the bird becomes heavier the background goes darker. My classmate Clo pointed out how the yellow nugget stays bright throughout, emphasising this metaphor of long term addiction to a particular drug.
The idea was for us to understand that sometimes keeping simple characters with strong stories can help make the point/main idea come across clearer than spending ages with details and intricacies that aren’t required and might have lesser impact on the audience.
In the later half of the session we moved on to characters:
Lucy mentioned Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling: ‘Come up with a character’s personality and then challenge them to do something that they are uncomfortable with and see how they would respond’
We looked at archetypes and here are the ones that Lucy shared with us:
- HERO – Slaps chest and says ‘I can do it’
- MOTHER – Open arms ‘I love you’
- KING – Crown on head ‘make it so’
- CRONE – Grasps ‘Mine’
- TRICKSTER – Looks over shoulder ‘Who me?’
- CHILD – Raises eyebrows with wide eyes ‘Hello world’
- HELPER – Raises hand ‘I’m here’
- VIRGIN – Head down eyes up ‘I have treasure’
- DEVIL – Eyes straight beckoning ‘do what I say’
- WISEMAN/HERMIT – Looking up ‘Listen’
We then picked two of these and came up with some drawings for them. My choices were the crone and helper:
We also got together in groups and discussed what kind of archetype pairs would work together, which ones wouldn’t and then what those archetypes are comfortable/uncomfortable with before the end of the very lovely session!
I really enjoyed this fun and interactive session with Lucy and thanks to her learnt a lot about characters and what’s important in a story and what’s not! I look forward to meeting her again next term!