This article is the continued from series of articles –Story Writing For Animation. You can read them all articles by clicking here
Music starts slowly . . . now beats are clear . . somebody whispering in the ears . . may be talking . . blurred faces. . pictures are becoming more and more clear . . its like being hypnotized . .Beautiful scenarios are appearing . . colors and brightness of scene is increasing. . music on its peak. . AND DAMN ALARM GOES OUT OF CONTROL . . .
You suddenly wake up . . but its ‘eureka’ moment . . nobody is in the room . . You are delighted, finally you have found new concept . Totally new, nobody ever had imagined! You start writing the story and drawing the characters . . Hello WAIT FOR ME THIS WILL HELP YOU BEFORE GOING DIRECTLY TO STORY. . .THIS ? (wait, I’m discussing in ‘this’ article).
Here I go . .
“ So Many ideas start with great passion AND TURN INTO A WHIMPER of FAILURE , Because the Bigger Picture was never understood by its WRITER in first place”
Sir Tony White
It happens most of the time that we start with great concept , we create good setup , good conflict and don’t know how to end the movie ? And then we start changing , setup and conflict , finally so many loose ends are created in the story . .great concept dies right in front of us. . . .
But here is the good news we can avoid it by CREATING THE OUTLINE. In simple words it means Summary of the story. Its also known as LOGLINE of the story .
But how does this will help?
In this you have to describe the whole film in just few sentences. This shows the exact flow of your movie. It becomes the Directive of your movie. Strong and clear Directive ends in successful movie on screen.
When we create the Logline for our idea indirectly we show that we have complete control on our storyline.
Here is the LOGLINE FOR “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film) –
Which is described in the “Disney Animation : Illusion of life”.
Jealousy leads a vain queen to threaten the life of young princess, who flees in the woods where she is befriended by the seven dwarfs. When the queen, in disguise tricks her into eating poisoned apple, the girl is thought dead and preserved in the glass coffins until a prince awakens her with love’s first kiss.
See the way Disney Artist created the directive for the Story in few sentences.
Because of this type of logline we understand easily the loose ends in complete movie while unfolding it .Its always essential for us to know the way we are resolving the CONFLICT and ending the movie. RESOLUTION is must be believable. We learn all that Three Phases in detail but before that we have to learn the skill of Creating the LOGINE.
Some important things that we should remember for LOGLINE:
- Try to cover the concept in few sentences.
- In logline setup-conflict-resolution must be stated directly.(Refer the example Given above).
- Use the attractive verbs , adjectives in the Logline.
- Keep the plot very clear , avoid the complications in the LOGLINE.
- Always remember LOGLINE directly specifies the Basic drive behind the story.
Try to develop the LOGLINES of the movies you loved or seen, it helps to improve the skill of developing the Directives.
Now we are ready for the story structure and story building.
In next week we will see the story structure (Setup-Conflict-Resolution) in detail.
Thank You very much .
Mahesh
For All Animation Story Writing Lessons click here
