Ideas and Storytelling - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 95

Developing ideas
I often do workshops about storytelling, with the emphasis on the freedom of imagination that
animation allows; these sometimes involve throwing various ideas and images into a hat, and
pulling out a random selection. We throw in a brief description of a character, then a location
or context follows, and i nally we throw in some sort of dilemma or weakness, or at least a
complication. These are all standard elements for any story. The details on the bits of paper are
hugely imaginative, and sometimes it is a tough task to pull out three bits of paper and link
them all into a cohesive story with a point.
Occasionally, a story comes out that is just perfect for a short animated i lm, and one such was
from a group of young animators in Portland. The i rst character we pulled out was a three-
legged dog. He immediately seemed appealing because of his vulnerability and uniqueness.
The location was a futuristic urban landscape, where all grass and trees and vegetation had
been replaced by artii cial equivalents and masses of concrete. It is a city run by robots.
We didn't immediately think of an obvious story, as the robots seem to be the main and
immediate image, but the dog as an outsider here was an interesting idea. The next piece
of paper to be pulled out was the complication 'the character needs to go to the toilet
immediately. This caused many guf aws, but at once I started to link the three random images.
Some story elements went of on embarrassing tangents, but there seemed to be something
worthwhile here. The robots seemed to be a red herring initially, but I thought that robots
don't need to go to the toilet and would not necessarily have considered the needs of others,
let alone a little dog, and the idea of a three-legged dog seemed to make the idea of going to
the loo even more of a drama. All the elements started to fall into place, making a story about a
cold hostile environment, where robots had no need of natural things like trees, or of biological
functions. This lone dog was some sort of survivor, and still with biological urges, and needed
to go to the loo, but there was an interesting twist. Being male, he could only do so against
a tree. The i lm could be developed into the quest for the perfect tree: I know my cat would
have made all manner of informed and fussy decisions before he was content. The soil is either
too wet or too exposed. The scope for gags about the unsuitably of the right spot is endless,
and add to this the ticking-clock element of how long his bladder will last, and there is the
basis of a self-contained short i lm. The escalation of all the compounded frustrations, such as
running gags about sights and sounds that make his toilet needs greater and more desperate,
would need some pay-of , such as i nding the perfect tree only to have it uprooted and the
whole thing start again. Losers can never reach their quest, Tom will never get Jerry, nor will
Coyote ever outsmart the Roadrunner. I should sit down and write the script for this dog and
the perfect pee i lm. Even as I write my mind is stumbling over itself with a million gags and a
million pay-of s for a story that seems to have gelled from three random ideas. And what's the
story of the missing leg?
What strikes me as suitable for stop motion are the textures, with a suitably hairy and
textured dog puppet contrasting with the smooth textures of the mechanised
world. The lushness of a single green tree makes an interesting visual, and there
is good scope for sound. Also, the movement of the dog, with his frustration
and release, would be a gift for any animator. It would be a hard audience not to
have empathy with this dog; a simple l aw makes him endearing. Underneath is a
substantial theme of natural urges being unsquashable. All in all, this could be a
pretty ef ective ten-minute i lm. All it needs now is a budget and a good title.