Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Building . In this short, a man is singing in his shower. Next door, an old woman
pounds on the wall to get him to stop. The pounding causes her cat to fall out a
window into laundry hanging out to dry. The cat trampolines off the laundry into the
face of a pizza delivery boy on a scooter. The scooter nearly collides with a bus. The
bus crashes into the base of a crane. Missing the bus, the boy on the scooter rides
up the stairs of the apartment building where his pizza fl ies through the mail slot of
an apartment onto the bathroom fl oor just as a woman is stepping out of the tub. She
slips on the pizza, grabbing a shelf to catch her fall. The shelf breaks, sending a boom
box into the face of the crane operator. The crane operator passes out and hits the
lever sending a giant magnet spinning in circles. The magnet picks up the bus and
sends it into the building, knocking out the guy who was singing in the shower. The
old woman settles down in her chair unaware that the building is barely standing
while a bus full of screaming passengers continues in circles.
Ripple effects require a number of events because problems spread out in all direc-
tions. It is often diffi cult, in a short, to have events spread out and be able to bring
them back to resolution. Le Building was a traditional animation and a group project.
It would be diffi cult to execute this in 3D as an individual or small group.
• The Butterfl y Effect. This is the age-old theory that if a butterfl y fl aps its wings in Aus-
tralia it will create tiny changes in the atmosphere that have nonlinear and catastrophic
effects (hurricane, tidal wave) elsewhere in the world. [5]
Increasing the Intensity of the Confl ict
In the short, most confl icts are compounded. All confl icts must rise in intensity until the character
is in crisis. Again, crisis doesn't have to mean chaos or catastrophic devastation. It means the
character reached the lowest point in the story where he or she learns a lesson, makes a deci-
sion, fi gures out the problem, and so on. It can be small. It can be just an itch.
One of the common problems in story development is that multiple events are created for the char-
acter to overcome, but the events do not rise in intensity. The story doesn't really go anywhere.
Increasing intensity has to do with raising the magnitude of a problem in a specifi c way.
Some of the ways are to raise the magnitude of the:
• Physical Obstacle
• Physical Jeopardy
• Mental Jeopardy
• Activity
• Energy
• Strength
• Competition
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