Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 6

Writing the Script
This week we wrote the bulk of the script for the animation. We went through a few drafts, passing it on to each other to update and rewrite until we were happy with it. Tess wrote the first draft of the script, crudely arranging the quotes we printed off in a coherent manner on a piece of paper then writing it up on the computer, before passing it on to me and Brogan. We then sat down and rewrote large portions of the non-dialogue parts together. It was important the script adhere to the conventions of scriptwriting, so while writing it I referred back to Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind script. While our animation tonally has little in common with this script, Kaufman packs his scripts with a good amount of detail when setting a scene or describing a characters motivation, which I feel is important for the purpose of what we're doing, as our idea is not easily explained and we want audiences to get the point we're trying to make the first time they watch our animation. Its also handy to have a professional script on hand to know how to structure your script.

While Tess' script did have a coherent structure and implemented the dialogue very effectively, me and Brogan both agreed tonally it was a bit all over the place in regards to the narration and direction. So we made a few minor changes to the narration and the way in which scenarios play out to reflect a more dry humour sensibility. We rewatched some episodes of The Office as research for this, identifying how the direction captures the mundanity, arrogance and awkwardness of its cast of characters in a sort of understated fly-on-the-wall way. Another thing we identified from watching the office was the way in which the cameraman is sort of a character in and of himself, with his placement in the scene and the things he chooses to look at adding another subtle layer of comedy to the proceedings.

We also looked at examples of comedic character's as the centre of a mockumentary, such as Alan Partridge and Philomena Cunk. As for the narration, we made the decision to play the voice straight, without making any quips or jokes, as we wanted Keith to be the centre and focus of the comedy. Secondary characters also were written a little more straight-man-ish, as a way of placing greater emphasis on the absurdity of Keith as a character. This is a comedic technique thats been implemented in Philomena Cunk's documentary segments, so we're hoping to emulate that sort of style.