We got lots of nice stories from them as well, from before they had dementia and how those stories changed after, which was quite upsetting.
For example in one of the interviews she said her grandmother used to make riddles about simple tasks as a joke. Such as "i was seduced by a giant melon" when she bought a melon from the supermarket. However later on when she had Alzheimers, she began to get more and more distant and mostly just sat on her chair.
Even something as simple as this story is saddening because although people may not be able to relate to having a family member with Alzheimers, people can always relate to change and loss.
These themes of change and loss are the main features of peoples experiences with family members who have Alzheimers. Also i feel that our animation should be based on the perspective of the family members around the Alzheimers patient. My reasons for this are, our research is primarily based on this perspective and me and Meg have first hand experience also. Basing it on the perspective of someone with Alzheimers, whilst maybe opening up a lot of options in terms of story, it would be hard to stay accurate. It would be hard to give an accurate picture of what its like to experience Alzheimers as none of us have and getting first hand research from people with Alzheimers is a possibility but we feel as though the people that are more effected by the disease, or the damage the disease inflicts, are the relatives of the person with Alzheimers.
Another story we had was that the person we interviewed, Hayeigh, her and her mom became essentially full time careers for her grandmother. Hayleigh was just 13 at this time so this must have been very hard for her to understand and accept at that age. She said that sometimes her grandmother would think she was a child and other times she thought she had no kids or sometimes had more kids than she did.
It must have been very hard to see someone disintegrate so much and have no dignity left at the end of her life.
On Friday we realized we needed to get a story down as soon as possible because we have been spending too much time on research and we need to form a good story from all that research, this was much harder to do than we thought.
We started by listening to the recordings and writing down the key stories that could be represented visually. This was quite useful but we were still struggling as to how to represent the effect of Alzheimers on family members of those effected. If we would have just animated along to the stories we would have felt like we failed. The reason for this is that in our opinion, mindlessly animating to someones audio clip may create an emotional response but primarily due to the audio. This approach to an animated documentary is also very unoriginal and uninspired and has been done constantly.
We wanted a more intelligent, creative, emotional narrative for our documentary.
As well as the interviews, we listened to a recording of my mum telling me some stories about her mother and grandmother who both had Alzheimers. Some of these stories were very visually adaptable but also quite cliche. For example, one of the stories was of her grandmother being found by the police at 3 in the morning in the pouring rain. Another was that her grandmother thought her husband, who had died a few years previously, was still alive and was hiding in a closet. She would shout at him through the closet.
The last story is similar to a story from one of the people we interviewed, Megan, who told us that her grandmother used to speak to her husband, who had also died previously. She said her grandmother really believed he was still there and that sometimes her family used to sit in the chair and pretend to be her grandad and her grandmother would still think it was her husband.
Seeing correlations between stories in our research informs us of the more common effects that Alzheimers has.
After listening to all the recordings and noting down stories we were still struggling to come up with any interesting, impactful ideas so we watched the short film 'Isabella' by Ross Hogg and Duncan Cowles. At first i didn't really like the simple imagery of it but then i began to feel like it was very relevant to the subject matter of Alzheimers and i really liked the extreme close up shots, i feel like they really brought out the character of the woman well.
These shots reminded me of some of Lars von Trier's work. He also uses close up shots in a way that really brings out the characters. We could utilize this technique in our animation to better describe the feeling we are wanting to convey.
The extreme close up shots were the main inspiration we got from the film 'Isabella' and also the abstract imagery was something to note. Another point in the film i really liked was when the woman slowly and quietly said "i cant remember". Although this is a simple and almost cliche way of showing what Alzheimers is, it's very raw and effective at making the audience sympathize with the character.
We started storyboarding some ideas based on the recordings, however i still didn't feel that this was the right path as although some of the stories were interesting. the visual representation of the stories wasn't really enough to make the viewer interested in the animation or to inform the viewer of how it really feels to have a family member who has Alzheimers.
The next day we continued to work on the storyboard but we still felt it was pretty meh, not very interesting or impactful.
We then chose to work through the most interesting recording, displaying it visually. This felt more interesting than the last storyboard however it was still quite bland and nothing particularly interesting.
We then realized that our animation doesn't necessarily even need characters or a conventional narrative. What our animation needs to accomplish is conveying the feeling's of loss and isolation associated with Alzheimers to our audience. What we need to do is work out the best, most effective way of doing this through a visual medium.
After trying out some more approaches, none of them were really working and we were stuck. Then Guy said he might have a good idea. He told me to bear with him and that the story doesn't have to be this big complex thing that were striving for it to be.
His idea was a very simple one. To focus on a small part of the last recording in which she explains how her grandmother used to repeat "nice weather isn't it" over and over.
If we based the entire animation around this, it would make it simple and effective. We don't need all these strong cliche's and complex transitions, what would impact our audience the most is subtlety.
We worked on this idea, and found it exciting and realized that if we can do this effectively it would tick every box. However to make this idea work we have to be really vigilant with our storyboarding, layout and especially our animating.
The core of the idea is having an old woman looking out the window and in the room are her son, who is reading a newspaper, and her granddaughter who is playing on a gameboy or something similar.
The first time the woman says "nice day isn't it?" the man looks up from his newspaper and says "yes mum" or maybe even just looks up and doesn't say anything. The second time the man doesn't even look up at his mum but just turns the page of his newspaper. This is what i mean by subtlety. The reason it may be hard to pull off is that we need to make it clear to the audience that the man is ignoring his mum but in a passive way, he is not getting angry, he is just used to it.
Guy suggested the man clench his fist when she says it the second time but i suggested it would be better to maintain this calm environment and he just turns the page of his newspaper. This still shows he is ignoring her but just in a more subtle way. The son getting angry wouldn't be relevant to what we're trying to show.
The third or fourth time she says it, we though of having the granddaughter asking her dad "whats wrong with grandma". However i suggested that the granddaughter doesn't even say anything but just looks up from her game at her dad. Personally i think this would be enough to show what the girl is thinking without saying it and therefore keeping the tension of the scene. Having her ask her dad the question would break the tension for no reason. She is looking up at her dad out of confusion or curiosity but she senses her dad is not in the best moods for questions so she returns to her game and doesn't bother him.
Seeing things from the characters perspective is important to determine what would be a more believable response to certain situations.
What all of this is doing, the old woman repeating the line and the son and granddaughters dismissal of her, is building the anticipation. Anticipation isn't just used in the process of animation, it can be applied with great effect to the story. I mentioned the tension of the scene previously, the tension is very similar to the anticipation and the way we are structuring the tension is to not break it and keep it slowly rising throughout. Some ways we can do this is through starting off with wide shots but slowly transitioning to closer shots until we're at extreme close-ups, although this is just an idea. Using the anticipation/tension in this way will make the audience feel like something's wrong and will make them feel uneasy.
We thought briefly about the ending, about maybe having a transition of her family disappearing and she's in a care home, still staring out the window and repeats the line one last time, but this is something we still need to develop.
Below are some early storyboards and concept art:
No comments:
Post a Comment