Reality Check

You know that moment when you're working on story-beats based on your script and you get the feeling that you've lost control of the story? Well that's what has been nagging in my head as I struggled to visually rough out the script after a few rewrites. So after listening to guest speakers and looking through other peoples honours projects I started to think about what I was trying to cram into a year and whether I was in fact as my supervisor said I was, 'trying too hard.'

Having spent an entire Easter break thumb nailing and roughing out story-beats, today felt like a kick in the guts, but in an odd sort of way, one that I needed. I realised that I was indeed trying to fit in too much and trying to say too many things in the one piece of animation. After some discussion today I left my supervisor's meeting feeling a little deflated but also more than a little bit relieved because now it finally made sense. I now understood why I had been so stressed and why I was panicking- I had bitten off more than I could chew and I realised that I wanted to savour a morsel rather than chewing like mad to get it done to some kind of standard.

So now with a half completed collection of story-beats and a script in tatters I am planning to regroup and really think about what I want to say with this project and how I want to communicate with the audience. And the very notion that I can put this current version to one side rather than having to struggle on regardless is something that I am getting used to because in the back of my mind I knew that I had some kind of issue with the story, but I just couldn't see what that issue was until some plain talking identified it. At the moment, when I think about the wasted hours of storyboarding it makes me a little sad and a lot annoyed, but then I think I would rather sort it now than later because at least at this point I can move forward with greater clarity and a stronger commitment to my original premise without getting bogged down in an overcomplicated or unworkable story.