A Short-film project about how our parents raised us to be adults, while they were still children inside.
STORYLINE
What seems to be two warriors fighting each other for fame and glory in a magical realm...
happens to be two young siblings competing for their parent's attention in a summer holiday. The children are bored from the beach routine after days of vacationing. While the grownups are enjoying the procrastination, away from work, the kids find a couple of sticks and pretend them to be legendary swords. Fantasizing about the mighty battles they would fight, this naturally brings on the "me more" competition game, but on an epic scale. When the unsupervised fun escalates out of hand, the youngest child gets hurt. Then the adults intervene and teach their children an important lesson: not fighting but making peace and caring for each other is what will always bring them love, attention, and recognition. The final twist comes when we see the parents are as playful as their kids, because that´s what adults are.... children with responsibilities.
ANIMATIC
Here you have a basic previsualization addressing timing and mood:
SYMBOLISM
The applause, both from the fantasy kingdom and from the parents in reality, represents the emotional validation these siblings seek, and it drives them into their confrontation. Each kid and his warrior depiction selfishly want all the attention and love for themselves. They daydream about it in their fantasy, but they only achieve it in reality after they embrace each other, as brother and sister.
The rainbow represents their egos. One character is right-handed and the other is left-handed, each has a side of the rainbow. We won´t see the full rainbow arc until they learn the value of letting go of their differences, in order to grow together and belong to something bigger than themselves.
The swords represent the tools that our parents give us to face challenges in life. Even if we are raised and educated in the same family and school, we´ll have a different way to absorb, understand and use what we learn.
ART DIRECTION
In the fantasy sequences, the shots should feel handcrafted. The idea behind this is to keep a childly playfulness and freedom to it. Layout-wise, the camera would never be absolutely still, keeping a bit of a hand-held feel. We are inviting the audience to be those rough warriors, so the camera has to convey that. Small zooms, pans, or motion blurs, would be short and quick, rough, but never change dramatically the framing or composition. Reframing would come from editing. We´d animate on threes or even fours where needed, accentuating this measured organic imperfection. There would be a final compositing pass to enhance production values with DOF and lens flares. Smoke, fire, water (river and waterfall), would be designed and animated as simple graphical cycles. On the other hand, the heavy VFX for the emotionally driven effects, which is the rainbow´s magic from the swords and laser guns, would break the style and be realistic.
In the reality sequences, the visual shapes would have clean edges, fluid animation and perfectly still cameras that would establish a distance between us and this family in the beach. During this section the audience is just observing, so this time the camera will move in longer steady pans, reframing the shot. We'd play with photorealistic collages for the environments, with a more limited palette and less dramatic lighting. Reality is less exciting than imaginary worlds, though still beautiful and relaxing during a beach holiday. Effects like the ocean´s waves, bbq smoke or sand dust would be realistic; but on the other hand, the emotional VFX when the children embrace and we see the complete rainbow arc, will break the style and be graphical. By breaking the art style introducing one element from the opposite narrative´s visual language, we´d subconsciously interlace both worlds better.
In the parent´s futuristic sequence, the shapes are more geometrical due to their adult perspective. Adults are less free to create raw fantasy worlds and they use what they remember; so visually it would feel funny in an old fashioned low-poly sense of design and animation, but still cool.
MUSIC & SOUND
The whole piece is silent, though the characters make noises and laugh.
The music will need to differentiate these moments:
Children's fantasy / boy's epic / girl's epic
Applause achievement (same music for both)
Duel at the waterfall (combines both epic themes)
Mom's a giant
Dad´s nerd futuristic fun.
The reality sequences have no music, just the sounds from a beach environment.
