Step Outline

Scene One - Alfie comes home, unlocks door. Walks straight through to living room, kicks shoes and bag off. Turns on TV. 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' is playing, and the 'basilisk' appears on screen. Alfie cringes away from TV and runs out of room. See him running upstairs.

Scene Two - Alfie is upstairs getting changed and he looks at the bed. Snakes begin appearing all over his bed and Alfie freaks out.

Scene Three - Alfie is laid in bed reading a book, and decides to go to sleep.


Scene Four - Alfie starts to dream that he is sat ont he sofa watching the cartoon 'Phineas and Ferb'. Snakes start appearing around him, and he runs upstairs, scared.

Scene 5 - Alfie is under the duvet scared, whilst the big red snake follows him. Alfie faces his fear and overcomes his phobia of snakes.

Scene Six - Alfie wakes up in his bed, and gets out of the bed, happy.

The basilisk can be seen in the previous blog post, this is the cartoon 'Phineas and Ferb':

Stop-Motion Animation

We have decided to use stop-motion animation in the dream sequence as it will make the whole film appear more child-like. We may use elements of stop-motion animation in other parts of the film, as Alfie sees snakes appear out of nowhere. Stop-Motion will be a little time consuming, but should be achievable and should look quite effective. We have been looking at Stop-Motion Animation videos on youtube, and seen how smart the overall effect is. Here are some which we have looked at:

Step Outline

Scene One - Alfie comes home, unlocks door. Walks straight through to living room, kicks shoes and bag off. Turns on TV. 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' is playing, and the 'basilisk'* appears on screen. Alfie cringes away from TV and runs out of room. See him running upstairs.

Scene Two - Alfie is upstairs getting changed and he looks at the bed. Snakes begin appearing all over his bed and Alfie freaks out. Hears his mum and dad come home, so he goes back downstairs.

Scene Three - His mum and dad have bought a new pet snake - Alfie's worst nightmare. He tells them he doesn't like snakes and won't hold the snake. He goes upstairs.

Scene Four - Alfie is laid in bed reading a book when mum comes in to say goodnight. They talk about why he doesn't like snakes.

Scene 5 - Alfie has a dream where snakes are chasing him, and he is running away. Snake eventually catches up with him and comforts him. Alfie seems happy.

Scene Six - Alfie wakes up in his bed, goes downstairs and wants to hold his snake. He is no longer scared.


* The 'basilisk' is a huge snake from the Harry Potter films. It looks like this:

Dream Sequence Idea

We have changed our dream sequence idea too. Now, we are going to have Alfie looking around normally, and lots of snakes being there - he does not react to them in everyday life. However, in his dream, he reacts to all the snakes and gets frightened. We will be buying 15 small stuffed snakes, green and 10cm long from IKEA to place around the house randomly, and 1 large stuffed IKEA snake, red and 1.5m long for in the dream sequence. We plan to use stop motion to animate the big red snake slithering towards him. It will be quite an abstract dream sequence, with lots of quick shots, odd camera angles and distorted colour.

Equilibrium

This is how we will use Equilibruim throughout the short film:

1. Equilibrium - Alfie gets home
2. Disequilibrium - Parents aren't there
3. Makes himself at home - turns on telly - 'Anaconda' is playing
4. Parents come home - equilibrium should be ok, but they have a new pet snake
5. Sleeps and dreams a scary dream of his pet snake chasing him
6. Wake up and holds his pet snake first time. And feels safe - equilibrium is restored. character has gone on a journey that will enrich his life.

Change of Plan

We have a new group member, Sam, and so we tried to think practically about how we could overcome certain obstacles. For example: we had to find a nursery rhyme book which included all of the nursery rhymes we needed. This proved to be difficult because we would of had to make our own, and we needed Jake and he was unavailable at the time. We also have to do some re-shooting, so we thought we could change the idea, and include Sam more, as she helped come up with the idea.

So, today in Media we decided we are now using a snake instead of a spider because it is more easily accessible for us. We also feel children are more inclined to be scared of snakes than spiders. We can now get rid of the Nursery Rhyme book which simplifies some of our problems, and we have a pet snake at our decided setting, which is used to being handled. We will have the 1997 film 'Anaconda' playing on the TV, as this relates well to snakes, obviously. And we can also have the boy dreaming his pet snake eats him, just like in the film 'Anaconda'. This simplifies our lack of spider films available. We have to do some re-shooting anyway, so changing the plot line isn't too complicated for us, it doesn't change our schedule. We plan to film at the weekend, and can start on the animation dream sequence this week.