Woman of the Moon

STORY

As mentioned, nailing a good story and developing it thoroughly has been important for me this year. I sunk a lot of this year into the development of the story. I wanted to build on my narrative in dissonance (my undergraduate film) as many people said they were confused by it as they were not musical. It seems that it has always been a part of my character to look to tell a difficult tale. For instance the aim of this story was to visually represent inspiration. Through-out the entire process, all the changes, the narrative has remained at a level about inspiration.

It makes the most sense to start at the very beginning. In my inspiration post I talked about a film I was working on in my spare time about 3 years ago. The narrative for that film involved a grandfather and a grandchild and a shared goal. It was more so about looking up to someone you know in real life. That film kind of came back in this film. I see this film as much as sole successor to that plan.

But back to talking about the film that this became instead. Initially I spent time mechanically and methodically planning it out and thinking about hitting every plot point that made a story up -

I was using milanote to divide the narrative into beginning - middle - end and then further into call to action, points of no return and climax stages. This version above is the initial thinking for the first version of the concept. It involved 2 characters both chasing their dreams and one being spurred on by the other's success'. The version beneath is what it became after a lot of working into it and condensing the plot, removing elements and ultimately really confusing myself.

When it came to boarding out the scenes I knew I wanted this to be a silent film and i wanted to improve my visual acting through that. It then became important to quickly identify how to discuss complicated topics like inspiration, dreams and desires when there can be no words. In the following sections I have broken the storyboards down into three sections - early story, middle and end. As early development changed so wildly that it is almost impossible to follow a concrete narrative from beginning to end.

In the early section of the film I began by attempting to establish both character's aims, wants or their relationship with each other. For example the sepia version below is one of the first boards I did for the film. I had a shot I could see in my head of them star gazing with a huge moon behind them, discussing their dreams and promising each other to chase them. The difficulty came with the lack of dialogue. It proved difficult to act out non tangible concepts like aims and dreams - a sentiment that Jared echoed in later conversation. There are several revisions of that initial idea explanation part of the film in the image below.

Then I boarded a second version of the intro where the creative character was actively struggling with art block. This was more in the service of establishing their relationship and what they meant to each other. To the creative character, the astronaut is just amazing, she is her muse and her inspiration and she spurs her on. Or at least she is meant to. I later find that making her admiration come across as inspirational and not abusive or smothering wasn't hugely easy. But these were the boards I made to learn that. There's an example of that in the right hand side. Where the creative is stuck and throwing ideas into the bin until the astronaut comes in and then she is able to have an idea - which is represented in an abstract sequence.

The last idea to discuss came from the thinking that both these ladies needed to have some reason to have to chase a dream, something must have to be stopping them, then when one breaks through they would pull the other up with her. So because the film was black and white and was going to be about space travel the route I decided to go with that was to have them held back because they wanted to go into typically masculine roles. The example of this is on the right but before the line.

In a very early test I actually turned the sepia sequence into a boardimatic to see if I thought that the visual acting could work -

I actually think it turned out better in a boardimatic than in just the storyboard and one day I'd like to return to a short visually acted scene like this with the aim to practice visually acting more complicated emotions and concepts but this was just a quick test for the time being.

I followed this line of thinking for a little while, having the astronaut achieve her dreams in order to inspire the painter. I thought a long time about how to off set their story points with one another and I structured that thinking in Milanote but unfortunately I didnt keep any pictures of that stuff.

The next section I've separated out for you is the middle of the narrative. This one is pretty messy because the middle and the end went through a lot of changes during the development of the narrative because these were usually where the narrative fell apart.

Here in the middle section I initially played around with the idea of the astronaut getting her first success and this causing the painter to have panic attacks because she fears she cant follow the astronaut. I thought about having the astronaut try to encourage the painter through her art block and her not be able to help and but eventually seeing the astronauts success will help the painter through her art block. I kind of wish I could have done justice with this narrative too because I liked the idea as well but it became convoluted and their motivations weren't clear the whole time. The painter wasn't a very likable character because of her mental block, it made her apathetic to the forwarding of the narrative. The other issue with the narrative was that the astronaut became very pushy and condescending when trying to coax the painter out of her art block. In the end it just became the wrong kind of film. It wasnt inspiration anymore.

I also looked at having a section that showed the astronaut's growth in achieving her dreams against the painters stagnation. But I really dont like montages so I cut those out of the film pretty fast. But I did learn some interesting things about repetitive imagery making longer time pass faster and constantly changing imagery making time pass slower in narrative, so that's a plus!

When it comes to the end I didnt do as much thinking on this because I always knew it needed to end with the astronaut coming back to earth to join the painter. Which meant I didnt have to do as much problem solving as before.

The first idea followed directly on from the idea that she had a panic attack mentioned in the middle section. The painter zones back in from her panic attack to find that she is now at the NASA launch observation deck and her partner gives her one last hug before being launched into space. The first pass of the story had the painter then being really inspired by her partner achieving her goal and then she goes to an art gallery to pursue her own goals. But the logistics of this script were confusing as the constantly changing locations were seldom explained and there was no room for this in the story itself. But ultimately the decision not to do this kind of thing came from the fact that without the dialogue it was still difficult to explain and to convey to audiences. I really didnt want to add dialogue in because even though it is a skill I am excited to try out, it want right in the context of this film and I felt strongly that it would have been a better film without dialogue. I was also worried that a bad script that then relied on dialogue to help it through wouldn't allow for any good visual acting.

I was pretty fond of one aspect of the initial idea phases though. The astronaut was supposed to encourage the painter to illustrate the side of her rocket and in the end she would see her painting taken to space. That scene in boarded below. Then next to it there's a version where the painter still feels constricted but then is able to break away from her constraints thanks to the astronaut.

The bottom three are from when I began to reconstruct the film and started thinking roughly about when they would meet back up again. and how that would look. So there's 3 different versions of the painter waiting for the astronaut to land again.

I worked into some of these ideas a lot further before arriving on the version of the film that I was happy to move forward with. I went the route of having to overcome a masculine dominated world for quite some time. Having the girls face physical and mental challenges to their achievements seemed logical at the time and it gave the audience something to follow if they didnt understand the less typically explored emotional narrative of the film (always a worry I had with Dissonance).

In the board immediately below is a better explored opening shot where both women are up against their workplace frustrations. They are both attempting to break in to typically male dominated industries - engineering and the arts and this opening scene was to establish this, as well as their personalities and relationships with each other. The astronaut is silenced by men at a press panel and he painters work is turned down by gallery execs without so much as a second look (as my board says below, I love that scene) I like the movement through it as it doesn't allow us to stop either. I like the framing, it feels kind of suggestive of something else by the fact that the audience cant even see the paining they're being shown and her speedy rejection is humorous to an extent. So even though it didn't make it into the film it's a scene I'm proud of.

When the astronaut comes home she finds her partner leaning up against the window, gazing out of it. Leaning, if you will, on the shared source of their inspiration, the moon and one another. At the sight of it the astronaut drops to the ground in defeat, pulling her arms up longingly to grasp at the distant moon, a tangible wish that remains outside her reality. But after the conversation finishes the astronaut is recharged and ready to keep trying her idea of making a rocket ship herself. Which then causes rubs off on the painter as she turns to keep working.

I actually think the script here is better than memory served before this point. I just remember all these early scripts being god awful but this has some well thought out moments in it. However, I can still tell I wasnt convinced on certain parts due to how terrible some of the angles are, and in choosing messy angles it makes for a confusing read. Which isnt good for a storyboard. I was trying to choose lower levels for the eyeline to make it seem more real but that really didnt work and I had to draw lots of angles I then felt were objectifying. Maybe there's a statement to be made there but it wasnt what I set out to do so all that has to go!

Moving on this board beneath is a sequence where the astronaut has been watching the painter work for quite some time and is reaching a supportive hand out to encourage her partner. She asks her to pain her ship so she can share a part of space with her. And in return while the painter is helping her with her ship's aesthetics the engineer applies a little bit of science to one of the painters less successful illustrations, introducing her to the golden ratio and the golden spiral. At the end of the day they both apply their new knowledge gained from the other to their own pursuits and are better for it.

I actually think this scene is pretty sweet but it just didnt function the way it should have. The painter gains far more from this scene than the astronaut, while the astronaut comes off as the driving force behind the scene. This imbalance once again made the painter character less interesting than her counter part. I was beginning to doubt that I could make this story work with both characters.

A film should be the most interesting thing to happen to the most interesting character in the film and as it stood we werent following that story or that character. As long as the astronaut was in the film she would always have the better story to tell.

Once a few of these avenues failed to produce anything I liked I began to look at sending the astronaut to chase her dreams earlier on in the story and having the painter recover her source of inspiration from a distance. This came after a conversation with Alan where we decided that the idea of distance and space should really provide the solution to the narrative and not just be another random part of it, as at the time it didnt really provide a purpose to the film.

In the board below I establish relationship quickly through a pan past a lifetime worth of art works of a couple growing up and falling in love till we arrive at our stuck artist. She muses at the walls briefly before her excited partner comes storming in. She is visibly excited and bursting to tell her partner something but the other is just so pleased to have her muse home that she begins attempting to paint her before anything else. However, she pauses after seeing the disappointed look on her face. She finds out her partner has been accepted onto the nasa space program and while she is upset about her partners departure, she is still very happy for her achievement, so she swallows her own fear and celebrates. But this only allows her fears to be revealed in her artwork.

This was fine but in reality I didnt like the notion that this film would then be about change and adaption, when I knew I wanted it to be about inspiration and that person in your life who is just so amazing to you that you cant help but be find inspiration in all they do. This wasnt that.

On top of this I animaticed a few sequences from this period of thinking too

So after much narrative stress I came to the decision that I needed to really rethink this thing. Nothing was safe until I was happy. Up until this point the astronaut had been my favourite character and that really seemed like an issue for the film as she wasnt the main character or the films focus. Jared gave me a few books to read that encouraged me to attempt to view the same narrative through multiple different lenses and I think this exercise went a long way to fixing the film.

The first idea I had was to lean into the more abstract elements of earlier ideas. The screen was split and a painted reaction to events was portrayed in half the screen. I liked it but it became repetitive and it was hard to match a painting to every emotion I needed.

The next version I tried something very different to what I had done. I had this quick little thought about the couple having had an argument about the astronaut going to space and her waiting it out on the moon. While the moon watched this whole fight and decided to send the astronaut back home. But omg was that hard to commit to paper. So it didnt really make anything any easier.

But thinking this one through did really help me with the idea that eventually became my final film.

This didnt take me long to write out and it went through very few changes to arrive at this stage. It just felt write. I committed to removing the best character in the film in order to build the kind of narrative I wanted for the other and I'm so glad that it paid off in the end.

I boarded the script out being sure to cut it into chunks so it could follow the phases of the moon concept that helped so much in the restructuring of the film. It was also at this point that the idea of the colour scheme began.

From this point I am delighted to report that things went a lot smoother. I turned this whole project around in 2 weeks and I was very pleased with myself for it.

This version of the story went on to become the film. I feel as though this version captures the initial intent for the film far better than any of the other versions had so far. Neither character is superior in their aims. Both are likable and the one being inspired by the other is the focus of the piece.

The rewriting also gave me time to explore the idea of artistry which in the end I feel was important to understanding inspiration and it's place within the greater creative pipeline.

Figuring this narrative out really was a blessing. I felt comfortable moving forward knowing that all I wanted to achieve was being achieved with this telling.