Group project woes.
Nov. 8th, 2012 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meitantei_cjFor our final project in Digital Storytelling, we've broken into groups and have to pitch a story about the Kogi people in Colombia. I'm in a supergroup of six people. (The other groups have like three people in them.) We all wanted to do a children's story. I would've loved to do a children's storybook, but Annette, the resident "I love film" person, jumped on film and everyone else followed suit, so I said nothing. We're not actually MAKING the film, we're just pitching it, so it's not that big a deal. Originally we came up with the idea of a coming-of-age story following a little boy. Chosen boys are taken from their homes as infants and raised with a high priest in a cave for eighteen years, after which they're brought out of the cave to experience the sun and everything else for the first time. We had this whole idea of the caves actually being this cool underground network of tunnels, maybe even a city. In my head I saw jeweled walls and such. The problem: The boys are raised in complete darkness. Fine. Plus there's all this other stuff we talked about today in class that we hadn't really considered (they're being killed off by drug runners and ecologists spraying chemicals in their areas; have there been any kids/people who broke the rules/left the Kogi altogether; do we focus on the internal culture or the clash between internal and external).
Jack came up with a cool idea to have two characters, one Kogi, one US boy, and show them (flashing back and forth was what he said, but we could've possibly done a split-screen) as they grow from young age to eighteen, since eighteen is a common age between the two for change. People (Annette) then got it into their head that that would skew too far away from children as an audience and move more toward young adults/adults. And then we'd have to get rid of the fantasy element. And then we couldn't do it without commentary. I said it could have a moral. Stories aimed at children tend to have morals. But no, that's commentary and we can't have that, never mind the fact that it's a fictional story and not a documentary.
THEN there was the issue of how to show what this kid's going through if he's in a pitch-black cave. Lord of the Rings was brought up, specifically Shelob's lair, which as I remember it is described as being pretty damn dark, pitch black. The film isn't depicted that way. The film has things barely visible to infer darkness. We could do that. But no, it's supposed to be black. But you can't see things if it's black. I said if they were raised in the cave from more or less birth, their eyes should adjust enough to see something. At the very least, they ought to be able to sense their surroundings. This happens with fish deep in the ocean. "Now we're getting too technical," Annette and Jack said.
THAT'S YOUR ANSWER RIGHT THERE. If we're doing this from the kid's perspective, show just enough to give the audience something while leaving enough dark to infer the darkness! But no, that's too technical a thing to think about. If you don't want my ideas, just fuckin' say so. I'll sit back and doodle while you agonize.
We basically left with the instruction (from Annette) to write our own stories and bring them to class on Tuesday, and we'll pick one.
I'm seriously about done, and we've just started working. I wish I could just wash my hands of it until they get something written and hand it to me to storyboard, because that is my part in all this. I am the only one who can draw something other than stick figures, so I'm the storyboarder. I want no part of the rest of it.
This is why I don't do group projects.
Jack came up with a cool idea to have two characters, one Kogi, one US boy, and show them (flashing back and forth was what he said, but we could've possibly done a split-screen) as they grow from young age to eighteen, since eighteen is a common age between the two for change. People (Annette) then got it into their head that that would skew too far away from children as an audience and move more toward young adults/adults. And then we'd have to get rid of the fantasy element. And then we couldn't do it without commentary. I said it could have a moral. Stories aimed at children tend to have morals. But no, that's commentary and we can't have that, never mind the fact that it's a fictional story and not a documentary.
THEN there was the issue of how to show what this kid's going through if he's in a pitch-black cave. Lord of the Rings was brought up, specifically Shelob's lair, which as I remember it is described as being pretty damn dark, pitch black. The film isn't depicted that way. The film has things barely visible to infer darkness. We could do that. But no, it's supposed to be black. But you can't see things if it's black. I said if they were raised in the cave from more or less birth, their eyes should adjust enough to see something. At the very least, they ought to be able to sense their surroundings. This happens with fish deep in the ocean. "Now we're getting too technical," Annette and Jack said.
THAT'S YOUR ANSWER RIGHT THERE. If we're doing this from the kid's perspective, show just enough to give the audience something while leaving enough dark to infer the darkness! But no, that's too technical a thing to think about. If you don't want my ideas, just fuckin' say so. I'll sit back and doodle while you agonize.
We basically left with the instruction (from Annette) to write our own stories and bring them to class on Tuesday, and we'll pick one.
I'm seriously about done, and we've just started working. I wish I could just wash my hands of it until they get something written and hand it to me to storyboard, because that is my part in all this. I am the only one who can draw something other than stick figures, so I'm the storyboarder. I want no part of the rest of it.
This is why I don't do group projects.
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Date: 2012-11-08 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-11-08 11:13 pm (UTC)