Inspired 3D Short Film Production: Story — Part 1
A good story is the foundation of nearly every successful animated short. Strong story ingredients are essential if you expect your audience to enjoy, remember, and recommend your film. Simply dazzling your viewers with compelling visuals is sufficient if you are creating a fine arts piece in which narrative elements are intentionally absent. However, trying to hide weak story ingredients behind captivating visuals is a recipe for, at best, mediocrity. Strive for a higher standard and ground your film in a foundation of strong story elements before entering the production phase. Remember that your goal is to capture and maintain an audience's attention and you won't accomplish this mission by telling just any story. You must tell a good story.
We understand you're eager to grab your mouse and start animating, but before you do, it is important to understand some basic storytelling concepts. Remember, even the strongest presentation cannot save a poorly formed story idea.
Defining Story
The simplest definition of the word "story" is the telling or retelling of an incident or event. Stories virtually always involve something physical, mental or spiritual that changes over time, such as a location, a possession or an attitude. For example:
Most of the time these changes go from one extreme to the other. A good situation or person becomes bad. A fool becomes a genius. A tranquil setting erupts into chaos. Life becomes death. Often, these changes come full circle. Rags to riches to rags. Boy gets girl… boy loses girl… boy regains girl.
A short story is one that delivers narrative progression with economy and efficiency.
Theme
Most stories contain a central theme—the main idea of the story. If you tell someone you are writing a book or making a film, he or she will likely ask what it's about (see Figure 1). If you can answer with a single word, such as "revenge," "love," "victory," "escape," "growth," "karma" or "redemption," or a short phrase such as "seize the day" or "blood is thicker than water," then you have a strong grasp of your story's central theme. To maintain a consistent vision as you assemble the elements of your film, it is often a good idea to identify this theme. In the words of Vernon Hardapple to Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys, "If you didn't know what it was about, then why were you writing it?"
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