So far the CPR module has been something of a problem. Originally I had four ideas, each viable and something I'd be willing to make. However, as time went on I began to turn on them. I wasn't getting any strong ideas of how to realise them or flesh them out, I was becoming more and more concerned about how I would create them to an acceptable standard by the deadline, and if I'd be able to make anything worthwhile out of them at all.
After all, this is supposed to be the 'big one'. The project that is the summation and culmination of all I've done throughout my years of development and my four years at PCA, and yet none of these projects felt right. Since I detailed these ideas at length in a prior post, I won't go into great detail, but a brief summary of each follows for the sake of clarity.
IDEA 1 - "WHEN WORLDS UNITE 2"
A sequel to/remake of the final Level 0 film. The original featured a team-up of all the various creations I'd made that year, and this idea would involve the original cast being expanded with a roster of newer creations of mine, and this time hopefully there'd be a better payoff to getting everyone together than in the original, which had great buildup for a hugely lackluster ending.
IDEA 2 - "TRAPPED INSIDE YOUR MIND"
A writer is attempting to write the great screenplay that will make them famous. However, they have major writer's block, compounded by the fact that the characters from the story have literally leapt off the page. Live-action, with the characters from the story-within-a-story realised with animation.
IDEA 3 - "INTERGALACTIC NERDS"
A full animation-based project. On a space station in the back end of nowhere of the galaxy, we follow the day-to-day lives of the shopkeepers, bartenders and other alien creatures who have to clean up after and deal with the intergalactic heroes who pass through on their high adventures.
IDEA 4 - "THE NIGHT SHIFT 2.0"
For the last project of FD Year One, I made a very poor film called 'The Night Shift'. It was intended as the opening sequence of a hypothetical feature film, but was hideously botched in execution. This idea would involve remaking the film with animation, perhaps playing the original before or after the new version for comparison.
As may or may not be evident, these ideas all have insurmountable issues. The Night Shift 2.0 would be fine as another random project for a module, but as the CPR film doesn't have the necessary 'finality' or that special quality that you'd expect of a film that is potentially going to get shopped around to film festivals.
Trapped Inside Your Mind would be acceptable if I had the resources and time to do so. It would require much, much more planning and production time than a few months to realise, and not to mention it would require a full crew of people, something I don't have. Unlike most of my colleagues, I don't have a mob of qualified friends to utilise in putting together a full-on cast and crew, so it is out of my league right now.
Intergalactic Nerds (working title) would also work pretty well, but would also require quite a bit of development time to finesse. It actually started life as plans for an extracurricular production during FD Year One, with several people willing to provide voice-work. However, the project has been on the backburner for going on three years now, and during that time still hasn't coalesced into a compelling story. Some ideas for where to take the premise arose, from just having a Clerks-in-space kind of narrative where we follow the day-in-the-life of several of these characters, playing around with the idea that we're actually in a low-budget sci-fi film, but the 'heroic' characters who are supposed to be the protagonists are background characters/nuisances in the actual main characters' lives, and said main characters are the people usually in the background. Another idea involved an attack on the station by evil forces, and by chance the evacuation leaves behind only the main characters, leading to a Die Hard/Red Dawn type of scenario where the least heroic people are left to defend their home. Nonetheless, neither of these ideas bore much fruit in terms of developing into a more concrete storyline, and I think trying to force it will only lead to ruin. Forcing an idea into production when I'm not happy about the quality of the story led to most of the problems the original When Worlds Unite had.
Speaking of which, When Worlds Unite 2 has a combination of all three problems. Not only do I lack the sufficient personnel to make it look even half-way professional, not only is it still just a premise with no narrative even though I've thought about the project and what I'd do with it practically since the original film was completed, but it again suffers from the 'not-ready-for-prime-time' problem. It was a major problem with the original that it was hard to follow without the context of the several films it was picking up story threads from, and increasing the cast only compounds the issue, since I'm the only one who's seen every single one of my films. If I let the film play out with no explanation for what is going on and who's who, then the story will be unengaging and unintelligible to everyone who isn't me. If I include recaps of what's happened, then not only will the opening be overlong and stale, but the concepts the audience will be barraged with in the first minute or so will be so out-of-left-field that it will be overwhelming. If I go to the lengths of working the entirety of all of the original shorts into the film, then not only will the film's running time skyrocket, but it'll also ruin the 'team-up' nature of the concept. In fact, the way I'd sum up the problem with the idea is that the appeal of a team-up movie is largely built on the novelty of seeing recognisable pre-existing characters join forces, and none of these characters are recognisable to anyone but myself.
So, naturally this left me with four invalidated ideas, and having to scramble for a new one. Fortunately, one that feels right and is viable in the time and my current skill level finally came to me.
IDEA 5 - "UNTITLED"
Set in the same kind of universe as Intergalactic Nerds, this idea is based upon a similar concept: the everyday lives of aliens in a deliberately stereotypical sci-fi setting. However, this time it has a twist. Instead of being a narrative-driven piece, it is instead a piece in a similar vein to Aardman's Creature Comforts. It would involve conducting live-action interviews with real life people, most likely my colleagues and any lecturers who would want to be involved, and recontextualising the interview audios with animation. While Creature Comforts turned a Brazilian man complaining about English weather into a lion complaining about the zoo, this project would turn interviews about the college and the course into a mockumentary about the opening of the first film college on the alien space station Intergalactic Nerds was going to be set on.
I'm excited by this idea far more than I ever was by any of the preceding four. Not only is it doable, since having static characters talking is easier to animate (and something I've successfully pulled off before), it involves connecting with fellow students in a way that sitting on my own making something entirely by myself wouldn't. Back when Intergalactic Nerds was an extracurricular project and I was searching for people to do voices, I gave each person the chance to dictate what their character would look like as a way to both entice more people to agree, and as a way to get the creativity and unique viewpoints of others into the film without them being massively involved.
It's an idea that seems far more possible and exciting than any other I have had for this project before. Now comes the one part that really makes-or-breaks the project: finding people willing to participate.
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