Another one of my roles within this collaborative animation, was to write the script. I have never written a script for an animation before, but the layout reminded me of a play so I thought it would be enjoyable all the same. Taking the role of script writing, meant that I would be able to strengthen my pre-production skills. I can become more mindful of every scene by considering each element, such as where each character is set, how they they are going to say things (e.g, with a sigh, with a stressed voice). I am able to consider stage direction, and timings. This will benefit me when I come to asking people to narrate our interviews, as they will have a lot of instruction from the script, as well as a good vision of what their character may be feeling with the scene descriptions.
Before I got onto my very first rough script, I sat with Hayley and together we wrote down the main points we wanted to get across within our character interviews. By writing at least eight valid points, we could then orientate an animal to each point, then give them a personality, and then give them a voice. This was so helpful for me, as it meant that I could form a narrative with facts that I could put with a character and personalise them. Hayley had done some great research as well, and had her own visions of how she wanted the characters to come across, so we were able to be diverse and have variety within the different interviews.
Whilst we were still together, I wrote a very rough structure of the way we wanted the animation to be set. This is an extremely rough script, but it allowed me to get more of an understanding of how the animation was going to be constructed. For example, we decided that we were going to have the Farmer start a topic about how he has been affected by climate change (e.g more flooding) and then switch to an animal character (e.g a sheep) who then explains how they have been affected, such as not being able to graze, which is a secondary effect of the flooding. By doing this we would be covering sub topics in an interesting and creative way, that will hopefully be entertaining as well as informative and engaging. I also think it is a clever way to introduce secondary effects this way, instead of having random facts all over the place. We want the documentary to flow, be cohesive and actually educate the viewer.
We also tried to involve the facts in a way that is almost like story telling. Especially because our animation is one-two minutes, I think having countless statistical elements would perhaps make us fall into making a boring documentary instead of an appealing one. Therefore by personifying our animals, we can use them as the driving vehicle for facts and statistic but through analogies and personal accounts which is harder to do with live action!
Then, because Hayley and I had gone over the script together, I used the BBC's example script to form a more professional and coherent one of my own. By doing this, it meant that when asking people to voice our characters for us, they can really get into character because they can easily read the direction, as well as understand the context of the animation, and what mindset each character is coming from. It also allowed me to see how we our going to construct our animation more clearly. For example, there were some parts that needed to be tweaked to make more sense, and some parts that needed to be a little bit longer, in order for the animation to feel like it flowed more. I also added some more little facts to emphasise the documentary element of this animation, as well as portraying it in a more professional manner, particularly since we have a more informal dialect and natural instruction for our actors to mirror. I still wanted the script to be polished, business-like and taken seriously.
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