I'm not sure your current structure gives the audience everything they need to know in order to sympathise with the body-guard. For example, right now, the voice-over is doing all of the work. Don't we need to see the bodyguard making smoothies for the diva in Act 1? Don't we need to see him trailing after her, becoming her slave, cleaning up after the dog, battling with the dog, making more smoothies, cleaning up more poo... don't we need to understand that the diva is a pop-sensation? We need to understand that the bodyguard has been driven to enact his grim revenge, as opposed to just being a vicious psychopath...
Also - tonally, I find the explicit hostility in your script a bit much; the voice over is pretty unpleasant somehow - it makes your bodyguard seem like a bit of a monster, when isn't he really a big gentle giant who is abused my the diva? In this same way, actually showing the dog being blitzed seems unnecessary to me; indeed, it would be more effective if we're shown him looking at the blender, then looking at the dog, then looking at the blender and smiling - and then we cut to the moment he's giving the smoothie to the diva - all of this is much more playful, as opposed to outright gore.
I do think your Act 1 needs re-working; we need to be shown the diva's behaviour towards him, and we really need to see the importance of those smoothies to her routine, otherwise your Act 3 doesn't make much sense.
Re. character design - it's very clearing you've been pushing this along with some gusto and that's great to see. I do think that perhaps the painterly/tonal style needs to be consolidated into something more 'animation ready' - so a consideration perhaps of using flat colour, clean line art and an even greater sensitivity for the structure and shaping of your characters.
I would observe too that you've got a monochrome thing going on in terms of your dressing room - a grey cell, with lots of generic surface that tells us nothing about the diva - when the design of this area could and should be used to tell us more about what kind of pop star she is (posters?), how vain she is (mirrors, photos of herself), lots of flowers and fuss. You need to think about this environment as being an extension of her character, so I'd use it much more to the advantage of the story you're telling.
So - final headline - you need to ensure we feel some sympathy for/understanding of the bodyguard's emasculation by the pop princess; you need to show in no uncertain times the importance of the blender/smoothies to her character, and you need to show the battle between the dog too; without these things, your bodyguard comes off as a woman-hating psycho (and your voice-over isn't helping in this regard right now...).
OGR 05/02/2015
ReplyDeleteHi Adam,
Okay - a couple of observations:
I'm not sure your current structure gives the audience everything they need to know in order to sympathise with the body-guard. For example, right now, the voice-over is doing all of the work. Don't we need to see the bodyguard making smoothies for the diva in Act 1? Don't we need to see him trailing after her, becoming her slave, cleaning up after the dog, battling with the dog, making more smoothies, cleaning up more poo... don't we need to understand that the diva is a pop-sensation? We need to understand that the bodyguard has been driven to enact his grim revenge, as opposed to just being a vicious psychopath...
Also - tonally, I find the explicit hostility in your script a bit much; the voice over is pretty unpleasant somehow - it makes your bodyguard seem like a bit of a monster, when isn't he really a big gentle giant who is abused my the diva? In this same way, actually showing the dog being blitzed seems unnecessary to me; indeed, it would be more effective if we're shown him looking at the blender, then looking at the dog, then looking at the blender and smiling - and then we cut to the moment he's giving the smoothie to the diva - all of this is much more playful, as opposed to outright gore.
I do think your Act 1 needs re-working; we need to be shown the diva's behaviour towards him, and we really need to see the importance of those smoothies to her routine, otherwise your Act 3 doesn't make much sense.
Re. character design - it's very clearing you've been pushing this along with some gusto and that's great to see. I do think that perhaps the painterly/tonal style needs to be consolidated into something more 'animation ready' - so a consideration perhaps of using flat colour, clean line art and an even greater sensitivity for the structure and shaping of your characters.
I would observe too that you've got a monochrome thing going on in terms of your dressing room - a grey cell, with lots of generic surface that tells us nothing about the diva - when the design of this area could and should be used to tell us more about what kind of pop star she is (posters?), how vain she is (mirrors, photos of herself), lots of flowers and fuss. You need to think about this environment as being an extension of her character, so I'd use it much more to the advantage of the story you're telling.
So - final headline - you need to ensure we feel some sympathy for/understanding of the bodyguard's emasculation by the pop princess; you need to show in no uncertain times the importance of the blender/smoothies to her character, and you need to show the battle between the dog too; without these things, your bodyguard comes off as a woman-hating psycho (and your voice-over isn't helping in this regard right now...).