Title (Tentative):
“Blue Collars: An Iron Ceiling”
Where It Began…
My idea for my thesis project is a short animated film. It is inspired by the current socio-political climate in the U.S.–videlicet, the country’s bloodied history of police brutality and racial inequality, the modern #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the year 2020 in general. I was also heavily motivated by the powerful, yet subtle method with which Studio Ghibli and Pixar films are able to articulate global issues within the guise of cute anime movies.
Setting:
I have this image in my head of a fictional setting divided as such: police and upper class have demonstratively better living conditions within eyeshot of the industrial, working class. This setting draws heavily from the social hierarchy and living conditions within Korea, China, American inner cities, etc. The setting I’ve described is one of the more significant facets of my film, as I wanted it to be familiar yet ambiguous. In doing so, I hope to remove any bipartisan or pre-existing notions about the people inhabiting both sides in order to present a narrative that can evoke empathy for all actors and objective contemplation. This will be accentuated by the use of character designs and overall tone, as I plan on making this film monochromatic (with subtle but impactful usage of color for key scenes or characters) and designing my characters as animals rather than humans. I haven’t actually decided which of these paths to go down entirely, though I’ll likely implement both in some capacity.
Plot:
As of currently writing this, I’ve all but settled on the plot for my film (with some caveats). I haven’t given any thought to the actual dialogue/script for the film or if I want my characters to say anything at all, in all honesty. I do, however, have the entire plot–or at least the significant sequence of events–mapped out as follows:
- All industrial workers live in squalor and work on the same row of factories (there actual place of employment is still liable to change depending on where I go with the character designs, i.e., animals vs. humans)
- Our unnamed protagonist is a worker at one of the factories
- The first sequence of events follows his/her daily life, as they eat breakfast, go to work in the morning, clock out and leave with the same group of workers at night, walk home, see the ‘other side’ living lavish, go to sleep repeat
- This is followed by a montage of this same sequence repeated and sped up/scenes are shorter but the same each repetition–until they witness an officer beat down another worker, though they don’t recognize either of them
- Montage continues, inter-cut with escalating acts of violence against the workers and scenes of two different schools for the two classes respectively; I’m thinking that this will be introduced with the child of one of the working class friends and juxtaposed with the child of the upper class neighbors
- The montage continues to speed up, symbolizing the fact that this violence has become normalized from the protagonist’s perspective (the first scene of police beatings is vibrantly colored but slowly fades back to grey as the montage continues and becomes more rapid)
- Montage comes to an abrupt stop for a scene in which the brutality of the police collides with our protagonist’s desensitized mindset when the worker being beaten on the usual street is one of the group members that had been noticeably missing from their usual walk home–the officer in question is going to be the one that our protagonist has seen on his walk home every day
- Slow pan to our protagonist and a tight frame of their face as they watch the beatings–shifts from this cut to zoom out and reveal that our protagonist is now one of many, surrounded by a crowd of workers with the same exact expression as their own and lined up at the street the divides the two social classes
- Fin.
*This sequence of events is likely going to change as I make more progress on the actual storyboard and animation process, but the motive behind the events is definitive. The scene that will probably change the most is the ending (sequence 8) as it feels a bit too direct and may prove counterintuitive to my initial priority of emphasizing ambiguity and dual-empathy, even to me.
What’s Next?
– Come to a final decision on character designs (currently split between humans and characters that resemble the polo ralph lauren bear)
– Initial storyboarding
– Settle on a vision for the actual scope of the project–that is to say, do I want to make the full film? Will I even be able to do so? Should I shift my focus more towards a teaser/trailer in scale?
