Study Task 5: Practical Approach

For my practical response, I plan to investigate the visual changes in characters who have significant true character development. This is the main way to visualise character development as most of it in the points I've been making are down to internal true character and their choice. So to visualise this idea, I will use the characterisation qualities like; hair, beards, clothing, accessories, attitude, posture, scars, injuries (missing limbs or parts of yourself).

I plan to use the quotes I gather to inspire artworks, I will try to illustrate the idea that the quote is getting across. I want to experiment with melding photos together from characters over time. I can line them up as much as possible and fade between them. I'm not certain what my final piece will be yet. The logical outcome would be character designs or redesigns, however I'd like to think of something else because I'm personally not very interested or confident in character designing.

Study Task 4: Essay Synopsis and Quotes

Characters make a story. Without great characters a story will fall apart. We as an audience need strong characters to connect to. That doesn't necessarily mean the character(s) have to be physically or emotionally strong, however they do need to be fleshed out so that we can really understand and empathise with their person, making the narrative memorable. The viewer need to know the character, and to really know someone takes time to grow with them as they develop. So how does strong character development aid viewer investment in a narrative? That is what I will be exploring in this essay,

My core researches sources are:

Story By Robert McKee

'We cannot ask which is more important, structure or character, because structure is character; character is structure. They're the same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the other' p.100

'TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature' p.101

'Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little' p.101

'Choice under pressure will strip away the mask of characterisation, we'll peer into their inner natures and with a flash of insight grasp their true characters'

Developing Characters for Script Writing By Rib Davis

The protagonist - and where possible other major characters as well - must develop through the script, and the means of that development taking place is conflict.

We allow the audience to learn about our character from what they say about each other and from what they say about themselves, but most of all we learn from the choices they make.

Aaron Sorkin Teaches Screenwriting (Masterclass)

Intention and Obstacle. That’s what creates friction and tension, and that’s what drama is. If you don’t have that, then it’s journalism.

My ideas in terms of case studies are to look into the character development in Breaking Bad, since there is already a lot written about that because of it's critical acclaim. Then, using that, I really want to do my own analysis of the character development in Black Sails as this doesn't have as much written about it due to it being a bit more off the radar. However I personally believe the character development in Black Sails is stronger and so I want to evidence that myself.

In my practical research I will be showing the physical side of character development. How the internal character changes manifest into an external appearance. I will show characters like Walter White, Captain Flint, Long John Silver, Tyrion Lannister and Jamie Lannister as they all have quite significant changes to their appearance as their character changes.

Study Task 2: Reading and Understanding Texts

The text that I read for my subject was Robert McKee's Story. This is a very definitive book on the craft of storywriting. I specifically read the sections about character in which he makes some very interesting and useful points.

'True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.'

This will be a really good and useful quote. In this section he was pointing out the difference between characterisation and true character. He is saying how all characters have the key observable qualities and then who they really are as a person. Their decisions under pressure show the audience what they are really like. And when other characters and they acknowledge it, that is when they develop from it.

'The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.'

This quote stresses the importance of character arcs to make the writing of a much higher standard. This all links to my theme very well since it is talking specifically about how characters need to arc and that it can be for better or worse. The characters I will be looking at (Walter White, Long John Silver, ect.) are not what we would class as good people. They go down rather destructive paths and become darker. McKee's point about revealing true character implies that this dark nature was there all along, it just took the pressure of a situation to force the character to reveal it.

Study Task 3: Images and Theory

How strong character development creates viewer investment in the narrative?

This question allows me to really explore the parts of character writing that I really want to be able to craft myself. I can also look into audience investment and engagement with narrative in general and in relation to characters specifically. 

There have been a few things I've been gradually researching into, the main one at the moment is a video masterclass by Aaron Sorkin. He talks about a great many tips, tricks and formula's to writing stories and characters. In one part he spoke about the fundamental base of drama being intention and obstacle. He talks in great detail about how every character needs to be moving for something and there needs to be something else, no matter how small, stopping them from doing so and that is the basis of writing a drama. From this, good character development will ultimately be when there are multiple events of intentions and obstacles, and these events make the character change the way they would try to overcome them. This is a good springboard idea as it is very simple yet very relevant. 

Some keywords to do with the idea of character development are:
Emotion
Connection
Growth
Evolution
Change
Strengthening
Adapting
Familiarity
Arcs


John Silver - Black Sails
Rick Grimes - The Walking Dead

Tyrion Lannister - Game of Thrones

Jamie Lannister - Game of Thrones

Walter White - Breaking Bad

Study Task 1: Initial Idea / Target

This is what I produced for my target. I am looking into character development for my project. It is something I am really interested in and passionate about. I also want to improve in my writing to be able to craft better stories and characters. 

Essays

Essay 1: Triangulation

The quote that I selected to work with throughout this project is this one from McLuhan, M. 1964.

‘There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided.’

I find this idea very interesting as everyone has a preconceived feeling about the differences between things like TV, film, books, radio, etc. and they each know what they prefer when being told a story. For TV and Film, there are many points to be talked about. I personally prefer TV shows because I love character development. McLuhan claims that a movie is a hot medium because it is more detailed by being ‘well filled with data’ but I think that more often than not, TV shows have much more information to be consumed. Each episode can have so many details that could be picked up on. A character can feel so much more alive in a TV show because we follow them and see how they grow and develop much more than a 2 hour movie can show. TV becomes much more of an investment of time as well, so we end up caring a lot more because we feel closer to them.

However, while TV shows have more time to tell overarching character narratives, they also have to have episodic stories. In a TV show with long form narrative, Innocenti and Pescatore (2014, p.2) say that:

‘single segments maintain a high degree of autonomy and thus episodes will include a central storyline that is concluded in the episode (called an anthology plot) however there will also be a background context that pans episodes (the so called running plot)’.

This means an episode needs to have enough satisfaction of some kind of ending each week but still with enough wonder to make someone come back next time. Movies don’t have as much of this problem. Both of these different delivery methods have adapted the narratives they tell to best suit the medium as Ben Shaul, N. (2008) states here:

‘..the evolution of the language of cinema and of television has devised complex narrative structures based upon such principles.’

Also, movies offer a much greater spectacle. The big screen experience is always incredible. Movies also get much bigger budgets to allow them to have much more expensive effects and actors because TV shows have to generally rely on adverts which don't raise as many funds. The movies generally look better, but I don’t think this really matters, simply because it is the content and the story at the heart of anything and that is what really makes or breaks it.

As for books to films, the common view is that the book is always better than the film, but this is all to do with biases. We naturally usually prefer the first version of a thing that we see so if we read the book of something first then we are bound to like it more. The problems with film adaptations of books is that they are just another person's interpretation of the book.

‘500 different readers of the same book may have 500 different ideas of a character’s appearance. And if an actor doesn’t measure up to what you imagined when reading the book, there’s some disappointment.’ Santos, R. (2013)

I completely agree with this statement as I believe that you create your own version of the story just from the words on the page, making it a personal experience. You have your own mental-cinema and you’re the director. Therefore when a film of a book is made, the director can only really make it the way that they envisioned it when they read it and this is bound to disappoint a lot of others because it’s often not what you imagined.

Time and pacing is also a problematic factor when turning a book into a film. Bazin, A. (1997) says that ‘..films are something completely different from the novels, that they are condensed versions, summaries, film “digests”...’ because a 2 hour movie cannot hold as much detail as a book. Something many franchises are doing nowadays is splitting a book into 2 or 3 films. While this does allow for more of the original source material to be included, it often ruins the pacing of the story. Breaking a single self contained story into multiple movies breaks the 3 act structure that most stories use.

Books being turned into TV shows has been less common until recent years. The most obvious example of this is the immensely popular Game of Thrones. With the book series being told in a long form narrative type TV show, it really allows many more of the incredibly complex and interesting characters details to be included. It is for this reason that I think something like the Harry Potter series would have worked much better as a TV show rather than a series of movies, with each book being a season of the show. It would give more time for each story and each character to develop through the school years in real time with the audience.

I personally think that the whole idea of this ‘hot and cool’ media is a bit redundant. No media is ever really better than another. It all comes down to personal preference and what you want to get out of a story. With TV and film it’s character vs spectacle. Whether you want something to invest in and really connect with deep, fleshed out characters or something that it is less of a commitment and just a great, self contained story. With books and films, it is more like a personal connection vs someone else's vision. They are both valid interpretations but it does depend on if you can put aside what you want a film of a book to be and just watch it for what it actually is on it’s own. At the end of the day, each media thrives with it’s own methods and obviously it does affect and change the way we interact with it but I believe it’s ultimately all about the story and if it is done right for the medium used.

Essay 2: Animation Analysis

The film Treasure Planet is one of my all time favorite animated films, but I am choosing to analyse this because of how the idea of the story links to my chosen quote. Treasure Planet is a stylized film adaptation of the famous 1883 book, Treasure Island and so here I am exploring how this story was adapted, and why certain aspects were changed because of the difference in medium.

Treasure Island is a 300 page book, whereas Treasure Planet is an hour and a half movie, so therefore a lot of the originals details and depth is obviously not included. Treasure Planet still stands strong on it’s own two feet as it’s own story however, just showing that it doesn’t need all that extra detail to achieve its purpose. The biggest change is that the movie is set in space rather than the seas. This is an interesting twist on the classic tale and one that could be seen as the advertising gimmick for the film to attract attention. The change creates a state for the movie where it almost becomes invincible to criticism regarding its adaptation from the novel, since it isn’t trying to be a faithful retelling, it is setting out to be different. Since Treasure Planet flows so well independently, it doesn’t really matter that it hasn’t included everything the book did because, as Bazin, A. (1997) says:

‘..faithfulness to a form literary or otherwise, is illusory: what matters is the equivalence in meaning of the forms.’

The original story has been romanticised through the years and it created the common tropes of the pirate genre including peg legs, parrots and treasure maps. These are all relatively fictional things from the real pirate era but have been exaggerated upon through the years. These elements all work well for a family friendly Disney film. They are adapted in a way to make it fit with the sci-fi theme, so the peg legs are robot cyborg legs, the parrot is a shapeshifting alien called morph and the treasure map is a holographic device. These changes keep it fun and interesting and create a very different experience than what a normal adaptation would be.

Speaking of the specifics of the films adaptation, the fact that this is an animated film is also very important as to how the story has been moulded to fit this retelling. The possibilities of the medium of animation are only limited by imagination and what a person can draw, so they can essentially do absolutely anything. This gives them more freedom to be able to take a more realistic tale and turn it into something of a massive scale. Osborne, R and Brew, A. argue that a

‘Film can brilliantly convey the unspoken menace, the uncanny and the repressed emotions of the individuals.’

This states that film can be much more subtle in conveying its messages since they don’t need to be written, just seen. In animation this would be a more thought through process. Any subtle expressions would still need to be thought and planned unlike on a live action film set where subtle expressions are more subconscious of the actors acting.

At it’s core, the story doesn’t change all that much as it still revolves around the relationship between Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. Their relationship was always a rather complex one since Silver is really the story’s main antagonist, yet he becomes somewhat of a father figure to Jim. This happens to a much greater degree in the movie than it did in the book as it is a much more family friendly depiction so it is made to involve less death and darker ideas. In the novel, Jim’s father died, whereas in the film his father simply left him and his mother. This change gives Jim a different and stronger motive in searching for a father figure in Silver and it’s why I think they put more emphasis on this relationship in the film.

Being a much tamer family version of the story, the terrible things that Silver has done in his pirating career are never really touched on in Treasure Planet, making him a bit more of a redeemable character. In the book, he was much more ruthless and scary and while he did have a soft spot for Jim in both depictions, the film version see’s the relationship developing so much that Silver actually gives up the treasure to save Jim in the end.

The animation in this film is very well done. We are made to really feel for the characters in a great way. Character animation is done in the famous soft and bouncy Disney style and feel that is so easy to connect with and engage in the character’s events. This is obviously going to be down to personal preference depending on how each person likes to consume stories. I personally connect more with the versions of the characters in this film more than the book. ‘One may, on the other hand, see visually through the eye or imaginatively through the mind. And between the percept of the visual image and the concept of the mental image lies the root difference between the two media’. (Bluestone, G. 1968).

Often when old stories are adapted to modern media, they reflect the world of the time it was made, regardless of how old the original story is. This is something that Treasure Planet strives in because it takes this awareness and runs with it, updating language to a modern audience, showing the advance of technology and also giving gender equality by bringing in a strong female character as the captain, who was originally a male in the book. This really makes the film feel more of a modern film while being set in the future and based on a novel from the past.

This is an example of a very unique and interesting style of adaptation that I think could be done more often in order to cut down the amount of basic adaptations and remakes in Hollywood. ‘Since 1995, for instance, more than half of the sixty-five films nominated for Best Picture by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were based on works of literature.’

(Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010)

It is difficult to compare the two tellings of this story because they are so differently told. This is something that I find so fascinating since while it is still at heart the same story, it adds enough new and excited differences to be a fresh experience.

Essay 3: Reflective Practice

The practical side of this module is something I struggled with a little more than I expected. The concertina sketchbook explores the visual side of my quote and the ideas behind it. In my first two essays, I have developed the quote into more of a debate on adaptations and media devices. ‘A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided.’ (McLuhan, M. 1964). This part in particular is something that I challenged and argued against in my prior essays.

My sketchbook also has this development as it goes on. Toward the start of the book, it is focused around the different media delivery methods and I labeled which would be, according to McLuhan, hot or cold. When piecing my images together I came across the fact that the hot or coldness of a media is relative to what it’s being compared to. For example, I was considering films, McLuhan referred to them as a hot medium when comparing them to TV but when they are compared to a book, they cannot hold as much detail, so surely that must make it a cool medium in comparison. This is the focus I came back to for my image sequence which I will talk about more later.

In the book, each page is contrasting with the one next to it. I wanted to keep the pattern of hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. I think this makes it easier to take in the whole picture since instead of understanding everything about hot media and then going on to everything about cold media, it may not be a fair experience. This way is much more balance between both types of media.

After the section on media types and technologies, I had a section on colour. I quite like this section since it clearly shows a distinction between hot and cool media in the form of reds and blues. I think the contrasting colours with the differing aesthetics used to convey the colour work very nicely. This is where I started to move into a bit more specific visual research. I gathered more images from animations and comics. I then went into the section with characters. I showed the heroes next to their most famous villains. This communicates the ideas of hot and cold because of how they are as characters. The villains being colder. I then like the idea of comparing the character from the cool original source material with a newer hot movie adaptation version of them.

The last section of the first side of the book is based around the idea of actual visual idea of data and high definition. I tried to visually represent by contrasting the images with a low quality version including, black and white, pixel art and low poly art.

As I went through the process of refining my essay, I wanted to add more visual research of the books to film. I show the covers of the books vs their movie adaptation counterpart. This is followed by a collage of articles talking about why the books are always better than the films or vice versa. This shows the argument is common within audiences and it is very interesting to see the great general opinion is that the book is always better. This is the same where I show the differences between the treasure island book and the treasure planet film.

‘500 different readers of the same book may have 500 different ideas of a character’s appearance. And if an actor doesn’t measure up to what you imagined when reading the book, there’s some disappointment.’ Santos, R. (2013)

The mass amount of Disney films being remade into live action is something that I am very passionate about. One could say that this is making a story from a cool medium and making it a hot media. I show the list of planned Disney remakes because I find it baffling that their movie plan for the next decade at least, just relies on adapting their old classics to what is seen as a superior media type. It proves how modern film industry is struggling to bring new, original ideas to life and their obsession with adaptation. They are playing safe with stories that they know audiences already liked. ‘Since 1995, for instance, more than half of the sixty-five films nominated for Best Picture by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were based on works of literature.’

(Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010)

The storyboard is something that is basically an elaboration of the points I’ve been making throughout the first and second essays. I visualise how all of the details and plot points from the book simply cannot fit into a movie. I have the book being red to represent it being a hot media and then the script is a blue to show it being cool media in comparison. I believe that this works well in order to communicate the idea of my whole project. I like how it developed to be able to talk about adaptation as I found it interesting and useful.

Bibliography

McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Canada. McGraw-Hill Education. p.30 [Online] Available at: http://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf (Accessed: 12 November 2016).

Innocenti, V. and Pescatore, G. 2014. Changing series: Narrative models and the role of the viewer in contemporary television seriality. Between [Online] Available at: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/4 (Accessed: 15 December 2016).

Ben Shaul, N. 2008. Hyper Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions. Amsterdam. Rodopi. p.17

Santos, R. 2013. 6 Reasons The Book Is (Almost Always) Better Than The Movie. Barnes and Noble. [Online] Available at: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/6-reasons-the-book-is-almost-always-better-than-the-movie/ (Accessed: 4 January 2017).

Bazin, A. 1997. Film Adaptation: Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest. p.21

Bazin, A. 1997. Film Adaptation: Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest. p.20

Osborne, R. Brew, A. Film Theory For Beginners. London: Zidane Press. P.52

Bluestone, G. 1968. Novels Into Film. University of California Press. p.1

Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010. Adaptation Studies: New Approaches. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p.11

Reflection and Proposal

From COP1 I learnt to make sure that I am working on something that will actually be useful to me and my development. I started with a rather different idea that was interesting to me but it wasn't important in helping me develop as an artist and storywriter. I feel that my essays did well at saying my opinion but I need to work more on triangulating sources to back up my opinion. The theory and practice relationship is important but I think that it has different levels of import to different people. I feel that sometimes it simply doesn't need to be so excessive and over the top, over-analysing and looking deep into every single thing just for the sake of it. I will work on making sure that my practice is influenced by the theory and have lots of thought behind it.

For COP2 I really want to explore more things to do with narrative. I think something that would be very useful to me and something I really want to develop is how to write strong characters. I love character development (part of the reason I love TV shows more than films) and I would love to learn how to make more complex and interesting characters.

Related Subjects:
Narrative.
Development.
Stereotypes.
Design.
Character Trees.

Books:
Rosenfelt, J. 2016. Writing the Intimate Character: Create Unique, Compelling Characters Through Mastery of Point of View. Writer's Digest Books.
Horton, A. 2000. Writing a Character-Centered Screenplay, Updated and Expanded Edition. University of California Press.


Websites:
www.writersdigest.com
www.tvtropes.org
www.nownovel.com

Information from these different sources will help me research how to create a very fleshed out, well written character.

Evaluation

Overall I found COP1 to be challenging and frustrating but also somewhat interesting because of how I shifted the focus onto something I wanted to look at. I struggled at first in finding a quote I liked and then I actually started going off with a totally different idea about how different media delivery methods could manipulate the message. While this is still a very similar idea to the one I actually worked on, it is more based around news and the media rather than narrative and stories.

I am very glad that I changed my idea as this was something a lot more relevant to me, but it did cause me a bit of a setback in getting started and I found it hard to get back on track in terms of time management. Time management between different module has been tricky and was even harder with COP than most as this was something that I found a lot harder to get motivated for because it wasn't directly animation work. I do struggle with academic writing and much prefer story writing with scripts and the like, however I am pleased with the results of my essays here.

I believe that I do make my argument well and give lots of reasons and evidence to back it up. The part I struggled with most was probably finding sources that were relevant and academic enough which became very frustrating. I did frequently get confused with the tasks and specific details as I struggled to entirely understand the briefs. 

Things I need to work on specifically are my time management and academic writing skills. I have been told that I write in a way that is too conversational and I need to learn to write out of 1st person and more formally. I would have left myself more time to do all of the practical stuff and make it a bit more creative. My sketchbook doesn't have any drawings in and my storyboard is very simply drawn. I should have put more effort into these to make them higher quality and potentially convey what I am wanting to say clearer. 

Storyboard

For this task I was really struggling to think of ideas. I wasn't sure how to make anything tell the story of my topic in a very interesting way without it being a bit too literal. One of my initial ideas was to have a person reading a book and then they could go to the cinema to see the adaptation of it only to leave disappointed. I thought that this was a bit too obvious and simple. 

The only other idea I liked that I came up with after lots of brainstorming was the one I have created. The idea of the words of a book flying across and trying to fit into a movie script was something I found interesting. I thought it was a cool way of showing how the same detail from a book cannot fit into a movie.


The book is a warm colour to represent it as a hot media.

The pages open and the scribbles of words comes floating out.

They move across to a blank script. The script is a light blue to show it as a cool media.

The words start imprinting on the paper...

..but not all of them can fit on. Some scribbles bounce off and fade away in the air.

We are left with the same story but with less detail than the original book.

Lecture: What is Research?

Use the research to explore and see where you end up. (6ft under).

Ideas are very important in the industry so you need to learn to develop to think of things more often or something like that. Try to get things wrong first. Then you can get it right sooner. If we already know what we're doing then it's not research.

To get ideas, you can either go out and research to get ideas from new things. Learning things.  Or an intuitive approach with just lightbulb moments where it is based on past experiences and what you already know. When you learn something it then becomes your intuitive stuff.

Clever people ask questions.

Types of research;

Primary research. Originally made things. New things made for the project.

Secondary research. Gathering someone else's research that was already there for another project. Needs to be analysed and sourced out.

Quantitative research. Facts and figures. Data. Numerical things. Provable. Not opinions. Statistical analysis. Objective.

Qualitative research. Observational opinion. People and interactions. Opinions. Not always provable but not wrong. Conversation. Subjective. Perceptions.

Information drives research. Information becomes useful. Data is the figure and fact. Information adds context and adds the meaning to it, making it relevant and useful.