Almudena Díaz: January 2016

Friday, 22 January 2016

From Script to Screen - Story explanation

After writing some different stories that didn't convince me (maybe because I was only focused on the tooth fairy and the zoo), I started thinking more about the diary which is the prop I got out of the blue box.

Well, in that process of creating this story, I was kind of playing with the diary being opened and closed to explain when the story starts and ends. I know it's not an original resource but as it's a short animation it can be great. Then, in act 1, the first character that appears is a kid because the tooth fairy is for kids.

My main problem in writing this story was connecting a diary, a zoo and a story for kids. As in the zoo residents are animals, I remembered a Spanish story. In Spain, instead of a tooth fairy, we have a little mouse called El Ratontito Perez. This little mouse is basically a tooth fairy, I mean it has the same functions. So in my story, the tooth fairy is transformed into a little mouse in order not to be discovered in case she is caught. At this point I came up with the idea of an avatar, a kind of character created by the mouse. All mice have their own avatar.

So, I had to connect the mouse (an animal) with the zoo, which is quite easy. About this I had two ideas:

1) The zoo is the mouse's house.

2) The mouse goes to the zoo to help other animals.

Finally I thought about the teeth, how can I join the teeth with this story? Well, my idea comes from the human creation in the Bible. One person was created from another person’s rib (a bone). So, in that fairy tale world I have created, animals can be created from a human tooth.

From Script to Screen - Online Greenlight Review 1

From Script to Screen OGR

From Script to Screen - Influence maps

From Script to Screen - Initial Ideas

After looking at my word maps I finally come up with some ideas. Talking about the tooth fairy, in Spain we have something similar. Instead of a tooth fairy, we have a little mouse called Pérez. So, as my story’s environment is a Zoo, I have been thinking about the idea of doing a mixture between the tooth fairy and the mouse Pérez. Here are some different versions about it:

1.) A boy who has no friends and is always writing in his dairy. He lives next to the zoo. He loves the animals but he doesn’t have pets. He imagines stories that could happen in the zoo. One day he imagines a story in which a little mouse has an important mission: get a lion’s tooth.

2.) A little mouse has to go to the zoo because he has an important mission: get a lion´s tooth. But getting a lion’s tooth is quite difficult so he gets in trouble but he gets the tooth too. Finally, this story is just another page that a little boy writes in his dairy.

3.) A little mouse whose mission is going to the Zoo to get a lion’s tooth. He writes all his adventures in his dairy. Finally he appears being older and reading his dairy to his children

4.) Some time ago a little boy found a diary and he decided to have a look at one story each night. This is tonight’s story. A small tooth fairy mouse is in front of a zoo. Although she is the best tooth fairy, she is still nervous. She has to get a lion’s tooth and get out of there alive. She opens her diary; she has the zoo’s map there. She has to get into the zoo, go to the crocodiles’ pit, cross it, get into the rhinos’ pit, cross it again, get into the lion’s pit, take the tooth, and run out of there being careful that the owl is not going to kill her. It’s not easy. Never mind, that little fairy tooth mouse knows how to do magic. Mission achieved. This story ends with the little boy getting the map, putting it into the diary, and going to sleep. He will look at another story tomorrow.

From Script to Screen - Word Maps

Well, these are the words I have been given and some initial ideas about them. The character I got is a tooth fairy, the environment is the zoo, and the prop is a dairy.