Initial Ideas

After the initial briefing session, I began straight away find inspiration, in order to develop a character and a scenario, as a starting point for our film. I watched the film below (Origami Street Art, by Mademoiselle Maurice), which prompted me to have a go at folding a few shapes myself.

Mademoiselle Maurice - Origami Street Art from ufunk parseError on Vimeo.

As well as researching the technique of folding the paper Crane, I also researched the meaning, which represents a significant folktale found within Japanese culture. In Japan, the Crane is the most mystical and holy creatures, and are said to live for 1000 years. Japanese legend says that, by folding 1000 paper cranes (one for each year of their life), one wish will be granted to the folder.

I began trying to think what my character might wish for, and came up with a few different choices e.g. Love, forgiveness, happiness, wealth, success. Initially, my character was going to wish for love.
I had the idea that she would visit the same place everyday, and leave a collection of cranes whenever she left, in hope of catching the attention of her love interest. He would then catch on, and began leaving the Cranes for her to find. In the end they would have made 1000 between them, and their wish to finally meet each other would come true.
Although I liked this story, I felt it would need something extra to help it to avoid becoming too cliché and boring, which it easily could. I wanted to keep the character and the symbol of the crane, but I didn't want to make a film about romantic love.

I then developed this into a film about loss and grief; her wish this time being for closure/relief from the pain she felt following the loss of her Mother. The 1000 cranes she folds would represent her wish to feel happiness again.

I took this idea to the small presentation we held amongst our group. Kayleigh came with a short character development, and Michalina came with her own story idea. Kayleigh's character was too under-developed to make much use of, so we focused on mine and Michalina's ideas. I got the impression that the rest of the group thought my idea wasn't exciting enough, and that it needed some kind of shock or sudden development, although they agreed that the symbolism of the crane was a good idea. Michalina came with a much more 'shocking' story, about someone who had committed a murder, but was acting very casual about it, just going about their daily life. This may have been a good idea, but it would be a struggle to extend it to be 5 minutes long, without it become boring to watch. We then had the idea to sort of merge our two ideas together; the girl in my story had lost her mother, and was dealing with grief, but then we questioned; what else would she feel if it was her fault? Our film would tell the story of a girl, wishing for acceptance and closure after causing her mother's death.

This was a very productive session in my opinion; we established our two characters, and decided on a location to film it in. Michelina and I agreed to go away and work on the script and character development, planning to meet again later on in the week.