Now that I had the basic structure of my set, it was time to add some detail to it. I added small scale hinges, the ones you might use for small box trinket box possibly, that sort of thing. I wanted my door not just to look like real doors, but also to act like them when they open and close.
I also added the door frames, window frames, skirting boards and the hallway panelling details.
Im really happy with the way the hallway turned out as it is doing what I wanted it to do. The way I approached this was to paint the top half of the walls grey and the bottom as black paneling. When you look down the corridor, the lighter area is almost covered, enclosing you in the small space.
Here are some pictures of my constructed set. I used MDF for the construction and screwed it together with nails. I decided to use wrapping paper for my wallpaper, as it had the right width of stripes I was after.
Picture of the wallpaper I used for my set.
I took a photograph of my set in black and white so that, at this early stage I could get a feel for what it may look like.
I wanted the father to look scary to a small kid. So I decided to make him pretty tall about six foot. You never see his face in my animation, this is to prevent the viewer having a chance to connect with the father in anyway as the story is about the kid not the father. And it’s more frightening I feel, to have a massive man with no identity waylaying on a small kid. Makes him even more menacing than he all ready is, with a fear of the unknown.
Also I have made him quite a fat man as he only eats fast food, after going out drinking, chips, burgers and takeaways. He also has a beer belly. I gave him several gold rings, this is based a bit on a character I remember from my childhood when I lived in Swindon. He would come storming out of his house shouting abuse and swearing at his children. Perhaps a bit of a stereotype.
Here is a sketch of my father puppet.
CHILD
I wanted to show the child as neglected without just putting him in torn up clothes. I thought back to Tim Burton's movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the character, Sally, she is a rag doll who is misused, unappreciated and abused by her owner.
Making him into a tattered rag doll showed the years of neglect and lack of love, both mental and physical scars having thier impact on the character.
For the child's favourite robot toy I decided upon a retro feel, as these toys have more personality than mass produced modern toys like cyber men, terminator etc.
Darrin Farmer Proposal for 3rd Year Animation Final Film: Broken Toy: script
scene 1
Opens with the kid sitting down on the floor of the living room, happily playing with his toys and his favourite toy robot.
Scene 2
Inter title is flash up on to the screen with violent text scribbled and scratched into the lenses. Inter title TXT: “TIDY THIS FUCKING ROOM UP”
Scene 3
Cuts to a high shot looking down on the kid from the father eye level as the kid looks up at the camera sad faced and teary eyed.
Scene 4
Fixed camera as we watch the father fling the kid's favourite toy robot at the wall and it breaks on impact with the wall with a large crack. The robots left arm and right leg flies off
Scene 5
Cut to the living room door slamming shut as footsteps walk away from us as the father leaves the house.
Scene 6,7,8,9
Cuts back to the kid who is now lying on the floor spread out, as he has just been hit by his father after he broke the toy. The toy robot lies in pieces next to him. Kid lifts his head and gases at the phone that is just to the right of him, he pauses for a moment. Camera Cuts to a close up of the phone Kid looks back at his broken toy, sad and slowly starts to collect the parts for the toy and cradles them in his arms.
Scene 10
After cradling the toy for some time the camera cuts to a close up of the kid opening the front of the broken robot toy chest and reach into it and pulling out a needle and thread. Fades out to white.
Scene 11
Starts with a fade into the kid fixing himself with the needle and Thread he retrieved from the robots chest.
Scene 12
Cuts to the front door slamming open, as the door hits the wall, it’s a quick cut back to the kid who has his hands up to his ear looking terrified that his father has returned.
Scene 13,14,15
Drunken father stumble though the front door holding chips and a bottle of beer Cuts to a inter title written in drunk txt. “YoU Bessssssst not offff....ff Lef.......ed a DAM messs!!....” Father stumbles down the hallway, dragging his feet. As he walks he bangs into the table in the hallway and knocks the vase of dead flowers onto the floor, it smashes into a million pieces.
Scene 16,17,18.19,20,21,22,23
Camera cuts to the Father. He is slumps down into his arm chair to watch the tv still very heavily drunk Arms hand down over the arm rest. Camera cuts to a inter title. Your all waaaays under my DAM! Feeeeeet.
Camera pans to the right of the father as he scoffs the chips he staggered home with into his face, dropping more chips and ketchup on himself than are going into his mouth; to see that the kid is sat in the corner of the room trying to make himself as small as possible, head in hands. The camera pans back to the centre, to see that the father has fallen asleep; his arms limp at his side and the bag of chip sprayed across the floor.
The camera then pans this time, to the left to see the boy's head peaking out from behind the arm chair and staring straight at the chips on the floor with a hungry look in his eyes.
The kid slowly moves towards the camera on hand and knees to kneel in front of the chips and slowing starts to eat them. He cries as he is eating the chips. As the kid is eating the chips he carelessly knocks over his father's beer which in place then to his leg the beer seeps through his sock onto his food and he instantly wakes up angry and pissed off.
Scene 24,25,26
Camera cuts to the father jumping out of his seat, turning to face the kid and backhand him straight across the face. The kid's head is knocked to the left of the screen, as stuffing flies from his mouth.
Cuts to an inter title “Your such a waste of space you little shit!!”
Scene 27,28,29
Camera cuts to the father holding the kid by the legs and dragging him across the floor with stuffing falling from out of his mouth. He also has a torn arm. As the kid gets pulled close to the living room door his arm slowly un-stitches and falls off. As he passes the phone on the table in the living room he looks up at it and tries with all his might to call someone for help, but instead just ends up dragging the phone off the table and unplugs it from the wall. The kid losses grip of the phone and lets go of it as he is pulled of screen though the living room door out of the cameras view point.
Scene 30,31,32,33
The camera is now placed in the hallway and the boy has gotten to his feet. As the father grabs him by the scruff of the neck, the camera goes into a first person view as if your looking through the fathers eyes. As he is about to punch the kid straight in the face, time slows down as the kid slow strains to look over his father right shoulder.
Scene 34,35
The camera is now fixed on to the front door as it swings open and a burst of light erupts into the room and fills the space. The camera quickly cuts back to the father holding the kid and he lets go to see where this over- powering light is coming from.
Scene 36
Camera cuts back to the front door where two lanky tall shadowy beings emerge from the door, one open arms and pointing to that point of the bright light outside the house. The screen fades to bright blinding white.
Scene 35,36,37
Is a close up of a cartoon robber, been held just as the father was holding the kid in scene 31. The camera pans out slowly to show more of the cartoon on the TV screen to show a super hero has beaten up and apprehended the robber.
The camera swatches prospective and is now set behind the TV as is zoom out to reveals the kid sitting in the middle of a sofa with a dad and a mother ever side of him as the camera zooms out further, he slowly turns from a unhappy kid to a happy kid and grabs both his new parents arms and holds tightly as the parents also hold him tightly.
Scene 38
As the kid sits with his new family a quiet but slowly getting louder noise is heard and the screen starts to turn black from the outside inwards. Then a beeping starts up in the background that gets loader and loader as it get to its loudest point the whole scene will have turned black. Now the black slowly turns into a heart beat monitor to coincide with the beeping. The line slowly gets smaller and less bumps each second until a flat line noise is ringing as the heart monitor flat lines. After the credits have started to roll you will hear in the background the sound of an emergency room, as the doctor’s panic to resuscitate the kid.
I decided that dialogue sound was not needed in my movie as the music and atmosphere would be enough to carry the movie without needing heavy dialogue. I feel a silent movie, when done right can be more powerful that a heavily dialogued movie.
So I planned to use inter titles which were at first, just what I was looking for. The contrast from the aggressive, rude, violent things the father said, with the simple black text and border speech worked well for a time.
But after watching my first animatic back, it just did not portray the feeling I was after. The traditional inter-titles could not portray the anger and violence of the father quite as starkly as I intended. Someone suggested I look at the text sequence from the Se7en movie designed by Kyle Cooper.
This text has a more gritty feel. The scratched look, the fussy pulsing, and almost screeching text was perfect inspiration.
As this movie is about child abuse it was only fitting I started by looking at anti child abuse videos such as the adverts presented by NSPCC. Thinking back to NSPCC advert I had seen on the telly the one that stuck in my mind the most had to be ‘Cartoon Boy’ produced in 2002 which features the punchline ‘Real Kids don’t bounce back
My movie needed to have a dark undertone; it should be dark and foreboding in order to tie in with the subject matter. It had to have something that didn’t quite sit right with the eye and made the viewer feel uncomfortable but compelled to watch it. I looked to a range of movies for inspiration with this such as The Shining, with its stark pattern designs on the carpets, Sweeny Todd for its dark and dingy Victorian feel and Tim Burtons Vincent
Looking at this poster of Sweeny Todd got me thinking about stripes in horror movies. This is not a pleasant patten to look at, especially within a small space. Strong patterns like this can be claustrophobic and these stripes to me, give the impression of prison bars, a creepy prospect. This gave me the idea for the design of the living room in my set.
With Tim Burton's Vincent, I have found that the atmosphere is enhanced by the lighting, and the large stark shadows. The set is daunting and insane, like the mind of a crazy man had designed a room just by thing about it.
I have also noticed with this animation that a childs perspective is presented by the fact that the mothers face is never shown, she is too tall and out of shot.
To produce a set as wacky and insane as that set used in Vincent, would surpass my current skill set, however I aim to create a similarly disconcerting atmosphere. After watching this movie I knew that black and white would also be appropriate for my film. I also decided that dialogue sound is not needed, as I want the visuals to speak for themselves but I will use haunting music.
Now that i hade a idea of what my living room would look like it was time to think about the hallway decor. I did not want the hallway to look roomy or light. I wanted it too look closed in and small so that it was almost funneling you out or into the house. I remembered that scene in The Shining with the two twins standing in the corridor. This a very creepy scene.
When initially stuck with an idea for my movie, I looked to my own past experiences for inspiration. Thinking back to my childhood, I experienced verbal abuse and bullying first hand. Although this meant dragging up some bad memories, I decided it gave me a powerful subject matter for an animation. Whilst my piece is designed to present the worst-case scenario of child abuse, which I did not experience, I will use my history to bring emotion to the piece.
The idea behind my movie documents a small child who is both verbally and physically abused by his violent father. The neglected child is depicted as a rag doll; tattered, shabby and unloved. His physical form shows both the bodily and mental scars he endures. He also has a favourite toy, the only thing that he loves, that his father breaks. These two elements inspire the name of the animation, as ‘Broken Toy’. At the end of the piece the neglected child is rescued by the social services. Through these details, I aim to show a troubled situation without using overly graphic or crude references.
