Moon Bird Script
Mon, Mar 2nd 2009, 09:23
More Moon Bird news!
We're just starting on draft two of the script and have a couple of weeks before it needs handing in to our Executive Producers at 4mations and Screen WM. We’ll also be sending a copy onto our appointed mentor at Aardman. We’ll be addressing some issues that mainly relate to the passive-active nature of the main character ‘Teardrop’. This is one of those interesting things that comes from adapting a work from prose to film (even if it's your own story you're adapting!). A character might remain in one place for a long time in a prose story, which can be uniquely unsatisfying in a screen adaptation. Salman Rushdie recently wrote an interesting (if slightly pompous) article on the pitfalls of adaptation in the Guardian. It’s worth reading for his comments about preserving ‘essences’.
Ernest Hemingway famously said that, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This has certainly been the case with some of our scripts. But you need manure to grow a good crop. We’re not convinced we feel quite so pejorative about our first draft, but we’re looking forward to seeing how it shapes up in the next draft.
Once we've got the script finalised and have a solid idea of the world we'll start designing the key components, the characters, layouts and props. We'll also start storyboarding. There’s already an early storyboard that we did about a year ago when we first started developing the idea in house. The first version of the new storyboards will be a series of ‘thumbnails’. Using the thumbnails, we’ll work up final storyboards or perhaps skip to the animatic. The method we choose depends on the particular project.
We have finalised the character design for our main character 'Teardrop' - We will post soon - Oh the suspense!
In the meantime, here's the first design for the antagonist's house.
