During the beginning of the project, our group – Deran, Emmanuel, Jacob and I, decided to collate a bunch of ideas and develop them into a story with a intricate lore. We looked into each other’s interests and strengths – which lead into an idea involving Mecha robots and fight scenes. We wanted to make something quite epic within the 20 seconds we were given.
I thought up about maybe having it be something related to pigeons if it were a fight scene since they were used in the bombs in the World War. It would also create an interesting plot twist to see a giant robot manned by a tiny pigeon seeking revenge.
This led us to another pathway – with a pigeon seeking revenge for it’s mother killed by deforestation. But over further feedback and discussions this was scrapped too since there was too much story to tell within 20 seconds.
Upon further feedback from our tutors for our plot, they believed that it was not as personal of a story as intended, and was rather a surface level plot that needs to dive deeper. Thus, we decided to connect stories of our own personal challenges in the past and find a pattern within it.
We came up with another plot-line where we see the pigeon fall into a lava pit, and then fly back out with some struggles in the middle, like an abstract moving image of sorts. I also tried looking to a lot of artists who convey the feeling of loss.
This did led me down a rabbit hole of lithography print making techniques and performance artists like Marina Abramovic’s works – but were however scrapped since we had to change the storyline in another sense of narrative/perspective and cut it further down.
In the end, we decided to create an antagonist character (eagle) to add more urgency and a focal point to the story. This did shift the tone and mood of the story into a less poetic and more comedic way, but since it fit in with the 20 seconds we used that plot instead.