This semester, as a student of University of Colorado Denver, I partook in a narrative class taught by Dr. Howard Cook. In this course, small groups of students worked together to create original story ideas which would later be produced as thesis films for the animation program. With my two collaborators, we created two stories centered around physical comedy and playfulness, called "Spaghetti Western" and "Bathroom Stall Galactica". The film that I took charge over and spent most of my time developing is the Western.
Previously, throughout the semester, the small groups would write a flash card sized summary of the story, and pass it to a different group to work on it next week. This week was the first week that we had our story returned to us, and we were able to nail down the actual plot for the story.
As a note of context for this story, I was having a conversation with one of my collaborators at the start of the semester regarding different classic genres of film, such as film noir and sci-fi. My friend used the term Spaghetti Western, which is another name for traditional western films, and was something I had never heard before. When I heard that phrase, I was immediately excited by the prospect of an old-time western film with a pasta related theme. This idea was something that excited us both so much that we made several different iterations of this story all centered around a western story in a world made of pasta. Hence, the name "Spaghetti Western" being both the subject and the classification of this story.
During this week of discussion, we ruled out two possible "twists" for the story. The first twist was the epic adventure in this pasta world with a protagonist that suddenly cuts to reveal the man standing over a pot of boiling water in a drab apartment. This iteration while comedic in intent, did not leave a lot of growth for the main character or explanation for the transition between worlds. The second iteration focused on a man making a pasta meal for a girl at a soup kitchen or community center, and the western adventure they embark under was a metaphor for the girl being able to help the man and ultimate get him out of a negative mindset. The deeper meanings and themes of this iteration were interesting, but limited technical abilities and an inability to reconcile the transition between worlds cleanly also hamstrung this plot.
The story we ultimately decided upon was a bounty hunter chasing after and trying to capture a little girl, where the big climactic moment of the hunter catching her then immediately cuts on action to reveal the hunter is the father of the girl and he is playing Cowboys and Indians with her before dinner. This plot gives us the cut on action "surprise" between the real world and the pasta world, while also establishing the motives of the characters. The pasta world is explainable from the childlike imagination of the daughter, and the story feels reminiscent of childhood memories that the audience can relate to easier. With this newly established direction, our group was ready for look development work next week.
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