Project brainstorm

So, I wanted to wait until after Thanksgiving to post some of my ideas for this honors project. I thought that my family might give me some inspiration, but they failed miserably. So here is some of the better stuff that I have (I'm sure I'll come up with crazier things if I go through a manic moment):

First, I really want to try to incorporate several different forms of animation (roto, stop, clay, cel, etc.) as well as different film making techniques (like hand painting) in the film. Basically, I want to try as many things as possible to make the story (whatever that may be) visually interesting. As long as, of course, what I do enhances the story. I'm not going to through claymation in there just because I want to.

Now, I found out over the break that I am a lot better off when I am given a general concept for a story than when I have to come up with one off the top of my head. I spent a great deal of time staring into space wondering what I was going to do this on, as opposed to actually coming up with ideas. I thought of recycling the ideas for my self portrait but when I looked back over them, I remembered that I wanted to do some of them on film or with still images. The only one that I think I could play with is the one about not being able to sleep and how I think it's making me crazy. SO, I had to come up with new stuff.

Idea #1:

My original idea for my animation final was to turn Brad into a marionette(I don't know if you've noticed, but the boy is all limb). I wanted to take stills of him in front of a green screen and use after effects to move his arms and legs like a string puppet and put him in some kind of dark underworld. I don't really know what he would be doing there though. Probably something sinister and strange.

Idea #2

Lately, I've been thinking of how different my life would be right now if I hadn't decided to move to Wilmington to pursue film. I was practically half way to Raleigh to go into NC State's pre-med program when I decided that I would rather be a poor, but happy, filmmaker than a rich chemist or doctor or whatever the hell I wanted to do with my life back then. I hear a lot of students talk about how their parents are pushing them to get their graduate degree in something that, down the road, might have a better future, like law or education. Although, thankfully, my parents have never done that to me (I think they were more worried about me when I wanted to go to med school) it makes me think of how people confine themselves to a certain idea about how your life should be, and how these ideas are usually pushed on us by other people.

I could make an animation around this idea that people box themselves into a certain life (school, job, marriage, kids, retirement) and rush into these things without thinking about who they are or what would make them really happy. I thought of making a little city that is very boxed in and everything kind of looks the same. People dress the same, live in similar looking homes, drive the same kind of car, work in cubicles and do the same thing everyday. And it could revolve around a character who doesn't really fit in but really tries her best to fit in. Over the course of the story, she'll become more in tune and comfortable with who she is and realize that, ultimately, she decides how her life should play out.

I wonder if you can tell which one of these ideas I am currently leaning towards? If I come up with more, I'll post it.