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Parker and Stone discuss the link points between story ‘beats’ – ‘and then’ links are boring. Links should be ‘therefore’ or ‘but’. ‘This happens therefore this happens, but this happens therefore that happens.

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Trey Parker and Matt Stone story structure

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Howard Wimshurst discusses the importance of unpredictability, where the narrative plays on audience expectations, but ends with something new and unusual. He suggests designing plots using a ‘thought valve’ model, generating story options through de Bono’s lateral thinking – the first 3 options are likely to be similar to those of the audience, so later options should be selected for the plot twist.

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How to Construct a Mind-Blowing Plot Twist

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Chris Do focuses on conflict – somebody wants something but can’t get it because of an obstacle. This could be conflict between subjective expectations/objective reality (Robert McKean), Normal – explosive event – new normal trajectory (Kirstin Hall). An important element in making this dramatic is through techniques for story delaying and exaggeration (Francis Glebas).

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How To: Tell A Great Story— 5 storytelling tips

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Chris Do shares his 5 tips on how to tell a story. Storytelling secrets. How can you make your Vlogs more interesting by understanding storytelling fundamentals? What makes for great stories? These 5 tips will help you tell a better story for Vlogs, documentaries, short form animation or just about anything that could use a more compelling story.

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Animation Approaches, Styles and Software

Visual Storytelling

Animation Principles and Process

Visual Dynamics

Global animation inspiration

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ABBOTT, H. P. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Cambridge University Press.

BACHER, H. 2013. Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation, Burlington MA and Abington Oxon, Focal Press.

BARTHES, R. 1977. Image Music Text, London, Fontana Press.

BLAZER, L. 2016. Animated Storytelling: Simple Steps for Creating Animation and Motion Graphics, Peachpit Press.

Campbell,  Joseph  "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" https://geni.us/thousandfaces

COBLEY, P. 2001. Narrative, London and New York, Routledge.

GLEBAS, F. 2018. Directing the Story: professional storytelling and storyboarding techniques for live action and animation, London and New York, Routledge.

HARMAN, Dan The Hero's Journey

INGERMANSON, R. How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method
SEGER, L. 1992. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film, New York, Henry Holt and Company.

MADDEN, M. 2006. 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, London, Jonathan Cape.

MURCH, W. 2001. In the Blink of an Eye: A perspective on film editing, Los Angeles, Silman-James Press.

LAMB, N. 2008. The Art and Craft of Storytelling: A Comprehensive Guide to Classic Writing Techniques, Cincinnati, Ohio, Writers Digest Books.

OPEN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS 2015. Commenting on Artists, Barnsley, UK, Open College of the Arts.

QUENEAU, R. 1958. Exercises in Style, London, Alma Classics Ltd.

SANDLER, M. 2018. Visual Storytelling: how to speak to your audience without saying a word, Studio City, CA, Michael Wiese Productions.

SWANSON, M. & BEHR, R. 2013. Ten Thousand Stories: An ever-changing tale of tragic happenings, San Francisco, Chronicle Books.

Vogler, Christopher "The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers"  https://geni.us/vogler

WATTS, Nigel Writing A Novel and Getting Published.

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Kurt Vonnegut analyses narrative as curve shapes on a graph with vertical axis good/bad and horizontal time axis. Most stories have curves that can be adapted to audience preferences for happy/sad stories etc. Flat stories eg Kafka metamorphosis or hamlet can be very good, but require a lot of skill to make interesting.

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Kurt Vonnegut, Shape of Stories (subtitulos castellano)

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How to Create Atmosphere in Animation (Part 1)

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Flip Through - Dream Worlds, Production Design for Animation by Hans Bacher

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Writing A Novel and Getting Published.
The eight points which Watts lists are, in order:

Stasis

This is the “every day life” in which the story is set. Think of Cinderella sweeping the ashes, Jack (of Beanstalk fame) living in poverty with his mum and a cow, or Harry Potter living with the Dursley’s.

Trigger

Something beyond the control of the protagonist (hero/heroine) is the trigger which sparks off the story. A fairy godmother appears, someone pays in magic beans not gold, a mysterious letter arrives … you get the picture.

The quest

The trigger results in a quest – an unpleasant trigger (e.g. a protagonist losing his job) might involve a quest to return to the status quo; a pleasant trigger (e.g. finding a treasure map) means a quest to maintain or increase the new pleasant state.

Surprise

This stage involves not one but several elements, and takes up most of the middle part of the story. “Surprise” includes pleasant events, but more often means obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist.

Watts emphasises that surprises shouldn’t be too random or too predictable – they need to be unexpected, but plausible. The reader has to think “I should have seen that coming!”

Critical choice

At some stage, your protagonist needs to make a crucial decision; a critical choice. This is often when we find out exactly who a character is, as real personalities are revealed at moments of high stress. Watts stresses that this has to be a decision by the character to take a particular path – not just something that happens by chance.

In many classic stories, the “critical choice” involves choosing between a good, but hard, path and a bad, but easy, one.

In tragedies, the unhappy ending often stems from a character making the wrong choice at this point – Romeo poisoning himself on seeing Juliet supposedly dead, for example.

Climax

The critical choice(s) made by your protagonist need to result in the climax, the highest peak of tension, in your story.

For some stories, this could be the firing squad levelling their guns to shoot, a battle commencing, a high-speed chase or something equally dramatic. In other stories, the climax could be a huge argument between a husband and wife, or a playground fight between children, or Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters trying on the glass slipper.

Reversal

The reversal should be the consequence of the critical choice and the climax, and it should change the status of the characters – especially your protagonist. For example, a downtrodden wife might leave her husband after a row; a bullied child might stand up for a fellow victim and realise that the bully no longer has any power over him; Cinderella might be recognised by the prince.

Your story reversals should be inevitable and probable. Nothing should happen for no reason, changes in status should not fall out of the sky. The story should unfold as life unfolds: relentlessly, implacably, and plausibly.

Resolution

The resolution is a return to a fresh stasis – one where the characters should be changed, wiser and enlightened, but where the story being told is complete.

(You can always start off a new story, a sequel, with another trigger…)

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The Story Circle is an approach to plotting that Harmon adapted from The Hero’s Journey — which itself derives from the work of academic Joseph Campbell. It lays out a kind of narrative arc that's commonly used by myths from all over the world and emphases how almost all forms of storytelling have a cyclical nature. In broad strokes, they always involve:

Characters venturing out to get what they need, and

Returning, having changed.

To get an idea of how The Story Circle differs from other, similar structures, here are the stages of The Hero’s Journey as laid out by screenwriter Christopher Vogler:

1. Ordinary World

2. Call to Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting the Mentor

5. Crossing the Threshold

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

7. Approach to the Innermost Cave

8. Ordeal

9. Reward (Seizing the Sword)

10. The Road Back

11. Resurrection

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The clues to a great story | Andrew Stanton | TED

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Flip Through - Directing the Story by Francis Glebas

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What is Narratology? What does Narrative Theory mean? Narratology Definition,explanation and Meaning

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She compares three approaches to narrative strategy in writing a novel:

8-Point Story Arc Method (starts at 2:41)
developed by Nigel Watts for more see: https://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-...

Save the Cat Method (starts at 11:49)
developed by Jessica Brody https://www.jessicabrody.com/wp-conte..

Snowflake Method (starts at 24:21)
developed by Randy Ingermanson https://www.advancedfictionwriting.co...

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Outlining Strategies (Save the Cat, Snowflake Method, & 8-Point Arc) | Planning a Novel Series Pt. 3

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Narrative Structures: Insights from writing

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Narrative Structures: Insights from writing

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Hitchcock: The rules of Visual Storytelling

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Hitchcock: The rules of Visual Storytelling

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Alfred Hitchcock: The Rules of Visual Storytelling

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TRANSCRIPT: Looking at it as analytically as possible, something that is very hard to analyse, I came up with six criteria. And what... if you could say what is a perfect cut, which is dangerous territory, it would look at each of the criteria and say: yes, it did that, and yes it did that, and it did that, and it did that. And those six criteria were at the top the most difficult to quantify, which is that, that transition from one shot to the next made you feel a certain way, it had an emotion with it, there was an emotional value to it, and that emotion was the correct one for that place in the film.

The next one, one step down in the ladder was: story. Did that cut help you to understand the story, why... what was being done and why was it being done? So this in a way gets back to our... the three levels of the brain, because the third one is rhythm: did it happen at the right place rhythmically. And basically, the music of the cut. If you think of editing as visual music, did that new shot come in at the right moment in the same way that the clarinet comes in at the right, exactly the right moment in that clarinet concerto, not a millisecond before or after, but right there. And, so these three levels of emotion and story, which is to say logic, and rhythm, which is a kind of instinctual thing, echo these three different layers of the brain.

The fourth level was: where is the eye of the audience likely to be looking? And if you divide the frame up into as simple as possible, quadrants, upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right, and then maybe the centre. So five things. Are they looking there or there or there or there? Because as a general rule, at the moment you cut, it's good to take into account, what is there in the new shot because that's where their eye will land. I'm looking there which is the point of the gun. At the moment of the cut, what do I see there? Sometimes you want something definitely to be there, other times you want it just to be blank so that the eye then looks for what the other focus of interest was. It all depends, but you have to take into consideration what, where the focus of the eye is because people are not looking at the whole frame, they are choosing to look in various areas, particularly in cinema as opposed to television. Historically, television people were further from the screen and the screen was smaller. In cinema, the screen was bigger and you're kind of looking around; it's more of a mural. Anyway, take into consideration where's the audience looking and how is their focus of attention carried across the moment of the cut.

The fifth thing was questions of the transposition of three dimensions into two. This is the so-called 180 degree rule, which is: are people, are we convinced that person A is looking at person B, and vice versa if they're having a conversation? And if you're cutting from one angle to another, the eye line of these two people having a conversation that is edited needs to intersect in a way that convinces us that they are in fact looking at each other even though they may have been two shots shot three months apart, and that the other actor wasn't actually there at the time of shooting, but it works, it's part of the chemistry of film montage that it works. So, does the cut take this into consideration the two-dimensional reality of the screen?

And then, the last one is the three-dimensional reality of the physical space that's being talked about. So, if the person gets out of the car to go into the house do they open the door to the car and walk up the path, open the door, and go into the house? If you did that, then the continuity of that space is maintained, and back in the early days of film, 1910, 1920, 1930, this was, people tried to follow this rule, because they were afraid that if they didn't follow the rule the audience would become upset, or confused: wait a minute, how did he get there, we didn't see him do that.

So, these are six things that you try to make an effort, and in shooting the film, the crew shooting the film, also it has to have these things in mind when they're doing it. Exactly how it's going to work out, nobody is 100% sure, but you are thinking about these things at the time of shooting.

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Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People

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Walter Murch - The six criteria of film editing (293/320)

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"A truth whispered among animators is that 70% of a show's impact
comes from the sound track."
Michael Dougherty, Sound in Animation (2015)

"I think really for the art of the film, sound is an aesthetic error... if the major consideration of film is the visual then the reason sound is a blind alley is that it cuts back on sight so that the very instance that sound is removed or that it is relatively silent, it becomes more possible to see...

I sometimes think the real reason that movies plaster mood music all over the soundtrack, so that there is never a moment of silence is because people are afraid. With sound pouring into the ears they feel more comforted, lullabied in some sense."
Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man (1970)

See also my post on:
TASK: The following two animators hold very opposing views on animation and the use of sound. Consider your own viewpoint - Search for animations that supports or challenges your viewpoint in someway.
Try listening to animations before you watch them, or watching them without the sound to help reflect on the relationships between image and sound.
Produce a short blogpost that outlines your research and supports your
viewpoint on the relationship between sound and image in animations. You could do this through writing or by creating a short audio/moving image piece.
I do not think there are any hard or fast rules. It depends on what one is trying to do. The important thing is to be aware of the interactions and interrelationships. And emphasis can shift in the course of any one animation.

What is done first? Sound, then suggest visuals and the visuals are carefully timed to follow the sounds? Or the visuals and the sound effects chosen to support them. Depends partly on which elements require continuity and which can be split and cut.

Some element of serendipity and disruption can enhance the meaning. Too much often becomes just cliche and boring in my opinion. But it depends on what one is trying to say - and whether specific rules are essential to one's 'signature style' or key area of exploration eg in the case of Brakhage.

For my own explorations see:

I Love Red Peppers E2.2 and E2.3 where I experiment with different approaches to using music track and sound effects.

Summertime E2.5 Sound and image animatic: an animated music video of Summer from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Summer 2020: Assignment 2 where I integrate different approaches.

Stanley Brakhage

Michael Dougherty

E1.2 Observing Cycles

Materials that Move

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Research 2.2 Debate on the use and misuse of sound in animation

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"A truth whispered among animators is that 70% of a show's impactcomes from the sound track." Michael Dougherty, Sound in Animation (2015) "I think really for the art of the film, sound is an aesthetic error...

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Beaded Necklace: Louis Morton’s animation is inspired by city background noise ‘My goal was to capture the atmosphere of a city by recording its sounds and creating an imagined world inspired by those sounds. It’s a playful look at the relationship between people and their built environment’ (Blaser p30)

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Cycles and loops: Zbigniew Rybczynski's 'Tango' (1980) is a montage of numerous short film sequences of one or two characters in the room. Each character/pair of characters is filmed separately (black line and no shawdows) in the room, then cut/masked out and overlaid in multiple cycles for each character in multiple permutations in a separate film of the room itself.. The repetition of cycles for each character is obvious – a tango of life repetitions. The different cycle layers means each cycle is in its own little bubble of separation. The different combinations and permutations of multiple character bubbles are chaotic and often surreal. The only interaction is where the old woman picks up the ball at the end after everyone else has gone, making that a very poignant moment.

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Story told by movement of contrasting layers across each other.

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Apocalypse Now intro: The Doors, The End {1979}

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Tim Webb’s A.is.for.Autism uses the drawing process to emphasise the narrative, using different media and styles to separate the different story strands.

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‘Malaria’ uses the format of a book where pages are turned by hand as if in a storybook.

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Malaria - curta metragem (short film) HD

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Merlot Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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Merlot Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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‘Merlot’ is a textless animation in comic format where the scenes are each set in separate pages that are pushed vertically or horizontally or turned, with some movement across and between each page.

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Merlot | A Short Film by Marta Gennari and Giulia Martinelli

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A complex animated non-linear documentary that starts with memory loss of a massacre, where the reality is only revealed through video footage at the end. Animation is partly a distancing mechanism that means more graphic violence can be shown or hinted at, with different animation styles used to differentiate different parts of the story.

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Lebanon War 1982, Waltz With Bashir, English Subs

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What is different in animation? Animated documentaries and graphic novels

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What is different in animation? Animated documentaries and graphic novels

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Animated documentaries & graphic novels - BBC report

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Two flocks of sheep are searching for companionship. But their shepherds, being at odds with each other, do everything to keep them separated.

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Tartakovsky's 'Primal' (2019) is a simple dramatic animation without dialogue. References Each episode has 3-5 functional story-beats, linked through contrasts of direction of movement – fast movement one way, stop move forward/back, fast movement the other way.

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Visual Storytelling involves the use of graphics, images, pictures and videos to engage with viewers in an effort to drive emotions and interaction. It’s about determining the right way to represent the information to ensure that it is compelling and relevant for the right audience. When the visual aspect is at its most powerful, the impact and performance of the content is magnified.
What is Visual Storytelling? The Growing Trend in Multimedia Design Jess Scherman  05/30/2016

Visual storytelling for particular audiences requires adaptation of insights from narrative theory, visual dynamics in art and design on each frame and editing techniques from video and film. These insights are relevant across all types of animation, although they may be adapted in different ways.

Visual storytelling without dialogue or text relies on simplification of plot and clarity of visual expression. In animation and film the audience has to quickly understand or decide to question what is happening, absorbing fleeting visual cues. Unlike readers of printed stories they have less opportunity to control the speed of absorbing complexity because it is more difficult to rewind passages not understood

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Alfred Hitchcock Interview on Writing and Directing his movies The Birds, Psycho, Rebecca, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Dial M for Murder.
tip 1 - 1:01 - Create suspense with Hitchcock's famous Bomb Theory
tip 2 - 2:45 - Make the audience scream and cry and they will come out of the theatre giggling. People go to the cinema to feel something
tip 3 - 4:13 - Give the audience some exposition but when you give it, it must appear to be something else
tip 4 - 4:53 - Direct the audience, rather than the actors (avoid cliches)
tip 5 - 6:24 - The quality of identification is most important for the audience's emotions
tip 6 - 7:14 - Whatever the content, always put your effort into creating an emotional response
tip 7 - 8:05 - Mystery is just an intellectual process, while the suspense is an emotional process
tip 8 - 9:10 - Learn the Kuleshov Effect to know how to "Show, don't tell"
tip 9 - 10:25 - Your story begins with only a couple of sentences
tip 10 - 11:11 - Happiness is a clear horizon - that's when you're the most creative. Hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents 10 Tips for Screenwriters and Directors

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Eye Trace: directing attention: Film and video editing

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Eye Trace: directing attention: Film and video editing

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All animation is an exercise in applying the principle of ‘eye trace’. This is a principle of film- making in general but one that is essential for the illusion of animated movement to work.

‘In The Blink of an Eye’ by Walter Murch, (1995) sets out the principle that the viewer’s eyes will focus on a particular position on the screen and editors exploit this to allow less jarring edit when one shot follows another by ensuring that the action or image is located in the same part of the screen.

This is also known as ‘registration’ in animation. A keen awareness of eye-trace allows the animator to play with the audience’s expectations and surprise them. The registration protocol was developed for hand-drawn animation to ensure that each subsequent drawing uses the same co-ordinates so that the illusion of movement between frames is not interrupted. In other animation the registration is looser and is intended as such to draw attention to the variation that ‘eye trace’ allows.

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Cycles can loop, oscillate, or even appear to be stationary. The use of cycles is often motivated by economy because it saves on drawing time. But the type of cycle that you use also make up the meaning of your film.

Looped cycles are most commonly employed on particular layers within a frame. Sergei Eisenstein described this layered looping within a frame as ‘vertical montage’:

“The simultaneous movement of a number of motifs advances through a succession of sequences, each motif having its own rate of compositional progressions, while being at the same time inseparable from the overall compositional progression as a whole”

Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein Volume 2: Towards a Theory of Montage (London: BFI Publishing, 1991)

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Non-linear narratives are

‘stories that don’t seem to have recognisable arcs or easily-interpreted thematic intentions….stories that cut different points in time, are whimsical, moody and symbolic, and use sound, colour, and pacing in a totally unexpected way.’
Blazer 2016 p 28

Some non-linear narratives in feature films and long animations can be quite complex with flashbacks and subplots sometimes signalled by their own separate style eg colour vs black and white. In Short films the non-linear narrative can be signalled through synchronous action and/or scenes are separated by specific signs or transitions.

Non-linear narrative formats:

Cycles and loops: cycles can loop, oscillate, or even appear to be stationary. They are often used in layers for economy of drawing effort. But they can also have narrative purposes, to signal repetition and circularity of life, interconnectedness etc.

Book Ending: Stories that end where they begin, going anywhere in between

Countdown: a constantly rising set of events without a climax

Puzzle: Information is revealed piece by piece, not necessarily in any order, until the big picture is clear.

Beaded necklace: use sound, music, voiceover to hold chaotic elements together. Sound acts as the string preventing the beads falling apart.

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Narrative Formats in animation: linear and non-linear

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Narrative Formats in animation: linear and non-linear

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The different elements of either linear or non-linear narrative can be presented on screen in different ways to link and contrast them and clarify whatever message/s is intended. Animation can use formats that draw on film and/or comic book layout.

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Padlet purpose:
This padlet provides an easy entry overview 'map' of visual storytelling options that present a range of alternative formats for my animations. These draw inspiration not only from animation, but also theories and practice in the written word and video and film.

Contents

What is visual story-telling?

Narrative Structures: insights from written word

Narrative Formats in animation

linear narratives

non-linear narratives

'Eye Trace' and 'grammar of the shot': video and film

To open the padlet:
Click on the square with arrow on the top right below.

To open the 'paddles':
Click on the paddle title or image, whichever shows a ‘hand’.
If no hand shows, click on three dots top right and expand.

To close, check whether or not the ‘paddle’ has opened in a separate window on your browser. Closing that will bring you back to the overview padlet.