Sunday and Monday Meetings

Hi everyone,

Here's a re-cap of what we went over in Sunday and Monday's meetings.

Sunday we met to decide on a clearer story direction from the options we had from Friday's meeting. Unfortunately, after about two hours of deliberation, we hadn't come much closer to choosing a single direction. Instead, we selected three potential directions from the material developed since the previous meeting. We decided to pitch the basic premise well as the three possible ideas in Natalie's class on Monday to see what she and the other group thought of the ideas, then decide whether or not to hold a meeting later that day.

In Natalie's class we presented our ideas and received some useful feedback as well as some more criteria on which to mold our story directions. We decided to hold a group meeting after classes so we could decide where to go.

At the meeting, we had a few members absent, but they had informed us that they would not be present and that we should continue with the meeting. We discussed the options available, then held an anonymous vote to decide our final story direction. The tally was 8 for the zombie direction, 0 for the slapstick idea, and 1 who didn't care. We then came up with our basic storybeats, fleshed out the core concepts for our main characters, and decided on a setting. The characters, the setting, and the storybeats are as follows:

Greedy, jerk leader guy, short and fat.
Smart, innocent scholar, translator, unexpected hero/ine, guide-ish.
Heavily-armed goon, bodyguard, not very bright but has common sense, treated poorly by the leader.

Set around WW2 at a tropical jungle temple.
Daytime until theft of treasure, after which it magically becomes night.

Storybeats
The three characters are going to explore a temple.
They reach the temple, and discover that a tribe still inhabits it.
The characters make their way through the tribe and reach the treasure.
The Leader sees the treasure and intends to take it.
The Scholar, then the Guard, tell him not to take treasure b/c of a warning inscription.
The Leader takes it anyway.
All the tribals become bloodthirsty zombies.
Scholar and Guard try to rectify the situation
The Leader gets eaten by zombies
Seeing the fate of the Leader, the Scholar and Guard band together to escape with their lives.

For Wednesday's meeting with Mark, he has asked for four panels representing our take on the story. The above synopsis is still missing some critical details, so if everyone does their panels filling in whatever details they feel are missing, we can use those to finish fleshing out our story. Also, we can use the images, along with any other design exploration, to begin to develop a visual direction.

Now that we have a firm direction, I think that we should start working out how to divide up the work necessary for the next stages of production in our meetings later this week. Since most of us are pretty new to the process, I think we should discuss with Tony the best way of going about that.

-Adric Worley

Week 4 Meetings

Hi everyone,

Since I didn't get individual emails out for each of our meetings this week, you all get a condensed version.

First, here's some important information for those who may not want to read the rest of the post: Group meeting! Sunday, 5pm, at the lab! Bring story beat development and initial visual concepts!

In Wednesday's meeting with Mark, everybody presented their personal take on our story direction, showing new story ideas and conceptual art. Mark commented that we have a lot of feature-style work, and that we need to simplify it to a more manageable state. For next week's meeting, we should work individually to get 4 panels of basic story direction to show to the group.

In Thursday's meeting with Tony, we discussed story length versus the reality of production limits, proper memo-writing skills, and critiquing skills. We then worked in groups to develop a pre-production pipeline for the group to follow for the rest of the semester. I will work our final pipeline into a document to send to Tony this weekend.

In Friday's group meeting, we decided to lock down a more focused story idea because of the in-class story presentation in Natalie's Monday class. We went back over Ban and Daphne's story ideas from the Wednesday meeting, then brought them to a vote to choose a more defined story. The votes were 0 for Daphne's idea, 9 for Ban's idea, and 2 who said they didn't care either way. The basic synopsis of our current direction is as follows:

Group of explorers trying to get a treasure.
They have to fit in with a group of partying natives.
After getting the treasure, they try to escape, but get caught.
It appears that they've been caught for stealing, but the twist ending reveals otherwise.

We then spent the rest of the meeting time brainstorming for ideas. Because of the short time between the meeting and the Monday presentation, we have scheduled a group meeting on Sunday, September 29th at 5pm in the 3rd year lab. For this meeting, everyone needs to work on developing story detail ideas to make into a beat script, and do some initial research and conceptual design so we can get an idea of where we want to go visually. Hosung will not be able to attend, and Kal will be late, but otherwise everyone should be there.

I think we've made some significant progress this week towards nailing down our idea, and I'm looking forward to see what everyone will have for Sunday.

-Adric Worley

Minutes and other topics

Hi everyone, here's what we went over and decided in our meeting with Tony this morning.

Mentor meetings are going to be every Wednesday at 10am.
We have set up a tentative regular group meeting date every Friday at 12:30pm.
For group votes, we need to have 80% majority.
For the future, we need to develop an agenda for each meeting.
We have decided on some new supervisors.
Daphne is our new story supervisor.
Martin is our new lead design supervisor. Hosung is our new assistant design supervisor.
Adric is our new miscellaneous supervisor.
We should track down and record our vocal talent by the end of the semester.
This week everyone needs to spend at least 3 hours doing personal visual development on the group project. Due September 24.
The final vote for our story direction is as follows.
1 for Groundhog.
9 for Action/Adventure.
1 Undecided.

That is the end of the minutes for today's meeting.

Other things to keep in mind:
I am still working on compiling a list of MSN usernames and active phone numbers to distribute to all the group members. I have information from Daphne, Harry, Hosung, and Vince. Everyone else, please email me this info as soon as possible.
I am also trying to get everyone added as authors for this blog. Adric, Daphne, and Vince are confirmed authors. Harry has been invited. Everyone else, please email me your Blogspot account email. If you don't have a Blogspot account, please make one, then email me the email address you register it to.

-Adric Worley

Story Decision Meeting

We need to schedule a meeting to make a final decision on our story idea. Please check your email, then email me back about what time would be best. Once I get a consensus on a time, I'll post an update here and send out an email. Since this is urgent, please do your best to make time to attend. If you fail to attend without contacting me either online or during class, I will assume that you've forfeited your right to choose. I do that on recommendation from DQ.

Adric Worley
Production Manager

And so it begins

Hey everybody,

This is the official production blog for Group D2's 3rd year film. We'll be keeping track of progress on our film, posting meeting and deadline alerts, and posting work for critique and comment.

For all group members, please create a blogger account so you can be added as a contributing member. This will be used in addition to the group email list, so check back regularly. Notes posted under the main blog name are official announcements, and attendance is expected unless otherwise accounted for.

Adric Worley
Production Manager
Double D productions