Author: kguinn23

Aristotelian:

This story will be about a relationship between father and son and the growth of their relationship in the mid 90’s California. When the son was born the father was always swamped by work and was too tired to raise a kid when he got home. The wife took up to raising the kid and took care of all his needs.The son knew that his dad worked to keep food on the table and a warm house to sleep in. But that didn’t stop him from wanting a more involved dad. The wife is tragically killed from a car accident when the kid is just 10. This puts a dent into both of the father’s and the sons lives as they now have to go to school and work while taking care of each other. Over the course of the story the father and son grow and learn more about each other. The father learns that he needs to take off time from work to support his child from home. The child learns more about how much dad actually can take care of him and learns what it is to be an adult. As well as to make your own decisions. This all leads up to the day of the funeral. The dad and son had some time to understand each other and get some closure with the passing of their mother/wife. And in the end the father and son are stronger people and go on to face the world with a new perspective of life. 

Kishōtenketsu: This story would focus on a man sitting out in the middle of a field surrounded by mountains. The man is describing his surroundings and is at peace with the world around him. The man continues to roll in the grass and continues to run into the endless plains. He looks at the mountains and views them in awe. Then the camera will pan downward under the earth and will show a car crash and a dead body of the same man. This will infer that the man in the plains had died and had reached some sort of “heaven” or “Nirvana”.  The story ends with this character being content with his situation and continues to explore the endless heavens. 

Episodic: This will be a story about different household pets in different people’s homes. The pets will be of different kinds of animals and different breeds of certain animals for a diverse “cast”. The show will tell these stories about how pets and humans affect each other’s lives and how we go through life together. These stories would be fictional and would have a different conflict with different pets and owners every episode. Each episode would be its own little story that makes up the whole overarching story of how pets and humans are closely linked with each other and makeliving in this world just a bit easier. But, not saying that sometimes taking care of pets isn’t difficult. 

Surrealist: When I think of surreal I think of crazy landscapes and weird imagery that brings thoughts and feelings into the viewer. I want to create a story that takes place in modern day Washington (2023). In this world, the main character who would be nameless is wandering around his school campus late at night where they stumble and fall on the ground. When they get back up they seem to have fallen into a pocket reality that is full of crazy surreal imagery that is constantly changing the more they walk through it. The base form of a school is still there but everything around it and in it is completely chaotic and creepy. The character’s personality is described through these environments as a way of communicating the main character’s thoughts and feelings toward periods of their life. The story ends with our character being transported back to “reality” where the story just seems to continue on without any sort of resolution or explanation. 

Personal: What many stories try to tell is a story about coming to age and realizing that it is now time to grow up. They do very well because the audience can really connect to it on a personal level. The story of my “coming of age” was when I moved across the whole continent to work for the Walt Disney Company at Walt Disney World. The story starts with a young man who had a dream of becoming an Imagineer, a creative designer for the Disney theme parks. Ever since he was little he’s wanted that to be his future. Well, while in college he had a chance to partake in the Disney College Program! Where he could work for Disney as well as make connections that could potentially get him to become an Imagineer! He took the chance and he got in! He was then flown down to Florida and started working for Disney. It was a lot of hours and a lot of work, but it was worth it. He made friends along the way and eventually found a person he loves. He worked with them for almost a year where loss and homesickness grasped him. In the end, he learned that there are a lot more opportunities for him in the future and Disney may not be the path that he is supposed to follow. The story ends with him moving back to Washington where he is now currently working on his degree to benefit his future. 

Great Rock n’Roll Pauses was a really interesting read that kept me engaged and somehow was able to guide the readers eye through the use of text placement. From what I gathered, the story is about a family of four that lives in the desert. The father is at work being a doctor and rarely has time at home. The mother seems to be home during the day taking care of the kids. The son Lincoln is really into pauses in rock music. His dad keeps trying to shift Linc’s interests so that he starts to make some friends. Linc doesn’t react to this very well and starts crying. Dad tries to console Linc and apologize but Linc runs to his room and shuts the door. Dad asks his daughter if she wants to go on a walk. Father and daughter have a bonding moment on this walk and the Dad learns to embrace Linc’s interests by agreeing to help graph out the different pauses. The story ends with images of the charts. The conflict of the plot is the father’s effort of shift Linc’s interests. The text and slideshow aspects of this story make it engaging by using graphics to explain and visualize story elements. A grate example is the slide about the siblings rooms. They are separated by a wall and would knock on it to communicate. The slide displays a 3D box to symbolize said wall which separates the texts for the respective siblings.

When we think of stories Aristotelian plot structure comes to mind. There is usually clear central conflict and a hero to rise to the occasion to conquer it! Well some stories don’t have that type of structure. They tell their stories in different ways. The Short stories that I watched were very interesting and were all so different from each other. Some were split up into sections and some were very artsy. What seem to connect them all was that the conflict in all of them was more of an idea rather than a physical thing. For example, in Small Deaths, I got the sense that the main idea was small tragic events in a person’s life that can add up to change and develop who a person becomes. That was my take away. My personal favorite short film was 160 Characters. The title is quite clever as 160 characters was all you could type in one message on nokia cell phones. The world was based through those messages as well as a little dialog here and there for context. But, the main way of storytelling was through those messages. This conflict between Victoria and the Father is very real and a conflict that isn’t clear cut. There is a pattern between all of the short films as there is still a hint of tragedy among all of them. Each story has a different conflict told in a certain way but all tend to be negative and have a moment of shock within them. It’s kind of like they all have their own rising actions and climaxes. It’s very interesting to observe.

Who thinks kidnapping your wife and embezzling the money is a good idea? Well Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo is a classic depiction of a greek tragedy. There are a lot of moments that spark conflict in which prompts the plot to move forward and proceed to keep getting worse and worse. The film starts with Jerry and the two criminals meeting in a bar to discuss the plan that they were about to carry out. This conversation shows that no one really knows what they are doing and heavily hints at how awful the plan will be carried out. The plan turns out to work at the start but then is turned around by the shooting of a police officer. This sets in motion the tragedy that would befall Jerry and almost everybody in the story. Aristotle explanation of tragedy is apparent in Fargo and it has the main three story beats. The first act sets up the story and gives the setting and the introduction to the main characters. The next act starts when the officer is shot and when the whole plan goes downhill. The film switches between Jerry and Marge, a police chief investigating the murders. It shows both of their efforts to try and get to a solution. The last act is finally the resolution of everything. Pretty much everyone gets killed or arrested and the only good part about the ending is that Marge finally arrests the “bad guy”. Overall this movie is a total tragedy and all the events spiral down to a unsatisfactory ending.