LO2 TASK 3
Planning a character for use in animation
TREATMENT
Title: Dead Man's Gambit / Limbo and Libel
Medium: Animated Series / 13 Episode Seasons / VOD
Run Time: 20 / Average script page count of 25 - 35
Synopsis: In an alternate world where everyone becomes anthropomorphoric animals, we follow Wayne Hauser, an anxious yet super cocky hitman and his exploits, shortcomings, abuses and follies serving under his employer. We start off when it’s revealed his long gone father has committed sucide, and as Wayne takes it upon himself to find out, he uncovers a better look at the demon facade of this ambiguous world they live.
Key Scenes: Introductory Scene; an old man who’s clearly dyslexic writes a suicide letter on a computer. We get a suggestion that he has a son out there, and we cut away after a gunshot. We then open on two assassins, discussing the importance of the document they possess, and that if they were to express their concerns, they’d jinx the operation. So they attempt reverse psychology so they don’t jinx their fate, but are killed anyway at a distance by our protagonist, WAYNE HAUSER who retrieves the document.
STORYBOARDING EXAMPLES
TARGET AUDIENCE
Target Audience would be somewhere in the 16-40 age margin. No real intention to lean toward any basic gender, though it may be influenced by having a male protagonist and two supporting male characters. The counterpoint to this being that because he is very… ‘blank’ and that his issues and flaws encompass so many of our issues lightheartedly, everyone would have some ironic or comedic empathy for Wayne, spurring a wider audience than we would if the character was a very niche / detailed one.
His issues won’t really revel in gender, like relationship troubles or having a role in life, rather be more mental societal ones like ego, anxiety and perfectionism.
Due to the themes and some of the content (use of language, occasional black humour) it definitely leans toward the 15 / 18 age gate. There is some pretty explicit content like swearing (though for now, they are left censored, since I think it sounds funny when swear words are censored). Blood splatters and some gun-on-gun violence is a recoccuring element in the show.
The show would be available to anyone who’d have good enough internet to stream the VOD broadcast of the show and Cable Packages that’d allow them watch it live.
PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
ROUGH VIABLE OUTLINE:
Week 1 (22-26th Feb): Script Excerpt / Rough Storyboarding
Week 2 (29-4th Mar): Voice Talent Search / Drawing Assets
Week 3 (7-11th Mar): Drawing Assets / Set Drawings
Week 4 (14-18th Mar): Voice Session with Actor 1 / Voice Actor 2
Week 5 (21-25th Mar): Lip-Synching / Animating All Scenes
Week 6 (28-1st Apr): Final Edit / Presentation
The standard loadout for working on the show would be:
Final Draft (Scriptwriting / Rewriting software, industry standard)
Photoshop / Digital Tablets (creating / layering imagery and elements to be animated / composited into after effects)
After Effects (compositing / animating elements and visual effects)
Audition / RØDE NTG-1 (Professional-grade microphone and software for capturing audio, applying effects and doing mastering of all audio files)
Premiere Pro (
Working with a Adobe Heavy process is efficient in both financial and logistic departments. Adobe, although professional, is a lot more affordable than other industry-standard specialist packages. Not only that, but recently, they’ve implemented a workflow system that allows adobe-application specific filetypes to be converted on the fly in other programs. You can basically bring audition multi-track master files (unexported) as an audition file into Premiere, without going through the process of exporting.
LEGAL ISSUES
Copyright is basically a shaky area, fortunately signed by huge red guidelines easy enough to follow that it’s hard to not follow them.
For instance, we’ll never ever show a logo or reference a real-life brand for the sole purposes of copyright infringement. That’s a given.
However, there are issues that slip through the cracks.
One of which, in a show that depicts use of weaponry, guns themselves have copyright issues. They licensing fee is less severe if you don’t reference the name or the creators or list technical aspects (no reason to). Military Video-Games are notorious for having to deal with different licensing fiascos with weaponry and military hardware.
In fact, one way to circumvent this is to create the storyworld’s own depiction of weaponry. This negates the licensing fee issue, but also gives more uniqueness and character to the worldbuiling.
Another similar issue is the representation of other people. Take a show like South Park. They’re allowed to get away with representing real-life figures because those representations are hyperbolic caricatures of the person.
They’re so absurdly crafted that the person being poked fun at can’t even point a finger because there’s such a disconnect — unless they have too big an ego and try to shut the episode down, which never works.
If the show tried to be serious, and have real-life figures make appearances, it’d be a more strenuous process. That, or no process at all due to the fragility of trying to seriously depict a person you have no permission to.
Going back to copyrighted material, it’s important that any licensed assets we do use are actually checked with / paid for. The show intends to echo other shows that employ the trope of using the ‘Ren & Stimpy’ soundtrack, which is now under creative commons.
ETHICAL ISSUES
Can’t incorporate elements that are grotesquely controversial. Especially, if it can relate to the show’s setting.
A famous story about this sort of ethical issue sits with Dan Harmon, the show-runner of Community, a sitcom about a community university. When he asked ‘what’s the worst thing that we absolutely cannot touch.’ And, in light of the Columbine Massacre, the studio executive said ‘School shootings.’ Dan Harmon then famously created a school shooting episode, though, it was entirely revolved around paintballing.
My point being that we can’t mimic controversial events, and like the issue regarding depiction of non-fiction figures, we’d have to subvert it.
Since I’ve given the show a goal of hitting a clean TV-MA rating (TV Parental Guidelines Certificate in US), there will be some themes to be expected from dry or black comedy. Violence is supposed to be laughed at, and there will be the occasional utterances of swear words.
