Story Ideas #2

From my previous post, it seems I forgot to mention some the character elements I intended to portray in my narrative. Namely in that I was trying to establish the emotional link between the BGH and the sand castles which was his home, full of his trophies and games from past adventures, and that he is hunting the deck chair in revenge for destroying his home.

While developing this idea further, I found that the story would not quite work in certain areas with such little time to convey the action between BGH and deck chair, resulting in a series of shots that would progress far too quickly lessening the impact and coherency of the story. I thought of changing acts 1 and 3 respectively to compensate with this, as well as considering a montage of events to portray the BGH attempt to hunt the deck chair. Yet ultimately, I found the story would not work to the confines of the time and perhaps was not building to the character of a Big Game Hunter enough.

Thus, I've revised my story to one of my initial ideas. Originally I thought to have the Big Game Hunter hunting the deck chair, but I've decided to turn this around for some unpredictability and have the deck chair hunt the big game hunter instead. The idea of scale came to mind to reflect this turn of events, so the deck chair and sand castle remain as a normal real world scale with the BGH being very small in comparison, enticing some comedic opportunities in contrasting the two scales together. So the story as follows:

Act 1
The BGH is residing atop a sand castle searching the landscape for prey using binoculars. In the distance, he sees a small deck chair, grins, and readies a shot with his rifle. As he takes aim, a large shadow looms over him, revealing another yet larger deck chair about to come down and crush him. BGH dives off the sand castle in escape landing to the ground with the dramatic destruction of the sand castle. It is here we cut back to our real world perception of scale to see a standard deck chair merely being placed on the beach crushing the sand castle that BGH was in, establishing the twist in scale.

Initial basic storyboarding of Act 1. Its pretty rough, but establishes some of the initial visual imagery I had in mind.


Act 2
On the ground, a hail of deck chairs come crashing down in a dramatic fashion, as BGH runs narrowly avoiding each one. Another cut to real world scale shows deck chairs are simply being placed in a row along the beach. BGH runs but he is eventually cornered and trapped as he falls into a small crater. As another shadow looms over him and BGH fears the worst with his eyes shut, the scene is engulfed in darkness.

Act 3
BGH opens his eyes and is confused that he is still alive to reveal that he is in a sand castle. BGH in disbelief, rejoices and walks out of the sand castle triumphant that he still lives, only to be crushed by another deck chair.

With this story, the character of the Big Game Hunter is drawn out more with his act in search of prey as well as in the environment of the sand castle perhaps being decorated with trophies of his previous endeavours. Additionally, the story provides a twist with comedic elements in the use of scale contrasting both the BGH perception and our own real world perception of the objects and the environment. The ending in Act 3 is something in particular which I am still considering, and whether it provide sufficient closure with a comedic punch. With some further development, I'm hoping to refine the narrative as a whole.

Some other quick sketches of images that came to mind while developing the story.


Eager to hear out your thoughts and comments.