What happens when a profit hungry business man attempts to change the lifestyles of a homely and simple group of candy farmers by taking over their candy bayou with an insidious plot to mass produce and industrialize the candy production.
Point Form Summary
1) Candy People Are Happy
2) Business Man Shows up
3) Business Man entices the Candy people with profit and increased productivity
4) Business Man Changes the Bayou entirely
5) Bayou people are unhappy
6) Candy people realize they were better off the way they were before
7) Business Man is defeated
8) Things go back to normal
Narrative
Act1
Introduce the people of the Candy Bayou. Show their way of life, what they do to make candy. Focus on their humbleness and happiness.
Meanwhile, a business-man lurks in the darkness and watches the people of the bayou and plots. He introduces himself, shows how he could improve things and entices them with increased profits. He begins to dance around the bayou, transforming it from its original homely nature into a cold industrial factory for mass production of the candy.
Act 2
The People of the Bayou are miserable and segregated from each other. They have lost their cultural identity and humanity. (Think Metropolis 1927).
Act 3
Something happens to give one of the people an epiphany and they realize that things were better off before. The people of the bayou begin to change their home back to its original state. The profits drop but the people don’t seem to mind as they gleefully go back to their former way of life. The Business man looks confused, unable to understand how anyone could not desire his way of life. He is defeated and this should be visually represented (possibly with a gag)
Themes / Underlying morals
American expansion
commercialism
mass production
heart and soul vs industrial coldness
humanity vs profit
cultural identity
integrity
Characters:
The Business Man: A mix of Facilier (Princess and the frog) and Sweet (Once More With Feeling). Should look villainous and have visual but very subtle allusions to Americanism. Walks about the Bayou, doing an eccentric move (eg; snapping his fingers) and changing the layouts/backgrounds. This character should be jazz music inspired.
The People of the Candy Bayou: Dirty and maybe a little gross but still friendly-looking and happy. They could be a caricature of the Cajun culture.
Act1
Introduce the people of the Candy Bayou. Show their way of life, what they do to make candy. Focus on their humbleness and happiness.
Meanwhile, a business-man lurks in the darkness and watches the people of the bayou and plots. He introduces himself, shows how he could improve things and entices them with increased profits. He begins to dance around the bayou, transforming it from its original homely nature into a cold industrial factory for mass production of the candy.
Act 2
The People of the Bayou are miserable and segregated from each other. They have lost their cultural identity and humanity. (Think Metropolis 1927).
Act 3
Something happens to give one of the people an epiphany and they realize that things were better off before. The people of the bayou begin to change their home back to its original state. The profits drop but the people don’t seem to mind as they gleefully go back to their former way of life. The Business man looks confused, unable to understand how anyone could not desire his way of life. He is defeated and this should be visually represented (possibly with a gag)
Themes / Underlying morals
American expansion
commercialism
mass production
heart and soul vs industrial coldness
humanity vs profit
cultural identity
integrity
Characters:
The Business Man: A mix of Facilier (Princess and the frog) and Sweet (Once More With Feeling). Should look villainous and have visual but very subtle allusions to Americanism. Walks about the Bayou, doing an eccentric move (eg; snapping his fingers) and changing the layouts/backgrounds. This character should be jazz music inspired.
The People of the Candy Bayou: Dirty and maybe a little gross but still friendly-looking and happy. They could be a caricature of the Cajun culture.
Thanks for pointing out The Princess and The Frog as reference. I didn't even think about that movie, if anyone has the book it'd be great if you could bring it in for bg reference.
ReplyDeleteI like the proposal -
What I think would be funny is if we made the business man a representative of a green company who's intention is to make all the products of the candy bayou healthy and vegan and the creation eco friendly. Even though this is noble cause we would portray it as evil corporate america trying to destroy this little piece of americana.
I think that having a narrative as a base to tie all the gags together is important but that it would be funnier if the narrative it's self was big joke. So we have all these little gags peppered on top of one big gag.
Also maybe there is a way that we could merge the grandpa and the kid characters into this story arch. I think they have a pretty good dynamic (although the kid could use more of a personality).
Maybe the kid just inherited "Green Giant Inc." because his parents died from choking on tofu and drowning in soy milk simultaneously and now Gramps is trying to convince this 7 year old billionaire that the bayou is better left the way it was found.
I don't know - I'm just throwing things out there. Your proposal is thought provoking, so great Job!
I really want the kid and old man in this. I think if this was a mostly narrated movie set to music it would work quite nicely. Though, I liked the original idea of their interaction. (How it was the old man telling the boy about the story of the candy bayou)
ReplyDeleteI don't really think it should be a joke wrapped in a joke. There are very few (if any) successful pieces (even comedic) that do this.
We really have to consider what our target audience is and if it's wide enough. We already exclude a large group with the gross-out humour. Without an underlying structure or moral base the cartoon will seem very disjointed and pointless to most people and it wouldn’t go much further than Newgrounds.
Even cartoons like Family Guy, Simpsons, Futurama, South Park follow this order. This is an established structure that audiences have come to expect from professional level work.
As much as I would love to take some jabs at the green movement as much of the propaganda toward it has become tiresome, I think it would be a really big mistake for us to touch it.
Consider the fact that we are representing Seneca and how they have established themselves on the issue. This is a really popular topic and placing ourselves where we are not ready to debate could be tricky. We would open ourselves up for criticism and that could greatly take away from the cartoon. (Not to mention it wouldn’t fair well at any film festival)
It doesn’t have to be in your face morality either where we make it so obvious we are beating the audience over the head with it and include an adage. I just think we need a message, a motif and a moral for starters.
I don't want to be a big discouragement of ideas either. I'm just trying to be thorough. :)
I'd like to agree with what Andrea is saying. Putting a "green" spin on the bad guy would really not be funny. There are too many people to offend there. I know that some people may like offensive humour but you habe to think of the audience that will be seeing this. Critics, future employers, etc. Is a cartoon filled with gags and no real plot something we would like to show these people? Especially representing Seneca. It would be funny if we were doing this just for our class, but it will be viewed by many.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I understand that many like gross out humour but a more subtle humour, less gross, is more widely accepted . I guess I'm basically trying to repeat what I said in class that didn't seem to be taken seriously at all.
The idea that Andrea gives seems to have more purpose, instead of just pure gags that will get tired after a while.
I'm not trying to be negative, just pointing out some things that need to be thought about before going any deeper.
If you still want to keep the old man and the kid we can do more of a cutesy beginning to contrast with a darker story of the evil corporation, while the old man narrates the story.
Think about the shorts that were shown in class, very tasteful, and yet humourous, with heart. Lets make this something that we can show a variety of different audiences, rather than sticking to strictly one.
You could try the spin of "green washing". That's the big controversy these days. Show how awful it is, but then how they're using the farm next door's carbon credits and it's all good. But I wouldn't get caught up in the bad guy. Princess and the Frog sucked because of the bad guy. There's no time, and it's better to focus on the funny of the kid and dad. Otherwise it's not the same cartoon at all.
ReplyDelete