In week 2, the session focused on short narrative and the challenges of telling a story in a short amount of time, especially through animation. We discussed how short non-verbal narratives need to communicate clearly without relying on dialogue, which means the story has to come through visual choices, character movement, body language, facial expression, sound and editing.
A key part of the session was understanding that short narratives usually focus on one main event, emotion or idea. Because there is limited time, there is not much space for long exposition or complicated backstory. Instead, the audience needs to quickly understand the character, the situation and the emotional direction of the story. The resources described short narratives as compressed stories that can still have a beginning, middle and end, but with a more direct structure and a clear emotional impact.
We also looked at non-dialogue animation as a way of telling stories visually. This was useful for thinking about how animation can work across language barriers, because the meaning is created through action, gesture, timing, expression, sound design and music instead of spoken words. Examples such as Shaun the Sheep, Flow, Oggy and the Cockroaches and Animanimals were suggested as references for visual storytelling without dialogue.
The session also made me think about how to introduce a character quickly. If my character is shown scrolling through media, walking through the city, or reacting silently to disturbing events, their behaviour needs to communicate their emotional state clearly. This links to the idea that non-dialogue animation relies on visual storytelling and performance to carry the narrative.
For next week, we were asked to start a section on the blog for the FMP thesis proposal and answer questions about our future production focus, the skills we need, how we might showcase the FMP, and whether the thesis should connect directly to the practical work.