First Storyboarding Meeting! 9/9/08

NOTES FROM FIRST STORYBOARDING MEETING, 9/9, at Soozin's house!

Word of the Day:

Metapsychosis: the transmigration of the soul, esp. the passage of the soul after death from a human or animal to some other human or animal body. In performance, this often refers to a being being present in multiple physical, emotional, and intellectual landscapes simultaneously. (Janaki gets 100 points for using this word casually in conversation.)


Meeting Intro:

We briefly discussed the inter-personal politics of communication, focusing primarily on what would happen to an individual's idea if they were to miss a meeting, and how we should deal with it. It was loosely agreed that if a meeting is going to be missed, it is up to the meeting-skipper to find somebody to represent their idea. This will be much easier when Rachel gets the contact sheet finished so we have everybody's phone numbers. Maybe people should email them to her....


General Thoughts on Storyboarding Process:

* It was mentioned that maybe the best way to proceed with the storyboarding is to focus on things that resonate visually as emotionally stunning moments, and see where that takes us.

*It seems important to start light, so that we aren't instantly alienated our audience in a sea of misery. Once we have won them, maybe that's the time to take them somewhere deeper? We should try to remember that this is a family show, and all ages/attention spans will be represented.

* All of the storyboards have similar scenes and visual representations of certain key elements, the main difference seems to be a difference of mood and of aesthetic.

* We emphasized the importance of focusing on an aesthetic of pageantry over theater... more singing, more movement, more large scale representative storytelling/motifs, making things larger than life.


Ideas and Visual Moments that Resonated:

* the "tree of life" with the dragon twined in the bark.
* both the dragon and the fleece/ram being able to "die" visually.
* the children being planted and becoming soldiers is a clear tiny visual/emotional arc that reverberated deeply for people.
* the harpies being representative of more than just "monster". Hunger/fear. How to emphasize this?
* the audience with oars.... maybe just a handful of people?
* shards of the fleece coming out from under the large fleece to tell the story... chorus?



Themes and Emotional Centers:
* After talking about all the different storyboarding options, we realized that the emotional center seems to be different for a lot of people. Ideas we discussed were....
* Home, how we lose it and how we come home, what prevents us from coming home.
*The Argonauts as "us"... the crucial to the storyline, make things happen, yet not a main character at all. How closely do we want the audience to identify with the Argonauts?
*How willing are we to have a clear dualism present? There is some worry that having the dragon and the fleece as central emotional characters will create this dualism. If we allow the dragon and the ram to have a real relationship (relationship tropes.... Rosencratz and Guildenstern-esque, much of this dualism will be swallowed by the grey area and contradictions of dualism that is exposed in all real relationships. No clear conclusion reached....


New Ideas:
*Bringing the election/political state into the story....
- "I'm Zeus, and I approved this message". Pre-recorded images of political ads projected on sail.
- Medea on cooking show.... cutting up the body. (Medea's brother as mutilated "body politic")
- The ram/dragon mudslinging.

New Storyboard:
We talked about having the audience enter into a space that is like a ship, and having a character lead them in unfurling the sail, etc. (Creating the ship around them... clear link between audience and Argonauts. Audi-nauts.

Things are still somewhat vague, but we seemed to agree that the center of the story should be the relationship between the fleece and the dragon. Right before we left it seemed like maybe we hadn't decided, so maybe we should revisit this?


Potential Logistical Issues:

* Using dialogue... how/when should this happen? Wireless mikes pose lots of problems, especially if more than one or two people have them. It was generally agreed that we should try to minimize dialogue, and maybe use only a few mikes for most of the speaking. This will give us a singular point of view, however. Who's voice is privileged by speaking? Especially if they are the only character speaking....

FOR NEXT TIME!

Please think about the five scenes that we will use.... each should be emotionally building on what was there before, leading us on a clear physical/emotional journey. ALSO.... any great ending scenes we can think of.

SEE YA'LL TOMORROW!