So Very Very Many Birds............

This year I have chosen to do pre production rather than post, and the first thing we were set was to choose 3 cards. Each card had a person, a phrase and a genre on it. We then had to combine these 3 things to form the plot for a film... in only 1 hour! My group got 'Beryl Markham', 'spill the beans' and 'soap'. After researching our person we discovered she was born into the Victorian era in England, was the first woman to fly across the Antlantic solo and was a rebellious character who had affairs and was involved with drug deals. Her father moved the family to Kenya and Beryl spent her childhood playing and hunting with natives, until her mother moved them back to England as she disliked Africa. So after a mad brainstorming session my group (made up of me, Eline Lindaas, Vicky Keaveney and Hannah Geach) were ready to pitch our idea to the tutors and class.

Our idea was that a girl is born in Kenya to an English couple consisting of an adventurous explorer father and an over protective, controlling, conformist mother. She grows up to be a feral adventurous young girl who plays in the wilds of Africa and hunts with the natives. But her mother makes her move to Victorian England against her will.
She doesn't fit in at all with the strict English sensibilities and conformist attitudes, she is a complete fish out of water, just as her mother was in Kenya and so instead she longs to return to the wilds of Africa. The girl decides the only way to return to her homeland is to learn how to fly, so she sets off on a mission to discover the secret of flight from the birds, namely the fastest bird in England, the Gannet. She catches birds and forces them to tell her the way to the Gannet, but on reaching him he tells her it's impossible for her to learn to fly, as humans can't grow wings.
Just as the girl despairs, the Gannet takes pity on her and rallies the birds of England together. They use their combined strength to carry her back to Africa, where she can run and play with the natives once more.

We then created an animatic, all four of us pitched in here, drawing a section each. I then put it together on Premiere. Take a look:

                               

We are thinking of using African art styles to inspire the silhouetted fantasy sequence where she envisions having wings. The fantasy scenes could be quite abstract and experimental in style, with interesting, artsy transitions. The scenes of strict English life could be quite realistic in style to give more contrast of life styles.

The feedback we got from the tutors was very positive, they said that it could make a very good music video if we could find someone to compose a track for it and extended its runtime from its current 2 minutes to the standard song length of 3 and a half minutes.
We are all very pleased with what we've come up with and I would love if we took this further and created an animation from it.