Rat Plans ft. Self Doubt

With second year ending I have all summer to ready my pitch for third year. It's something I've been thinking about since knowing I was coming to Falmouth and it feels like there is a lot of pressure to make it the best thing I can achieve.

Because of this I have never been able to convince myself any of my stories are worth developing and have this moment of panic where I feel like I'm running out of time before third year and this isn't worth following up on, and so I switch to a different idea. In reality this just wastes more time as I've learnt how much time and effort it takes to develop a story and it doesn't help constantly resetting in the hopes of a stronger starting position.

During the pre-production module last term I began working on a story which I thought would be appealing to the tutors, a piece set historically with an art style grounded in that time and a story that was attempting to comment on an issue that was important to me. But it felt like a chore, I had very little art for it and I wasn't motivated to make anymore, it wasn't something that I wanted to make. Which is why I decided to develop a story based on a sketch I did whilst procrastinating from the first one. The sketch was of a rat dressed like a pirate and I thought it was kind of funny and I like rats.

And now I sit here, weeks after term has ended, and my main character Pokey is still what I find myself drawing every day. Even now I have my doubts about this project, it maybe not being as action orientated as the things I'd like to produce or that it really isn't saying anything deep like all the short films our tutors show us in lectures but I am committed to my rat story. I think working past self doubt is all a part of the writing process and a healthy part of developing a fleshed out story.

So with that in mind I have chosen to spend this summer continuing to develop my story, 'Rat Trap' to make it as visually and narrative engaging as possible. And I hope I never get sick of drawing fat little rats.

Evaluation of 'Rat Trap'

The idea behind Rat Trap is finding comedy in the contrast between the high romance of swashbuckling piracy in the style of adventure movies from the 30's featuring Errol Flynn but with the subject of rats. Rats are seen as disgusting rodents and carriers of disease but in my story they're imitating the humans and acting like pirates.




And whilst this started as simply a dumb joke I found that there was also drama to be had in that setup, the rats believe themselves valued members of pirate crews where they aren't even noticed. Pokeys arc is about discovering his role in the world because it certainly isn't as a pirate but he is too far into the facade to acting like just a rat.

The narrative begins as a fairly conventional pirate story, he arrives at the island and encounters Scab and they wind up duelling over conflicting ideas and miscommunication really. This scene is most evocative of the previously mentioned adventure movies, I took direct inspiration from 'Captain Blood' for this part in the location for the duel to take place in.

Concept art (left) is by Eloise Gardner

However after this scene the narrative takes a turn away from a pirate story as Pokey kills Scab in the name of the humans only to find that they've left without him. He is left on the island to slowly become more rat like and eventually become like Scab, but he does not want this and the story ends with him crafting a makeshift raft and leaving the island to make a place for himself.

In retrospect I think the story in its current shape is a little clumsy, after the humans leave the pacing is broken and it is waiting for Pokey to make the decision to leave but as of right now it isn't motivated by an engaging narrative. And the ending itself feels slightly underwhelming, really the story just sort of peters out after the mid point which is frustrating.

But I do think it has some interesting aspects, I think with some more development it'd have quite a strong visual style and I think there is a lot of comedic moments in the setup. I may even decide to develop this and pitch it as my third year film.

Rat Trap

As part of my pre-production university module we have to develop a story ready for pitching as a short film in the third year. For my story I developed Rat Trap, a story about a naive rat pirate named Pokey who is abandoned on an island by the humans he thought was his crew and he has to learn a rats place in a pirates world.

This is the main character Pokey, he joined a pirate crew after wanting to escape life as a city rat surrounded by filth. He wanted to see the world but he doesn't realise he's more of a castaway than a pirate, he has deluded himself into thinking he is a valued member of the crew.

This is the antagonist, Scab. He has lived on the

 island for a while now. He was once abandoned on the island much like Pokey is now, he seems to have lost his marbles a little from being trapped so long.

Character design - Space Prince

This is a character I imagine comes from a pulpy science fiction melodrama story in the style of those from the 70's. He is an estranged Prince of a royal kingdom who has dissapeared in the wake of his father becoming fatally ill, he is the next in line for the throne other than his brother who is infamously sadistic and is only interested in starting a galactic level war with a rival kingdom.
So naturally the missing Prince is a target for many people, whether that be sympathisers of his brother who wants him permanently gone, royal soldiers, and even people who don't want his brother to be in power.
However he is hiding in a deep corner of the universe, running from his responsibility as a leader since he is not interested in leading. He is quite a selfish character, but his refusal to stand up to his role as leader also goes hand in hand with not wanting to face the fact his father will die. So he runs.