This critique was like a brain explosion and not in a good way. The response I got back from Meredith was not exactly the best. The very first thing she suggested to me after I finished telling her the pitch was that I should do this story in live action.
... Say what?
So she explained that she thinks it would be funnier to see Lee in real life doing these things in a superhero outfit. So while I think this is totally a disaster waiting to happen, I can't quite figure out how I would get a volunteer lead actor that wouldn't mind walking around in a superhero outfit all day, being dumped, probably humiliated, etc. And on top of that, there's the locations to think about too. The places I would have to film in would likely be somewhere like downtown Memphis, which I'm not even comfortable walking in, not to mention filming in. The one pro to doing this in live action I think would be the ability to have someone actually fight people. I would have the time to have my actors actually trained properly, which would be an up side in relation to two semesters ago when I had to have Aaron cram essentially two months of training into two and three weeks (and they didn't even get to train together until the night before).
Another thing that completely throws my entire project into chaos in a second suggestion that Meredith made. She thinks I should make Lee (the superhero) the main character and make this story essentially about him failing several times to save different women who can save themselves. Which would then lead to him hanging up his superhero uniform--turning it into a traditional 3-gag structure. Not only would this completely change the entire story, but it would cheapen Lee even further, throw the chance for him to fall for one girl completely out the window, and the throw away the chance for me to make a simple animation.
Overall, the main thing I got out of this critique was a realization that I don't want to go any of these directions. I like the idea I have, and even though I may not be the best animator in the world, I intend to see this through. There are changes to be made in this story, but if I'm going to change something, I'll have to find another way to go about it. Make no mistake, this is not me merely throwing my foot down and throwing a fit. I gave my BFA a lot of thought over the summer, and the one of the conclusions that I came up with was that I did not want to do this in live action. I plan to talk to Jill about this, but I have no intention of changing this piece to live action without a solid reason.
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