Transitions - Critical Reflections

I found writing the script very different from what I am used to, in my previous productions the scripts tended to be simple and down to earth, regarding modern day items such as phones, cars and such. With this project, I was working with concepts such as Artificial Intelligence, Genetic Engineering, Robotic Mech, Spaceships and much more.


This change in style was quite a change and I struggled at first to keep things sounding plausible and yet still at the edge of fantasy. My biggest struggle was working through writer's block, In this project, I did set myself a schedule, at first it was one page per day, then two per day and so on. I would sit down to try and write and be unable to think of anything to put on the page.


Because of this I started to run out of time and I think that reflected in my work, I also would decide to change small parts of the story throughout the script writing process which would require me to change large parts of the script.


Researching the creator didn't yield many results, aside from basic facts there wasn't much about his art style, in the few interviews he had done his answers were very short.


In my next project, I will try to plan the story out better, perhaps making bullet points for each scene to look at whenever I get stuck and creating a better timeline so I can keep track of what I need to write and when it happens.


I also think I need to work on some creative exercises, perhaps setting myself a goal of creating a short story idea once a day, even if its bad this should help me be able to generate ideas. I will also try creating different characters and given them different voices and speech patterns as I feel like my characters sounded quite similar in the way they speak.

All in all I know I can do better, but I'm happy with what I produced it was a nice change from writing drama scripts and so on but I would like to be able to create my own universe for the script rather than trying to adapt one to my script.

Transitions - Writer - Tsutomu Nihei

• Tsutomu Nihei was born in 1971
• Japanese manga artist. 
• cyberpunk influenced artwork. 
• Creator of Blame, Knights of Sidonia and Biomega
• Studied Architecture and incorporates that into his work, designing large structures for futuristic cites/ships etc.
• Likes to explore transhumanism.
• Likes to write about post-apocolyptic dystopian societies

Tsutomu Nihei initially started work as an office worker, then a construction worker, he then moved on to writing his Manga books, in his work he tends to explore things like, huge structures, Post Apocalyptic worlds and Transgender/non-human pairings.

I like his progressive thinking regarding things like transgender and non-binary genders, I also appreciate how he works with large-scale structures and creatures, such as the Gauna and Sidonia in Knights of Sidonia.

The concepts I would like to take from his works are working with large scale ships/structures and his views regarding gender and sexuality. 

Transitions - Characters/Scenes

SCENES

Transitions - Change of Idea

Today I spoke to Simon about my script idea, in my idea I wanted to do the following.



•For my script I would like to rewrite the first episode of the show
•Change how Nagate gets his garde, he steals it when he hears the gauna are approaching
•Been brought up to hate gauna with an almost radicalized passion
•Towards the end of his grandfathers life he got obsessed with teaching nagate about piloting and self-defence to the point of beating Nagate if he did it wrong
•Nagate will be socially inept, cannot handle large crowds

Simon discussed the possibility of me writing my own episode for the show, I warmed to the idea and decided to change my plan of re-writing an episode and instead write a completely new episode. 

For my idea for the new episode, I wanted to do something which is tied in with the inhabitants of Sidonia turning to Genetic Engineering to solve problems like food shortages and replication. My idea is that instead of first turning to those ideas, what if they initially tried to create half human/half machines instead. 

These were my main ideas

1)The story would consist of an old experiment waking up and wreaking havoc in Sidonia, Nagate the main protagonist would try to reason with the creature as he relates to growing up in solitude.

2)The story would be about a failed experiment which killed its creators, unable to kill the rampaging creature they locked it away in a room to starve. A hundred years later the creature finally escapes, however he is peaceful to Nagate and wishes to help fight against the Gauna

3) This idea mainly follows a failed experiment who has been training in a Pilot Simulation pod for a hundred years, he finds a way to transfer his consciousness to a Garde Chassis and becomes the first unmanned Garde which is successful against the Gauna.

I decided to mix between my second and third idea and have something befall the experiment, perhaps he was not accepted by the people and they attacked him or the main antagonist in the show Ochiai wanted the experiment killed before it could reveal any of its creators secrets, the experiment would then transfer its personality into a garde unit and would help Nagate and his fellow pilots on their missions.

Transitions - Pitch

Today I did my pitch in front of the class


My pitch did not go as well as I would have hoped, I should have practised a bit more and prepared better, I had decided to change my idea from a Anime show about VR to an Anime show about space/aliens and mech robots. In the future, I will try and keep to the same idea to prevent myself from getting mixed up in the pitch and I will also prepare point cards so I dont have to keep looking back to see what is on the screen , this does not look very professional.