The Last Breath - Final Year Project - Evaluation

Evaluation

For my final year project I wanted to create a Anime styled tv show called "The Last Breath". In this story people can give a person a piece of their soul by "Pledging their last breath" to them, this last breath the person breaths contains a piece of their soul, which transfers knowledge, power and strength to the recipient.

This concept was fun to conceptualise, but quite difficult to manage in a long form script. I spent a lot of time working out the limits and capabilities of those with lots of breaths compared to those without. I didn't want to fall in the same trap of constantly revealing new and amazing ground breaking abilities. 

I found coming up with the base story line rather easy, since I had already had this idea a while before. What I found diffiuclt however was putting my thoughts into words.

Motivation was my biggest drawback on this project, since I was working by myself I had no one to help manage my time, or solid deadlines to finish work by. I was constantly pushing back my own work schedule in favour of other activities. 

To help manage this I researched several ways of managing time effectively, some methods did work, but I found the best way for me to sit and focus was to work outside of my home. To this extent I began to work in Cafe's and parks, writing my scripts down on a pen and pad first then typing them up into Final Draft after. 

This method really helped me focus as it took away my biggest distraction. The internet.

Other than time management and organisation something else that I struggled with was the dialogue. 

One of the staples of anime is the long winded and over dramatic speeches the majority of shows contain, mine was no different, however the dialogue I wrote seemed wooden and forced and did not fit with the tone, or characters I had created. 

I tried to tone down the speeches for the key moments in the story, avoiding using dialogue as a means of exposition and simply a method for driving the story and at worse clarification on the intricate special powers system I had created.

I also struggled with creating unique character dialogue, there were several times during the script where two characters would speak in almost the same tone and voice. I found it difficult to have clear differences between the two main characters Arthur and James. 

I wanted James to sound slighty more refined than Arthur, indicating a higher level of schooling or perhaps higher status in life . I did this by mainly having Arthur often using contractions , such as Don't, Isn't and couldn't etc. Whereas James uses Do not, is not and could not.

I also struggled to find a way to explain the concept of the story without outright telling the audience, after getting feedback on my first script I came to realise that to someone who did not now the concept of "The Last Breath" it was a bit confusing. 

To rectify this I created a short two minute script which would serve as a title sequence or a prologue before the first episode. This gives an overview of the concept of the Last Breath and allows the viewer to understand more in the first episode.

I am quite happy with how the first episode came out and the last two, I felt like I learnt from the process of writing and the last scripts are better and more interesting.

My take aways from this project is to work on my organisational skills and self-discipline for the project, setting myself targets and sticking to them rather than pushing them back. I know I could have done a lot better for this project but I am proud of how much I got done.