Short Story

Instructions: First, write a very simple, seven-sentence story on any topic using any characters you like using the following format. Note, this is not a fairy tale that you’re writing, but rather the universal story structure for all stories. 1. Once up on a time… 2. And everyday… 3. But one day… 4. Because of that…. 5. However… 6. Until finally… 7. And ever since then… Again, you are not writing a seven-sentence fairy tale – unless you love that genre and really want to write one! Your story can be about anything and any characters that interest you. You are the director. Create a storyboard for this simple story that is at least 14 frames in length. A storyboard is a VERY simple set of drawings that lays out what the frames of a film will look like. A full, proper, feature-length movie storyboard might be thousands of drawings long. Here’s an example of a storyboard. For this assignment you will create a very abbreviated storyboard for your whole story brought to film. Instead of making perhaps 100 drawings for a key scene, your assignment is simple to create 7 pairs of frames, one for each part of the story as you wrote it (so one for “once upon a time,” one for “and every day,” and so on). Your job is to illustrate the moment when you would use 7 different film transitions. The purpose is to explore how inter-connected stories and editing transitions are. Where might you use a fade out? Where might you use a jump cut? Why? For example, perhaps in part 7 of your story, you have a special ring that the main character sees on the ground. You would draw a wide shot of the ring on the ground in square 7A and then a close up of that same ring in drawing 7B – that’s an example of an inset editing transition – from 7A to 7B. A second example might be when one of your characters says, in drawing 3A, “What’s that?!” while pointing to the sky. In drawing 3B we see a meteor coming toward the city. That’s an example of a motivated cut, or a cutaway. Draw each pair and label which editing transition is taking place as A moves to B. Here’s an example: So write your story first. Imagine what kind of scene might go somewhere in each of the seven parts. Draw 7 pairs of frames – 14 drawings in total. Your drawings should be 1.5 inches x 1.5 inches and all 14 drawings should fit on one page, which you will scan in and submit. Add any extra details that you feel are essential. Make sure your drawings and labels are clearly visible. If you don’t have access to a scanner, take a digital picture of your drawings (with editing transition labels under them). Insert your scanned or photographed image of your drawings into a Word document so that your work is all in one file. If you cannot combine your two pieces into one file for some reason submit your story and your drawings to the assignment link in the course site as separate documents. The system will allow you to upload multiple files. Be sure to read the criteria, by which your paper/project will be evaluated (last page), before you write, and again after you write.