So I’m going to come clean and say I drank Baileys out of my hands like an animal and held half a loaf of rye in my arms like a small child tonight. It’s election night baby. Here’s some stuff I worked on this week:
Continuing with the script development, Alia (@sisterhugbear) and I talked more about modifications we could make to cut down the script. I made a few tweaks to make certain things flow better, and the escalating tensions between then characters work nicer, but I’m having trouble condensing it to a more manageable size. Alia had the idea of perhaps having certain more description heavy moments be voiceover, with the image described doing an animated boil perhaps. This would cut down on some of the animating we’d have to do, although it’s not exactly what I envision “aesthetically” for the film.
The premise is this: Three friends, Louise, Ari, and Chris, play a tabletop roleplaying game. Their interpersonal relationships and personalities are revealed through how they approach the game, and as they continue to play it, the game and their own reality in relation to each other becomes blurred.
early concepts of the characters
It’s been difficult writing a script about something as complicated and often misconstrued as Dungeons and Dragons. The more I show the script to people the more I realize that a lot of people don’t have any idea what’s going on because they have no idea what DnD even is. Essentially, most tabletop roleplaying games are games of (a certain level of) chance. Players have characters who can do certain things particularly well, and other things not so well, and these things all have numbers associated with them, which are added (or subtracted) to performative dice rolls. One person (in Dungeons and Dragons they’re called “Dungeon Masters” or “Game Masters”, whichever one makes you feel less like a complete clown I guess) is in charge of running the story, essentially narrating it, and determining what effect the actions of their players have on the story. They also roleplay all the characters who aren’t the players. This sounds really convoluted and arbitrary now that I’m actually committing to writing out a description. ANyway
Essentially, Louise is a Dungeon Master who is highly organized and anal retentive, she is a control freak and follows her own scripts and maps for her generic high fantasy story so rigidly the mere thought of improvising puts her teeth on edge. Now, a “good” Dungeon Master is someone who can walk the line comfortably between being organized and being flexible, for when their players (inevitably) do something unexpected. This is what makes the game interesting, after all! The players should have just as much input in where the story goes as the Dungeon Master.
Ari, is the opposing force, personality-wise, to Louise. She is spontaneous and provocative, but never actually challenges Louise’s authority. She pushes Louise to improvise and do a story more to her liking, but never actually suggests that she herself could do a better job. Her approach to the game is very erratic and lawless, and this drives Louise crazy. A player like Ari can be fun, because their ideas are so off the wall, and can make for interesting story developments. However, Ari never tries to play within the game’s “ethos” and “rules”, by suggesting something goofy at every moment, she brings everyone out of the world of the game.
Lastly, Chris is the foil that bridges the opposing personalities of Ari and Louise. He is quieter, careful with his words, and less confident about his ability to play the game. He is likely a new player. He wants to play the game in a way that makes both Ari and Louise happy.
At the end of the script, Ari pushes Louise over the edge, by incessantly derailing her story, to the point where Louise morphs grotesquely into a dragon and eats both Chris and Ari whole, and then burns her apartment to a crisp. I like the idea of using this hyper-literal imagery. Does Louise actually turn into a dragon, or is that just a symbol of her frustration and animosity towards her friends? I don’t know!!!!!! It’s animation baby anything can happen.
early concepts for post-transformation Louise