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shamanicshayminI've started volunteer work at the Cattery yesterday! I'll be working there three days a week, with two hours for each day. I'll be making friends with all the kitties there~! ♥ God, it feels good to finally become a functioning member of society, even if it's not the same as a job that pays money. I couldn't be happier to get kitty scratches all over my hands, nomnomnomnomnom~ ♥
Sometimes, I think about becoming a director of animated films. Seems unlikely and impossible, considering people's viewpoints of animation (gdsgsdjg dammit Animation Age Ghetto and All Adult Animation is South Park!) and the lack of female directors in the industry, hell, lack of female directors in general. And hey, if cultural viewpoints and gender don't hold me back, ableism will. :/ The first animal shelter I tried volunteering at? The lady didn't think I'd do well simply because I "couldn't follow simple directions", despite said directions being vague as hell. But I still think about it from time to time. If she had told me her damn name, I wouldn't have to walk around the entire shelter trying to look for her. :/
Anyway, getting off-topic. I still fantasize about directing animated movies from time to time. And after thinking about this thread, it reminded me of a movie I considered making long before the Lorax movie with Danny DeVito was announced.
How would I direct a Lorax movie? Here's a little something I cooked up.
So we got this kid with a wild Seussian name, but his first name is Theodore. He lives in a polluted dystopia, in a city made up of abandoned Thneed factories. Remember London when it was clouded in smog? That's Theodore's living conditions. He can't see his own hand if he held it in front of him. Clean water is expensive as hell (if you're lucky enough to get water that isn't sludgy, that is) and people use outhouses instead of toilets. Life expectancy has decreased because people were getting sick from the smoke. Paper is also expensive, so computers and cellphones were more important than ever, but not everybody can afford them, so you've got a ton of beggars living out in the streets.
Theodore isn't happy about this and wants to know what happened. But many of the people were caught up in getting their next meal rather than think about things vanished into the past like trees and Humming-Fish. His grandmother, however, is one of the few surviving seniors of the city, and she still remembers what life had been like when the sky was blue. She tells him about the Onceler, so Theodore leaves the city to look for him.
The first half of the film (or rather, the second act, after the short first act) is the Onceler recounting the story of the Lorax, with a few things added to punch in the gut. Onceler was once (pun intended) an idealistic young man who used to go camping in the woods with his father as a boy. All his life, his father believed in him and encouraged him to follow his dreams of becoming an inventor and successful businessman. Caught up in the excitement and grandeur of creating things to make other people happy, Onceler's story turned into something like a Greek tragedy. His invention and creation led to destruction and ruin, and people ended up becoming miserable. Once he had given so many jobs for people, and now they're out of work. On top of the animals and Lorax leaving, Onceler's father gotten ill from the pollution and passed away in his Thneed bed covered in his Thneed blanket.
Oh, but that's not the end. Far from it. After the Onceler gives Theodore the final Truffula seed, the boy goes home and thinks over what he's heard. His grandmother's started to develop a cough. Uh oh. Frightened for his grandmother's health, Theodore runs back to the Onceler, demanding him to leave the tower and help him clean the city. At first, Onceler is reluctant, but Theodore refuses to put up with his self-pity and sets the tower on fire, forcing the Onceler outside. With that bridge burned, the Onceler agrees to work together with Theodore to work on the city and save his grandmother.
Using his knowledge of business, the Onceler hires people to clean up the city, giving thousands of jobs for the homeless. He builds inventions to help aid the people and makes filters to clean the sludgy water. Theodore nurses the Trufulla seed, and the two of them go around the world to tell people their story. But nature takes slower to recover than polluting it, and Theodore's grandmother ends up in the hospital. The only way she could get better is if she got clean air and sunshine. But is there such a place left in the world?
Have any of you read "Searching For Summer" by Joan Aiken? It's like that. Theodore wants to know when the last sightings for Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish were. Theodore and Onceler head on over, and *DUNDUNDUN* there's a secret enclave where the sky is blue, the grass is green, and it's lush with fauna! The Lorax is there and he's not happy to see the Onceler. Theodore explains and begs the Lorax to let his grandmother stay with him, promising him that he and the Onceler will never reveal their secret shelter. After his grandmother has been moved to the enclave, Theodore chats with the Lorax and tells him what's going on in the outside world. He asks the Lorax if one day, the Earth would be clean enough for him to come home. The Lorax's answer is ambiguous, though he shakes his head sadly, telling him that people should always be caring for the environment, not just when it's in danger. Once something is gone from nature, like the extinction of a species, it's too late. The movie ends with Theodore saying goodbye to the Lorax and the Onceler, the latter staying to provide the grandmother with health care and to protect the shelter from anyone finding or decimating it. There's color returning to the grandmother's cheeks as she holds a baby Bar-ba-loot, and voila, we've got a hopeful end.
I also thought of making a movie adapt of "Halloween is Grinch Night!" but that gets its own entry in the future. Maybe.
Sometimes, I think about becoming a director of animated films. Seems unlikely and impossible, considering people's viewpoints of animation (gdsgsdjg dammit Animation Age Ghetto and All Adult Animation is South Park!) and the lack of female directors in the industry, hell, lack of female directors in general. And hey, if cultural viewpoints and gender don't hold me back, ableism will. :/ The first animal shelter I tried volunteering at? The lady didn't think I'd do well simply because I "couldn't follow simple directions", despite said directions being vague as hell. But I still think about it from time to time. If she had told me her damn name, I wouldn't have to walk around the entire shelter trying to look for her. :/
Anyway, getting off-topic. I still fantasize about directing animated movies from time to time. And after thinking about this thread, it reminded me of a movie I considered making long before the Lorax movie with Danny DeVito was announced.
How would I direct a Lorax movie? Here's a little something I cooked up.
So we got this kid with a wild Seussian name, but his first name is Theodore. He lives in a polluted dystopia, in a city made up of abandoned Thneed factories. Remember London when it was clouded in smog? That's Theodore's living conditions. He can't see his own hand if he held it in front of him. Clean water is expensive as hell (if you're lucky enough to get water that isn't sludgy, that is) and people use outhouses instead of toilets. Life expectancy has decreased because people were getting sick from the smoke. Paper is also expensive, so computers and cellphones were more important than ever, but not everybody can afford them, so you've got a ton of beggars living out in the streets.
Theodore isn't happy about this and wants to know what happened. But many of the people were caught up in getting their next meal rather than think about things vanished into the past like trees and Humming-Fish. His grandmother, however, is one of the few surviving seniors of the city, and she still remembers what life had been like when the sky was blue. She tells him about the Onceler, so Theodore leaves the city to look for him.
The first half of the film (or rather, the second act, after the short first act) is the Onceler recounting the story of the Lorax, with a few things added to punch in the gut. Onceler was once (pun intended) an idealistic young man who used to go camping in the woods with his father as a boy. All his life, his father believed in him and encouraged him to follow his dreams of becoming an inventor and successful businessman. Caught up in the excitement and grandeur of creating things to make other people happy, Onceler's story turned into something like a Greek tragedy. His invention and creation led to destruction and ruin, and people ended up becoming miserable. Once he had given so many jobs for people, and now they're out of work. On top of the animals and Lorax leaving, Onceler's father gotten ill from the pollution and passed away in his Thneed bed covered in his Thneed blanket.
Oh, but that's not the end. Far from it. After the Onceler gives Theodore the final Truffula seed, the boy goes home and thinks over what he's heard. His grandmother's started to develop a cough. Uh oh. Frightened for his grandmother's health, Theodore runs back to the Onceler, demanding him to leave the tower and help him clean the city. At first, Onceler is reluctant, but Theodore refuses to put up with his self-pity and sets the tower on fire, forcing the Onceler outside. With that bridge burned, the Onceler agrees to work together with Theodore to work on the city and save his grandmother.
Using his knowledge of business, the Onceler hires people to clean up the city, giving thousands of jobs for the homeless. He builds inventions to help aid the people and makes filters to clean the sludgy water. Theodore nurses the Trufulla seed, and the two of them go around the world to tell people their story. But nature takes slower to recover than polluting it, and Theodore's grandmother ends up in the hospital. The only way she could get better is if she got clean air and sunshine. But is there such a place left in the world?
Have any of you read "Searching For Summer" by Joan Aiken? It's like that. Theodore wants to know when the last sightings for Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish were. Theodore and Onceler head on over, and *DUNDUNDUN* there's a secret enclave where the sky is blue, the grass is green, and it's lush with fauna! The Lorax is there and he's not happy to see the Onceler. Theodore explains and begs the Lorax to let his grandmother stay with him, promising him that he and the Onceler will never reveal their secret shelter. After his grandmother has been moved to the enclave, Theodore chats with the Lorax and tells him what's going on in the outside world. He asks the Lorax if one day, the Earth would be clean enough for him to come home. The Lorax's answer is ambiguous, though he shakes his head sadly, telling him that people should always be caring for the environment, not just when it's in danger. Once something is gone from nature, like the extinction of a species, it's too late. The movie ends with Theodore saying goodbye to the Lorax and the Onceler, the latter staying to provide the grandmother with health care and to protect the shelter from anyone finding or decimating it. There's color returning to the grandmother's cheeks as she holds a baby Bar-ba-loot, and voila, we've got a hopeful end.
I also thought of making a movie adapt of "Halloween is Grinch Night!" but that gets its own entry in the future. Maybe.
