You are a famous toy maker living in the Industrial Revolution, drowning in an overwhelming flood of work. From dawn till dusk everyday, you work away in your workshop, struggling to keep up with the endless demands. One late night, exhausted and yearning for a stress free life, you craft a particularly beautiful toy. As you sigh wishing life was easier,  the impossible happens,  the toy springs to life ready to assist you in bringing your overwhelming workload under control…

This is obviously not your life, but it is the life of John Spinsbury in my story ‘Fading’.

The Project

I have been working long and hard on growing my knowledge and skills in order to complete the project, ‘Frankenstuffies’. Through Frankenstuffies I was constantly doing things that helped me answer the driving question, How can we, as writers, weave historical details into our creative storytelling to convey a clear and impactful message? Within this project I learned about the Industrial Revolution, learned how to tell and create a successful story, I sewed together a character from old stuffed animal pieces, which all lead up to the final assignment when I created a short film staring my character and the Industrial Revolution.

Here is my short film: 

My Answer to the Driving Question

The past has a huge impact on how the world is now. It has created the foundation for our society that allows us to continue building knowledge and improving how and where we live. In order to learn about the past, people must spread the word, a very effective way of communication is storytelling. Storytelling provides an engaging way of sharing experiences. By communicating what we have learned and what happened many years ago through  an entertaining story, we can hook people in, and make an impact on the world.

How I Got There 

Learning About the Revolution

Documentary + Doodle notes

In order to tell a story about the past, I had to learn about the past. Something that really helped me learn about the Industrial Revolution and answer the driving question was watching the Industrial Revolution documentary by Alexander Street and taking doodle notes for it. Before watching this I didn’t know a thing about the Industrial Revolution, after, I felt very confident and prepared to create my story.

Watch the documentary here

Here are my Doodle Notes:

Doodle note slider

Storytelling 

Hero’s Journey

In order to create an impactful video, i had to learn how to write and tell an interesting and engaging story. Something that helped me learn how to write a good story is learning about Hero’s journey. Hero’s journey is a story structure that leads a character through an adventure where they face challenges, grow, and return transformed. Every single Disney movie follows this structure!

My Story Structure

I improved my story idea to fit the hero’s journey template which helped me create a very impactful more entertaining tale.

Spreading the Message

Once I finished learning and writing, it was time to start creating. For the final product I was assigned with creating …

Creating the Stuffed Animal

A big step in creating my video was to create the character that was going to star in it. We had to collect old stuffies, cut them up, and then sew their parts together. I bought my stuffed animals from the thrift store and ended up making my character with a long colourful fish tail, great for swimming. The body of a fox, core muscles of steel. The head of a duck, long and proud. And Legs of a unicorn, speedy in any situation.  I had a very hard time sewing my stuffed animals together because no matter how many times I redid it, I couldn’t get it perfect. 

Creating the Video

Now it was time to turn my story into life. This was a long process of filming and editing. In order to animate the character we had to tie it to strings and use a green screen . This was very hard for me because I couldn’t get the animal to move how i wanted it leading to a sloppy looking video. After redoing it for the 5th time I made the decision to use keynote to animate the complicated parts of my story and greenscreen for the other. This helped me a lot in creating something that I was proud of. Once the filming was done I edited the clips together added the captions and the sound, and did the voice overs. 

F.A.I.L (First attempts in learning)

Something I really struggled with during this project was my perfectionism. This project was very hard for me because It had me trying new skills and experimenting with things I had never done before. When trying new things there is always a learning curve, the thing you are doing is not going to be amazing the first time you do it. This concept was very difficult for me, I spent hours and hours sewing together my character and ripping it apart, and refilming m video that I was doing 3 hours of homework a day. This lead me to be very burnt out and caused me to fall behind in a lot of my other projects.