After talking with Neil, I thought that it would be a god idea to go back to looking at what a Falcon actually is in much more detail; How does it live its life? Is there any type of person that behaves in a similar way to a Falcon? What does it look like overall? What does it do?
The first thing I thought of when I looked at how a Falcon lives its life is that it hunts by being ridiculously fast and catching its prey off guard. This was a bit hard to narrow down as to what kind of things in real life are analogous to it, however, once I factored in the relationship between a Falcon and a Falconer, everything suddenly made sense; it's the relationship of a master and a servant, and when you think of fast, stealthy killings combined with a master and servant relationship, you think of Ninjas and Assassins;
Another thing I noticed was how the silhouette of a falcon looks very similar to the silhouette of something like a House Marten or a Swallow, which could lead onto an interesting story about how someone who's never seen a Falcon before finds one and mistakes it for a very large Swift. Alternatively, a pair of Falcons mistake a swift for one of their own and decide to take care of it.
Again, these are little more than loose concepts at the moment, but they're still interesting angles that the subject of a Falcon would allow me to take.
Following the idea about the animated documentary, I almost immediately thought of creature comforts and a french show called 'Les Kassos';
(Les Kassos takes characters from famous films and shows and then makes spoofs of them and how their characters deal with a school guidance counsellor)
I felt this angle of documentary would be much more interesting than the standard documentary structure as it provides the opportunity to satirize information and issues and address them without coming off as overly preachy. It also gives the audience a much better chance to understand or associate themselves with the characters in the film, so I feel that it could help address points a lot clearer.
However, despite wanting to do this sort of 'mockumentary', I still felt like I would need an overarching narrative to break up the interviews and make it more palpable for the audience.
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In terms of style, I still want this to be a 2D film, so I'd probably go for something much more similar to Les Kassos than Creature Comforts in terms of execution, but it's all still open for change at present.
Given that I'm pretty certain I want to set the story in London, also based off of the fact that most of the interesting stories I had to tell all either felt like they'd be best suited to London -or ion the case of the documentary, not work anywhere else- I decided to start compiling moodboards and get some simple research sketches done to bette grasp what sort of environment I'd be representing and how the atmosphere changes at different times of the day;
I also gathered research of more specific landmarks that are known to be nesting places for Falcons in London based on the assumption that if I wanted to make a film about Falcons in London, I would probably end up drawing these landmarks at some point. Again, I gathered varied colour palettes to see what the buildings look like at different times of the day.
After talking with Pooja, I realized that I was getting too caught up in the details of the story and not letting it happen naturally, so I took what she said to heart and went back to the basics; The theme of the story.
I was originally inspired to take this angle by a film from the 60's called 'Kes', which is a story about how a boy with nothing to live for uses falconry as a way to cope with his life.
The theme of falconry was something I originally wanted to explore quite deeply as a result of this, but after a lot of deliberation, I eventually decided that it wasn't falconry I wanted to focus on, but the subject of the falcon itself. Following this, I started researching falcons, their eating habits, what environments they live in and how they fly.
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It was when I was talking with Mark Parker, the head falconer at the International Centre for Birds of Prey (ICBP list of staff) that I learned that there are Falcons living in London atop high rise buildings. I did more research into the subject and found that they're in London for three reasons; there's an abundance of prey in London, the living conditions are very similar to their habitats in the wild and there's no contests over the abundance of food with other birds of prey.
I also learned that there had been a population decline in the 60's due to a pesticide that had gotten into the food chain which had reduced the UK population to 360 pairs from its original number. In recent years it's shot back up to 1500 pairs, and there are currently 24 pairs nesting in London, which is the largest number that's been nesting in London in recorded history.
There's also a pair of falcons who've started nesting on top of the Tate Modern, again because of the abundance of food and the cliff-like living environment.
Another thing I found out is that the recent population boom in Peregrines has led people to start thinking about how to incorporate nesting sites into their buildings that are naturally designed to enable Falcons to nest in them in order to encourage the population to grow.
A Peregrine Falcon's nesting site in Staffordshire was targeted by a 34 year old man from the same area for no apparent reasons other than a desire for barbarism or fear that they might attack his pets. This is a recurring problem perpetuated by a small minority of people to numerous different forms of wildlife, so it also lends itself well to being told as a story.
A young Peregrine tried to make a premature flight out of its nest in Chorley, Lancashire, and ended up falling from the nest. It was rescued and put into rehab by a birdwatcher who saw the whole thing happen and contacted a professional to help it recover.
The third paragraph in this article mentions that Peregrines were killed during WW2 to prevent them killing off carrier pigeons, tying in to the pesticide ordeal, this could work well if explored in a historical context.
There was also a video I watched that displayed the fact that even though Falcons can fly at speeds of up to 200km/h, they don't always manage to catch the prey they're hunting
Here's some more information I dug up on Peregrine Falcons to supplement this video;
Following all this, I had a bunch of ideas that I felt might work well as stories;
A documentary covering the lives of the Falcons living in London from the perspective of either the Falcon or from Onlookers; How do Falcons in London live? What sort of dangers do they have to deal with?
The story about the Peregrine Falcon that fell from its nest due to heat exhaustion lends itself well to being told as a story as it can be dramatised with very little effort.
A story in a more bizarre reign commenting on modern attitudes towards art which focuses on the Falcon's nesting at the Tate Modern and how the gallery curator has decided to turn them into an exhibit of sorts; This film would be from the perspective of the Falcons and be intended as a commentary on attitudes towards art in the modern era.
A story about how the pesticide affected the UK population; This might come off as a bit too preachy though, so for me this is still up in the air.
A story focusing on the Nesting sites set far into the future which could be about how the population has boomed to the point where Falcons are just as common as the average Pigeon and about how Londoners are living with them; This would probably be more in the vein of Kes, examining the relationship between a man and a Falcon that's been nesting at his house so long that it's practically a part of his family.
A story about a Falcon hunting for food in London focusing on the fact that even the 'perfect predator' can have off days where they don't manage to catch any food; This is probably the most generic idea of the bunch, however.
Going of of a more 'creature comforts' vibe, the entire thing could be a documentary from the point of view of the Falcons nesting in London, humanising them to some degree and making a comment on all of the birdwatchers that actively seek them out, as well as covering the danger of their nests being sabotaged.
Either way, I need to do more research into the setting and the characters so that I can figure out what angle I want to take in terms of mood, as well as figuring out what would work best for each story idea; should I focus on realism or stylisation? should the linework be sketchy or clean? should I just avoid linework altogether and treat it as a painting of sorts? I'll have to produce a few concepts before I can really nail this.
Here's a mixture of the work I've currently done that's gone towards understanding what a Peregrine Falcon is in terms of bodily structure and shape, and some very basic, preliminary ideas about how to stylise said Falcon;
I still need to inject character into these preliminary design ideas, so that's why there are so few at the moment. I'll probably have a much more comprehensive set of thumbnails up here later on this week.
EDIT 14/10: here are the sketches I did earlier on this summer. I only just solved my camera issues, so sorry that the update is so late;
The main theme for the story idea I had is comedy starring the character of a Peregrine Falcon living in London. I want to make it a comedy because I feel that comedy is what I'm best at. I chose the Falcon as a main character because they're a native Bird of Prey to big cities, and often nest in an around the big office blocks and high-rise apartments dotted around London.
The story is based around a Falcon who is suffering from extreme hunger
He lands on a building in London, tired and angry from missing another day's catch, and sees something in the building opposite him that kicks him back in gear
He wants to eat the thing in that building and wants to eat it very badly
The entire film consists of visual gags displaying the extent that this falcon is willing to go to in order to get his food and get inside the building where the food is.
I'm unsure about the ending, but here are a few ideas I came up with following the session with Pooja:
The Falcon is targeting a pet bird belonging to the CEO of some London based company. In the end, he manages to eat the bird, but immediately following this, the CEO comes in and sees the mess. Two endings are possible here:
The CEO sees the Falcon and decides that it's a better pet bird than his previous pet, so the Falcon becomes the pet bird instead.
The CEO (who's lunch was delivered to some no-name peon in his company by accident. This can be shown at an earlier point in the film during or between the visual gags) gets angry and orders security to do something about the Falcon that just ate his pet bird, so they kill two birds with one stone (huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhhu) by serving the Falcon as the CEO's lunch.
Edit: I said during the presentation that I wanted to make the humour quite dark, but that was honestly just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Looking back on it, I feel like it would be better to stick to standard comedy and not worry about whether or not I make it 'dark n' edgy'.
