Iris' Documentary Adventure

Alice

Altough the script has never really been finished, there is a shot list which can be found below. It came out of all the shots we had taking around london and in Kingston in combination with the characters we were most interested in during our research. The highlight colour indicate who is animating the shot, the strip-through shows if the shot is done and the red colour indicates if the file has correctly been exported. As you can see, all of the files and shots have been done.

IRIS

TERESA

RITA

Title WHERE ALICE WENT appears on screen in jittery, handwritten letters. The script fades out and the text "oh, I've had such a curious dream!" appears on screen.

While Alice talks, the words are erased in a zigzag motion.

Chair

Alice in

After Alice sits down, Flowers start to grow from her feet (Roses, Daisies and Lilies). The flowers grow out of the frame and Alice follows them up.

Bridge

Alice walks in frame right, turns to look out over the river. The clouds overhead form into a rabbit. Alice walks out of frame left.

Train

A smiling cat(11) slowly appears, lazing about on the bridge. Tail waving back and forth and smile appearing gradually.

Cathedral clock

Building

Men crawl up and down the building like ants. Alice walks in, frame left and looks up at them. She walks toward the building.

Reflection

Reflected in the window we see alice. She touches her hand to the glass and disappears into it. (Screen left movement)

Counter

Alice appears screen right. Behind the counter a sheep works, Alice tries to talk to it, but it just keeps on working. Alice walks out screen left.

Garden

Alice walks in frame right, looking around her (Confused) Frame left, a queen enters, and stand stock still. Alice lifts her hand to touch the queen, gets transported.

Queen

(Graphic match with garden queen) The queen on top of the building waves her hands around, while the bird stays calmly on top of her head.

Alice looks but does nothing.

Big Ben

Landscape

The white rabbit comes floating over, while another queen (White) runs across the skyline. Enter Frame left, Exit frame right)

Queen

Alice still standing, a White queen races past (enter frame left), The white rabbit floats by happily (exit frame right).

Alice turns to look at the white queen running, and runs after her. The other queen continues moving her arms now catching the rabbit instead of the bird.

Daffodil

(enter frame Right) The small white queen runs past the daffodils, A caterpillar crawls among them.Tiny Alice runs to, but stops when she sees the caterpillar. As the caterpillar blows out smoke, he creates a ghostly Alice, which get blown out of the frame (Left). Alice follows.

Alley1

Alice walks onto the alley where smoke alice is floating around. She stands in front of Smoke alice as the white queen comes running past again. The white queen runs into the Alices and they both disappear.

White Queen

Alice stands in front of the white queen’s statue as she waves her hand and Alice walks out of frame left.

Kingston Clock

Ugly Duchess

Alice walks into the frame (right) and comments on the painting before walking out frame Left.

Unicorn

She walks up to the horse painting, which starts to sprout a horn. As the camera moves up, the horse moves up too, until it can be seen flying above the painting.

Hippogryph

The hippogryph comes loose from the wall and flies up toward the sky.

Trafalgar square

In the sky above nelson's column, the unicorn and the hippogryph fly by. The unicorn descents to land next to one of the lions. We look around the whole of trafalgar square to see drink me and eat me labels on the buildings. Once we gat back to the bottom of the column, the unicorn has put its horn into the side of the lion.

London Eye

The hippogryph flies past the london eye. She climbs all over the london eye, which makes her fall into the river. The cheshire cat is riding on top of one of the carriages.

River

Alice floats down the river (enter screen left) under the bridge (Exit screen right)

Alice Out

The smiling cheshire cat(21) appears grinning over it’s shoulder as Alice walks away..

Alice

The Story and Voiceover quotes

March 25, 2016

The story that was written for the video, contained more scenes and more quotes than were used in the end. This has to do with the amount of footage we have as well as the amount of time it would have taken to animate certain scenes, such as the card queen scene. As stated in our pitch and treatment, we have only used quotes from the actual books. Everything was either said or thought by Alice and is taken from the Gutenberg online versions of the books, which can be found here and here. the All blue highlighted sentences come from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and all yellow highlighted quotes come from Through the Looking-Glass.

Where Alice Went

Alice sits down on a chair, flowers grow out of her feet, over the top of the frame and she follows them up, by standing up on the chair. Everything above the original frame is wonderland (London).

tart with a blank screen with the quote “Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” after which the voiceover says “Stuff and nonsense! The idea of having a sentence first!” “I could tell you my adventures - beginning from this morning, but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” The screen has dissolved into a chair walking across the room, Alice walking barefoot after it and sits down.

An animated Alice is now visible from the waist up. The first view of london is from the middle of a bridge, looking out over the Thames. One of the clouds floating over changes shape into a rabbit, pink eyes appearing, as well as a waistcoat. Alice speaks to the rabbit: “I like them when they can talk, None of them ever talk, where I come from.” The rabbit rushes of with a gust of wind, Alice gets blown along.

Alice walks up to a glass building: “Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through—”

Alice arrives at the park. “What can all that green stuff be? (And where have my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can’t see you?)” The red queen is walking around a bumps into Alice. “I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty—” Alice lifts up her hand to touch the Red queen crown. “Where does she wear the thorns?” When one of her fingers touches the crown, the world starts spinning and ends up in the grass outside. Alice is nowhere to be found.

A caterpillar is roaming around on the ground, blowing out smoke rings. Animated Alice being blow away like smoke, only to reappear after a blue caterpillar blows smoke out of his hookah while climbing all over a london skyscraper in the background. “It might end, you know, (said Alice) in my going out altogether like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” The caterpillar breathes out smoke again. There are now two Alice’s made of smoke “It’s no use now to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough left of me to make one respectable person!” One of the smoke Alice’s walks out frame right slowly growing larger. The smaller Alice follows. “Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?”

The Alice’s walk into an empty street. The real Alice walks into the smoke one and she becomes one person again. “I see nobody on the road.” The white rabbit appears: “I see somebody now!” is running along it and she follows him quickly.

She follows the rabbit into a high building. From the top, the Alice’s look down: “Look, look! There's the White Queen running across the country! She came flying out of the wood over yonder—How fast those Queens can run!” A pack of heart playing cards run after her. Alice is shocked. “But aren't you going to run and help her?” Alice jumps on the roof of the building and runs after them.

She ends up in front of a small shop, where a sheep is working behind the counter, next to the regular humans. “Oh, that'll never be done! I'd better go in at once—” She walks into the shop, only to find the sheep has turned into a pig. who runs through the back of the shop and out to an alley. Alice follows.

The wall of the alleyway is filled with playing cards, moving to form a queen, whose head gets cut off. “You shan’t be beheaded!” Alice grabs the head of the playing card queen and tries to get it to stick against the wall. It tumbles off again and the cards all spread apart. “You’re nothing but playing card!” We follow the cards falling down.

When the camera tilts up again, we see a courtyard with a table filled with tea cups, cupcakes and bowls. “Well, I'll eat it” We zoom cut to a view of a cupcake plate. One by one the cakes disappear to only leave behind empty wrappers. Alice shrinks down until she can fit into a teacup. Tea gets poured into the cup and Alice dissolves. “How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.” The tea turns into clear water, reflecting the sky.

From the sky we travel down until we see a gryphon and travel even further until we see a red wall. Alice appears on it’s back and they fly down on to the red wall. We move from the red wall to a painting of an ugly duchess. “If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear, I'll have nothing more to do with you.” Alice gets superimposed onto the image of the duchess, turns around to look at the painting. “If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.” and walks out of the frame right.

Last scene: Alice gets down from her chair (“But what happens when you come to the beginning again?” “Now I’ll manage better this time.”)

As Alice grows, her head pushes against the top of the frame, making the frame move up. We start seeing the studio again, with Alice still standing on the chair. She gets up and walks away. In the shadows behind her we see a rabbit run with her.

Acting

Helping out

March 18, 2016

Next to making working on my own project, I'm also helping out others. In this case, a project Amanda and Rosie are working on about international students and as an international student myself I've been helping them out.

Past Sunday we filmed several scenes at my flat, to be used in their video. Before the filming, however, I wrote a short piece about being an international student at Kingston. The whole text can be found below.

Iris Rouschop, 23, The Netherlands

I had been to London before I moved here. I got invited to stay for a couple of days to try out Kingston as part of a diversity and widening participation program. It was the first time I flew in an airplane alone. It was a way to learn more about the university and about what life would be like on my own. There was a mix of people from different backgrounds, but mostly from the UK. I think the biggest shock to me when I really started living here was how diverse the community actually is. In the Netherlands, I lived in a city where the majority of people are white and Dutch, with very little visible international influences, and here I am, on the outskirts of London and there were so many people coming from so many places. I don’t actually miss home all that much. I think it has given me the distance I need to see my life more clearly. That’s not to say I don’t miss my family sometimes, but I don’t miss my country. I’ve changed enough for my family to hear a British accent when I speak Dutch. I sometimes don’t even know how to speak my mother tongue anymore. The biggest difference between here and there is me. I’ve figured out that I’m more social in the English language than I ever was back home. I’ve learned so much about myself since I started living here. I’ve made great friends, and finally understand that I can do a lot more than I ever thought I could. I’m going forward, everyday looking to be better than I was yesterday. It makes me sad sometimes, looking back at where I was before. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, and not leave my dad behind all alone. But this is better, for both of us. I’m happy in my new life, speaking English while he goes on with his, speaking Dutch. And every week, I touch the keyboard and he answers Skype and everything is alright.

This text has been recorded in the FASS audio suite. I've been using the recording studio for a while now and know very well how to get the best recordings. So when we recorded the voice-over before the filming I helped Amanda out, although Neill explained most of the basics to her. Not all of my text was used, as there would be an intercutting of four international students in the video and only parts of each text would be used.

The recording of the shots went very well, especially because Amanda and Maddy had made a shotlist and knew exactly what they wanted. I've never acted before, so this was a very new experience. I'm very glad I did not have to learn any lines as everything is done through voice-over.

Alice

Treatment

March 11, 2016

Program Idea: A stop-motion/Digital ink and paint animation based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, using only Alice’s dialogue as a guide through Wonderland. We will be using photos of London as our Wonderland and aim to emphasis the themes of identity, the subjectivity of reality and growing up.

Genre: Fantasy/Animation/Surrealism

Title: Where Alice Went

Synopsis: In our short film we will be showing Alice’s Adventures using Stop-motion animation and Digital ink and paint. The original story is used as a foundation for the characters and certain scenes, however we have let go of it’s structure. The city of London will feature prominently by becoming Wonderland with all it’s strange creatures. We will make stop-motion photographs of London and overlay them with hand drawn digital animation. A Voice-over will guide the viewer as Alice, using only the words she thinks or speaks in the book. This gives us themes of growth, identity and the perception of reality to consider. This video is suitable for all audiences but aimed at people above the age of 12. The main goal of the video is to make people interested in Alice’s Adventures again while looking at them from a different perspective, paying attention to how Alice behaves instead of the strange characters she encounters. It also wishes to highlight the lack of visual clues in the original story and the assumptions people have made about the story due to the interpretations of Disney and others. We will highlight this by changing Alice’s appearance away from the girl with blond hair.

POSITION	JOBS	NAME[S]
Director of Photography	Shoot film. Sound. Lighting.	Teresa
Director	Direct film. Continuity.	Iris
Producer	Oversee and drive people and the project.	Teresa, Iris, Rita
Researcher	Find facts, people, locations.	Iris, Teresa
Production Manager	Organisation. Call sheets. Recces. Risk assessments. Point of contact.	Rita, Teresa, Iris
Writer	Write links, VO, scripts.	Iris
Editor & Post Production Supervisor	Digitising. Editing. Graphics. Play out. Compression and delivery.	Rita, Teresa, Iris
Talent	Acting. Presenting.	Iris