I Forgot will be a 5-6 minute stop motion animated short. The central idea behind it is to portray what it feels like in the moment of forgetting. I want to capture and make physical that elusive feeling of absence coupled with the sensation of not being in control of one’s own mind. Structurally, all of the action will occur in an internal fantasy world framed by dialogue from the external world.
In the external world (again, existing only in audio), nothing extraordinary happens. We hear a lighthearted, bantering conversation between Finn and his roommate, Jack, who has just arrived home from the grocery store with a mundane tale. As they talk, Finn draws Jack away from his story until they deviate so far that it seems that Jack has forgotten what happened at the store entirely. Just when we think all is lost, he recalls and the story reaches its conclusion.
While we listen to Jack and Finn’s conversation, we will see a manifestation of Jack’s internal world. This is the important part of the animation; the external world serves only to frame and contextualize what we are seeing. The internal world will look like a complex but beautiful forest that never stops moving comprised of both alien-looking organic matter and geometric shapes. Its intricate parts are always moving through mysterious machinations, all of which are interdependent. The forest will function like a Rube Goldberg machine, but it will operate on an endless loop without any input.
The sole resident of this internal forest is a blobby creature that is cute, but is neither human nor animal. It is free of responsibility in the forest, and gets to wander about without worrying about any of the intricate movements of the forest. Things go awry, however, when Jack is distracted from his story. Suddenly, the machine malfunctions, things don’t fit into their places anymore, and the forest begins to fall apart. The creature, overwhelmed, does its best (at the climax of the animation, it sprouts several new arms in an attempt to hold things in place), but ultimately fails. The forest inexplicably rights itself when Jack, in the outside world, finally remembers the rest of his story.
In the external world (again, existing only in audio), nothing extraordinary happens. We hear a lighthearted, bantering conversation between Finn and his roommate, Jack, who has just arrived home from the grocery store with a mundane tale. As they talk, Finn draws Jack away from his story until they deviate so far that it seems that Jack has forgotten what happened at the store entirely. Just when we think all is lost, he recalls and the story reaches its conclusion.
While we listen to Jack and Finn’s conversation, we will see a manifestation of Jack’s internal world. This is the important part of the animation; the external world serves only to frame and contextualize what we are seeing. The internal world will look like a complex but beautiful forest that never stops moving comprised of both alien-looking organic matter and geometric shapes. Its intricate parts are always moving through mysterious machinations, all of which are interdependent. The forest will function like a Rube Goldberg machine, but it will operate on an endless loop without any input.
The sole resident of this internal forest is a blobby creature that is cute, but is neither human nor animal. It is free of responsibility in the forest, and gets to wander about without worrying about any of the intricate movements of the forest. Things go awry, however, when Jack is distracted from his story. Suddenly, the machine malfunctions, things don’t fit into their places anymore, and the forest begins to fall apart. The creature, overwhelmed, does its best (at the climax of the animation, it sprouts several new arms in an attempt to hold things in place), but ultimately fails. The forest inexplicably rights itself when Jack, in the outside world, finally remembers the rest of his story.