Development - EXCALIBUR

Following the focus of some advice discussed in my tutorials, I'm keeping with the idea of universal characters, identifiable by their archetypes but differing in their specifics.

I thought a good place to start thinking about this was with the concept of Excalibur, the weapon of the hero. Lightsabers, magic swords, staffs, lucky pistols and demon fists are just a few examples of the way these weapons reoccur constantly through storytelling.

Loosely drawing these from memory was a great exercise in getting back to sketchbook mentality, killing your darlings and focusing on producing ideas rather than being hung up on clean refinement.

Timelines & archetypes

Character timelines - archetypes
Characters are universal for a reason. There is a reason we all feel some connection when Frodo sits reading his book, looking beyond the Shire. Or when Harry sits under the stairs thinking of leaving his miserable life with the Dursleys behind. Or when Luke Skywalker looks out at the twin suns of Tatooine wishing to escape his dusty farming life for adventure.
Some characters are built to relate to us in this way, no matter where you are in life you always have some form of dream of change, it's something at the core of the human brain, and film has a direct line to this. Like a big mining tunnel. Of emotion.
Anyway.
In a similar vein, these characters, because of their universality (is that a word, spell check isn't tripping me up on it so I think it is) become iconic because each of us feels a certain sense of ownership over them. All fans of Batman have their favourite actor, each Star Wars fan a favourite character.
As a simple way of exploring this idea of legacy and iconicity (that one can't be a word surely, I’m unstoppable) I started making these rudimentary time maps to start illustrating how different characters have evolved drastically different ways over the years.

Changing Direction - tutorial notes

Changing direction - more focus on film and lack of originality there

After talking to Rachel in my tutorial I found that I really want to focus on film for this project. Film and film culture has always been something that has informed all of my work in other modules, but I’ve never really utilised it in this module before. I don’t know why, because I’m constantly thinking and talking about film, so I may as well put it to good use.

The main driver behind the tutorial was the lack of originality in films, and how people have come to accept certain tropes and archetypes in modern cinema. How is it that some films come out to critical adoration and make no money at all, and some come out to middling/bored critical response and make hundreds of millions without fail.

I think there must be some sort of link between what the human brain desires in entertainment/escapism, and how movies respond to that. Some films actively seem to go against this to make us question things about ourselves, and some of them hold our hands through every scene to make sure we have a lovely nice time and tell all our friends to buy tickets as well.
I want to understand why these decisions are made and how they can affect an audience.