[Story Beats 1 w/Pictures] - Emma Maltby

Here were some rough doodles of some of the first scenes in the film. 

[Story Beats 1] - Emma Maltby

1.Introduction:

• The camera pans across the wall's of the old woman's living room, you see pictures of her, her husband and this one specific bag. 
• You can a close up view of a set of photo booth pictures of her and her husband.

2.Old Bag: 

• The old woman is in the living room looking at the pictures on the wall.
• She looks down at her handbag (that is shown in the photographs) and sees it has become old and tattered and doesn't look at pretty as it does in the photographs. 
• The old woman decides after comparing the bag to the pictures she is going to get a new one of her bag. 

3.The Bus Stop: 

• The old woman leaves her house and heads for the bus stop to go into town to find her new bag.
• The old woman is sitting on a bench at the bus stop, when a young lady comes along. 
• The old woman glances at her briefly but then does a double take as she sees the young lady has her bag but its new and looks just like her one once was. 
• A bus pulls up to the stop and the young lady gets on board.  The old woman sits there for a moment thinking about what to do. 
• She jumps up and follows the young woman on to the bus.

4.Stalking begins: 

• The old woman sits a few seats behind the young lady so she can keep an eye on the bag. 
• The old woman slowly moves chairs so she can get a better view of the bag.
• In her new position, she pulls out her knitting needles and slowly leans over with them trying to hook the handbags straps.
• Just as the old woman does it, the young lady grabs the bag unaware and gets up to get off the bus. 
• The old woman quickly jumps up and follows her off the bus.

5.Shopping Centre: 

• The 2 women are now in town, in front of a shopping centre (?), the young lady walks off into a shopping centre. The old woman follows slowly behind, keeping her eyes on the prize. 
• The young woman walks up to and greets her boyfriend/partner in the shopping centre, the old woman is unaffected by this and watches them closely, focusing on the bag. 

6. Stealing attempt 1:

• The couple go sit at a cafe or bench to sit and talk. 
• The old woman follows, sneaking and ducking behind chairs/benches/plants/walls to not be seen. 
• She crawls under the tables/across the floor trying to reach out and pull the bag away.
• The young lady picks up the bag from below her and puts it on her lap. 
• The old woman sighs with annoyance. 

7. Stealing attempt 2:

• The couple get up, and start walking away. 
• The old woman fumbles through her bag quickly. 
• She pulls out some wool and ties it into a lasso. 
• The old woman waddles after the couple. 
• The couple pause at a window. The old woman sees this moment, stops and tries to fling her wool lasso over the bag.
• Just as the lasso gets there the couple walk off. 

8. Stealing success: 

• The couple walk over to a photo booth 
• The young lady takes off her bag and places it on the ground as she steps into the photo booth with her boyfriend/partner.
• The old woman sees this and waits until the two are definitely inside of the photo booth.
• She quickly runs over to the bag on the ground and grabs it. 
• Her eyes sparkle with joy as she holds it in her hands. 

9. The Photographs: 

• As she clutches the bag, the photo booth machine makes a loud noise as the photos of the couple are printed.
• The old woman looks up and sees the pictures of the couple. 
• The old woman stares at them at it flashes to the pictures she has hanging in her living room of her and her husband. 
• The old woman realises what she has been doing and places the bag on the floor as the couple exit the booth laughing and smiling. 

10. Realisation:

• The couple see the woman standing there. 
• The old woman takes the photos out of the machine, smiles and hands them to the young lady.
• The young lady smiles as she accepts them from the old woman and then turns away and walks off with her partner.
• The old woman looks down at her own handbag, smiles again, and leaves.  

[More main character ideas] - Rob Gray

Over the week I’ve been helping with research for the main character, who at the moment is a fashionable crazy lady.

Because of the age of the character I really wanted to research what would have been the fashion when she was young, eventually focusing on trends during the 1960s. I thought this would work especially well with her character because of the very striking shapes and colours that I noticed from the references I found; it also lends well to accessories for the story!

From these references I started to make silhouettes to try and get a feel for the shapes of the main trends at the time; while trying to keep the character in mind:

At the same time I have been investigating old women who still have a sense of fashion, to focus more on the main character; from those came more silhouettes:

Possible influences:

1. The Incredible’s character Edna Mode - Appears to be based on Edith Head, another fashion designer
2. Audrey Hepburn? - 1950’s/60’s fashion, but obviously aged.
3. Possibly the Arrested Development character Lucile Bluth - For the value of material goods over people, but hidden value of family.
4. Anna Wintour - Has a documented eccentric personality, hard to deal with, very fashion conscious
5. 101 Dalmations’ Cruella Deville - Though I’m not sure our main character would share such an evil personality, I’m sure she is a great example to look at just for pure eccentricity.

More sketches to illustrate ideas:

[Rough Story Panels] - Emma Maltby

THESE AREN'T STORY BOARDS.

THEY ARE ROUGH DRAWINGS TO QUICKLY SHOW THE OUTLINE OF THE STORY!

:)

[Main Character Basic Ideas] - Emma Maltby

I always thought of the character being quite a stylish character. So I created a mood board of extremely fashionable old woman to help with ideas of how the old woman could dress.  

These were the original roughs I had done the pitch my first draft, I feel these are still helpful but no way near the film character. 

I did some random drawings of how I imagine very stereotypical old woman. They aren't so helpful but they can my first ideas out of my head. 

Now that we have a clearier idea of the story the character is slowly becoming more defined. She is a sweet but stubborn old woman, so I feel like rectangles/squares and circles would be the best shape language for her but I have tried all of them to see what I feel works.

[Story Development Ideas 2] - Emma Maltby

We as a team have now decided on a basic plot that we would like to go with. 

The problem was that we were too limited by the original idea, so we tried to think about how to make this character 'relate-able' and give her more of a personality and a reason why she likes bags.

The old woman wants to replace the handbag that her husband gave her. It was the first bag she ever got and began her love of bags (you can see this in her house). 

The bag has become old and tattered, and she wants a new one that is the same to replace it. 

The old woman goes out to go find this handbag in town. She goes to the bus stop and she's a young lady with the bag as hers. 

She spends her day following this young lady all over town trying all sorts of methods trying to get this handbag off her, for example using wool from her knitting to lasso the bag away from the young lady.

After stalking the young lady all day, the old woman see's the young lady meet up with her boyfriend/partner and it reminds her of why she loved that bag so much (or maybe of her self and the relationship).

The old woman gives us and travels back home hugging/holding the bag. She gets home and puts the bag down in the empty seat of her husband. 

The end. It is open for more updating but for now this is a good point for our team.

We have developed this idea a lot from the original draft but its for the best.

Location: The locations would now involve the old woman's living room, a bus stop and town views (depending on where the young lady goes in the story will mean more backgrounds/settings) 

The Old Bag Woman: The old woman is a fashionable woman, maybe a little outdated but still can put together a decent outfit. She is sweet but stubborn/hard headed. At this point she could be any shape in her visual look.

The Young Woman: She would need to have elements of the old woman in her, so she would also need to be fashionable, updated in her style apart from the handbag so it stands out from her. Maybe similar colour scheme?  

[Thumbnails] - Emma Garner