Storytelling Presentation

This week I have to do the first of the case study presentations for our Storytelling class. I have to speak for 12 minutes about the use of character in a previous student's work. From the 2010 AIM dvd I chose a film called 'Among the Clouds' by Jinchao Han, about a small lonely boy drifting though the sky on a decrepit wooden ship. I found it really hard to find any works from last years class which had a really developed use of character, and in a way it was this lack that has proven to me just how important what we're learning in Kate's class really is. I was originally supposed to be discussing the use of dialogue in one of last year's works, but not a single film on the DVD actually contained any dialogue. It seems its true that people shy away from dialogue, and that the short film format means most people barely bother to develop any interesting characters- its hard enough to get a simple plot across in such a short amount of time. I'm beginning to understand how much richness and depth you can add to a short piece just by thinking really long and hard about the development of character. I chose Han's film because of the effort he has clearly gone to to invest his character with personality and emotion- from its expressive movements to the ways in which the landscape and weather of the film mirror the character's emotions.