Poems - The tale of the lady and the cake

From the poem infidelities, we used the idea of the loose change from the mans trousers to create this story.

Sheila woke up one morning when the dog jumped on her to find her husband had gone to work. She found a pile of coins in the bed where her husband sleeps. She looks at the dog for his opinion of what she should do with the money, baring in mind she is meant to be on a diet and her husband would be very disappointed if she broke it as he is very strict about it. She runs to the shop and comes back armed with cream cakes. She then starts ramming her mouth with the cakes and her dog is looking at her in disappointment and then her husband walks in and shakes her head and she gives a guilty little smile with her face covered in food.

I really liked this idea, and if it was in black and white, silent film, that was sped up it would be quite comical like a Charlie Chaplin film. Most of the story is told through expression. It is quite a light hearted story that doesn't need much background behind it.

Song Lyrics-Pranker

We looked at the song banana pancakes by jack johnson and chose these lines:

"The telephone is singing
Ringing it's too early
Don't pick it up
We don't need to we got everything"

to inspire our short story.

The film is about a random girl who doesn't have much to do with her life so she just prank calls people to entertain herself. She carries out a series of prank calls until someone doesn't answer and she becomes bored and then she just carries on with the rest of her day.

The reason we don't see the people at the other end of the phone pick up is because they are happy with each-other and are enjoying having time without anyone else interfering with their life's so think its best to ignore the phone-call.

Modern Art- Creep

As part of inspiration week we got into groups and looked at different forms of media and created ideas for short stories. The pice of modern art we looked at was of a tent that included the names of everyone they had ever slept with. From this we created this short story:

Peter and Melanie were best friends when they were growing up, but after high school they drifted apart. Melanie went on to become a prostitute and peter was obsessed with her but she didn't know. He would stalk her and take pictures of her with all of her clients and had documented every client she had ever had. In his basement he had a room that only had a tent that had hundred of pictures of melanie, her clients and some artifacts of Melanie's for example her underwear. The story ends with Peter going to sleep.

Peter going to sleep symbolizes that his obsession with melanie is part of his everyday life. Even though Peter stalks Melanie, the audience never get the idea that he wants to hurt her.

Postcards

I looked at postcards of secrets from a book as a way to find inspiration for a short story. The postcard i chose to look at said "I don't want to go to college, i want to grow shit" and had pictures of vegetables.

From this i wrote the outline to a short story:

Henry was a hungry caterpillar who hated school. Henry couldn't wait to become a butterfly and didn't see the point in school. He found a special recipe to make a potion to help him evolve into a butterfly quicker. He had to grow the ingredients himself and live at the bottom of a tree. Henry left school and made the potion, but when he drank it nothing happened, so he had left school for no reason and had no chance of becoming a butterfly now.

In my opinion this story carries quite a strong moral, that cheating with things doesn't get you anywhere and you should do things properly. This story would be unrealistic to create as it is based on insects.

What is a story?

As a class we brainstormed what we thought a story was, here is what we came up with:

• Equilibrium/Disequilibrium
• Non fictional/Fictional
• Biblical, myths, fables, fairy-tales, legends, cultural, folk..
• Used for education and entertainment
• Setting, plot, characters, structure
• Beginning, middle and end
• Told in books, songs, music, newspapers, poetry, fashion, film, television
• Series of events
• Passed down throughout generations
• Different stories with same morals told in different cultures.

Inspiration Week- Story Game

As a class, we wrote a story by writing a sentence and passing it along and then being given back your original story. Each sentence was given a theme, for example "write the name and occupation of a woman", this gave the story some structure.

Here is the story that i was given back:

Gregory is a baker.

Marie was a 80 year old pensioner in the hustler club.

They met online and have only ever seen each other through webcam, from below the waist.

She said "Mum, i've had enough, you don't give me enough freedom. I'm 80 and i still live with you, I'm moving out to live with Gregory and you can't stop me"

He looks at her slaps her and walks away saying "Trees are free"

She finally agreed to shave her underarms and legs and they lived happily after.

From this i wrote a synopsis:

Marie was a very hairy lady and Gregory was a tree saving baker. Marie was getting on a bit, but where they meant to be? Will the 80 year old stripper ever find happiness with her dirty webcam lover or will her hair issues and obsessive mother stop her?

This story was very random, mainly because everyone was just writing random sentences not knowing what had previously been wrote, but from this i made some sense to create a short story.

Bibliograhy

http://www.divamedia.ie/
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/movingshorts/films/film7.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://festival.sundance.org/2010/
http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/