Progress Update #1 - Failed Ideas & Moving On

Have been really struggling with this initial phase of ideation for my film. After spending a few weeks before the beginning of semester coming up with different stories, I settled on one about a young boy in a monstrous carnival. I pitched that idea at the formative stage and didn't like how it sounded, especially after hearing other's ideas and seeing the reaction and confusion around mine. I think the idea is still good but needs some work on the story itself - which is not my strong suit. After that phase I decided to try out a different idea - a semi-autobiographical story about estrangement and personal relationships - but I couldn't quite nail down exactly how the narrative would play out. Each time I came up with my own story, no matter how much I worked away at it I struggled to get the narrative to flow properly. I found myself getting very stressed out and overwhelmed over small things, and trying to patch up narrative empty spots with 'nice' shots. Or, even worse, telling myself that 'I'll figure out what to put in here later on...'' whilst storyboarding.
I didn't want to succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy by continuing to develop something I felt was failing, just because I had already done a bit of work. So, I've decided to make one final move and to do something I had been planning on doing since my first year at ECA - an adaptation of a short story by one of my favourite authors; Ray Bradbury. I'll add more information about this final plan in another post, but am going to share here some of my work up until this point. That is, work that's now been rejected and moved away from, but from which I think I still learned a fair amount!

Beat/Story/Mood Boards from my second story idea - But She's Your Mother!

I'd still like to do something with this idea but I couldn't make it work this time around. I thought doing something much more personal, which deals with parental estrangement, would be powerful but I just couldn't figure out how to get from one point to the next. I also quickly realised I didn't want to draw the forest over and over again.

I'm still planning to use some of this development in my final film, especially some of the colours

and style inspiration from my mood board. It was useful for me to write out a sort of 'beat script' whilst in this stage and is something I did for my final idea too; so doing this initial one was great at getting me into the right creative space.

Sketchbook development from my first story idea - Dante's Infairno

I still think Dante's Inferno could be  really strong but after pitching it I started to see some weaknesses in it that I didn't feel like I could fix. The story also kept getting away from me, with more and more things requiring explanations and, in turn, more scenes. It just wasn't right for the time that I have and I was wasting time trying to fill in narrative gaps. I'll continue to work on it as a visual development portfolio piece but I'm leaving the story behind for the moment.