Thumbnail Developments

After talking to the tutors I found that my ideas were a bit too literal in terms of imagery. 

Instead we decided to cut out the whole car-crash conclusion idea, and focus on the aftermath of the two choices. So maybe for the good choice, I can skip the driving home safely scene, and show a happy bbq or family tv session (similar to the Simpsons). For the bad choice, it will have a similar composition to the good choice, but the viewer will end up at the funeral instead. 

Symbols & Metaphors

Contrast in Triptychs

Drink Driving (Alcoholic) - Research

"Never" TAC Drink Drive TV ad

NZ Anti-Drink Driving Commercial - Legend

Teens React to Drunk Driving

"I went to a party mom, I remembered what you said. 

You told me not to drink, mom. So I drank soda instead. 

I really felt proud inside, mom. The way you said I would. 

I didn't drink, mom. Even though the others said I should...

As I lay here on the pavement, mom. I hear the policeman say,

 the kid that caused this wreck was drunk, mom, now im the one to pay. 

Im sure the guy had no idea, when he chose to drink and drive."

Choice Research

Alice in wonderland story and movie also introduces the issue of choices in the form

of (good and bad advice). The choices that she follows may put her in either a good 

or bad spot. 

"I give myself very good advice, 

But I very seldom follow it, 

That explains the trouble that I'm always in, 

Be patient, is very good advice, 
But the waiting makes me curious,

...

I should have know there'd be a price to pay, 

...

Will I ever learn to do the things I should? "

The story and movie focuses on advices and influences by other people such as how Alice was influenced by the white rabbit by following him into Wonderland. From there, Alice had to make choices that could either put her into more danger (getting her head chopped by the red queen/getting hooked on illegal drugs) or getting her out of the mess (leaving wonderland/drug scene). 

I feel like this issue is quite familiar in our world. Although it may not exactly be about drugs, our choices are often influenced by the people around us. This could be an adult, celebrity, family, friends, someone we respect etc.  We make our choices base on them and this could either turn out good or bad. 

Mood Board

    List of choices

• Plastic Surgery (Barbie Dolls)
• Drugs
• Anorexia (Mirror Reflections, Celebrities)
• Smoking (Normal Tobacco) 
• Drink Driving (Sober Driver), ("Drink Me" Reference), (Tea Party)
• Shoplifting 
• Gambling
• Dropping out 
• Abortion (Pills)

Some other bad choices people usually make from influences:

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_are_some_statistics_on_peer_pressure

Concept Idea

I decided to go with the idea of choices and how our choices are influenced by the people around us. In my triptych I wanted to show the two directions that a bad or good choice can lead you, and it will be up to the audience how the story ends by the choice they make. Currently thinking what will be this "choice" that I wanted to focus on.

Research on Choice

We determine what we want to achieve, and then the value of achieving it. We look at our options and decide which one will suit us best. Humans are highly motivated to avoid making choices they regret. This hard-wired fear of doing the wrong thing can lead to stress so great it affects your decision making -- to the point where you make a choice you wish you hadn't.

People often have a weakness for the immediate gratification of a pleasant experience, even if it makes for a very poor decision. Gratification over the long term simply doesn't deliver the same instant, feel-good endorphin hit.

It's also common to put more stock in the choices of someone you know than in the average outcome of the same choice. As an example, you know that the overwhelming majority of people who play the lottery are throwing money away, but if your friend hit a jackpot, you'd probably be more likely to play even though the odds are still astronomically against you.

Bad information leads to bad choices, too. Before you compare the options available, you must make another decision: where to seek the information you desire. A wrong choice here will lead to a bad choice when it comes time to make the decision before you. And if you're confronted with too many options and too many choices, your brain overheats, and you lose the ability to sift and analyze only the information that's helpful.

Sourced From:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/bad-choices.htm

Concept Thumbnails & Triptych Research

I was struggling between 2 ideas: Choices and how a child sees the adult world (curiosity). After speaking to my peers and tutors I figured Choices would be a stronger idea as it works better in terms of the non-linear triptych layout. At the moment I am currently thinking of a regular rectangular triptych with the good choice on one end and the bad choice on the other end, and the viewer's decision in the middle. The triptych will allow the story to be read left-right and vice versa depending the choice that the audience makes. (The layout may change during development)

Triptych Examples

Playing with different emotions in each panel.

Different images in each panel but they are connected 

together with one object (this being the cord in the triptych)

Different story in each panel, but also individual stories 

between the group of characters.

Layout: Closing one panel to change the story or eliminate 

a character. 

Artist Models

For my topic I wanted to go for more of a surreal style to show how people go delusional when they go down the wrong path. As to separate the bad advice from the good, I wanted to have a selection of colours that can represent the both. Maybe lighter colours (yellow, white, pink) for the good advice and darker colours for the bad. The audience can then select their choice through the colours perhaps. 

Vladimir Kush

Mark Ryden

Rene Magritte

 Xue Wang 

Others

Brainstorming White Rabbit

I brainstormed with my group who also chose White Rabbit as their song. We started breaking down the lyrics to find some hidden meanings and then sharing our own take on the song. It was interesting to see other peoples interpretation of the song. We then had to come up with one word that sums up all of our ideas and the word that we found was "choice". 

After our discussion, I began researching for the one idea I wanted to carry further. In the end I wanted to do my original idea of 'choices' but also extending this idea by showing how we make these choices through the influences of others (bad and good advice). - Creating something like a rite of passage. At the end of this topic, I wanted the audience to engage with my work and have their own pick of the path they want to take. As for now, I need to come up with a story that supports my idea. Maybe I could go literal and carry on the idea of drugs, or find something a little more abstract. 

-Protest
-War
-Dieting
-Rite of passage (learning from bad decisions)
-Anorexia
-Making choices (good or bad)
-Experimentation with drugs
-Reflecting your actions
-Choices (Picking between bad and good advice)
-Learning from your mistakes
-Drugs and hallucinations (Rabbit is the hallucination)
-Role models (Following the Rabbit)
-Peer pressure
-Decisions
-Discovering yourself / Growing up

Initial Thumbnails

White Rabbit - Jefferson airplane (Line Interpretations)

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall

Of course,the reference to pills is perfectly in keeping with Slick drawing parallels to Lewis Carroll's works and the Sixties drug culture. The lines to "And the ones that mother gives you/Don't do anything at all" would appear to be a reference not to Caroll, but instead to placebos. A placebo is any preparation which has no demonstrable effect on the human body, but has therapeutic benefit merely through the power of suggestion.

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice when she was just small

The first two lines refer to the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is in this chapter that Alice sees the White Rabbit (in waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch, no less) and falls after him down a hole. The hookah-smoking caterpillar first appears in Chapter Four of the same book.and plays the central role in Chapter Five, in which he tries to advise Alice. The final line may be a reference to either Chapter One (in which Alice shrinks) or to Chapter Four (in which she shrinks again).

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she'll know

"And you've just had some kind of mushroom" would appear to be a reference to both psilocybin mushrooms (commonly called "magic mushrooms") and an incident in Chapter Five of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Having shrunk once more, Alice eats a mushroom and returns to normal size. This seems curious coming as it does before the line "And your mind is moving low," as eating the mushroom returns Alice to some sense of normality. It could be that "your mind is moving low" is unrelated to the reference to the mushroom, instead referring to the effects of various drugs.

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head

The lines "When logic and proportion/Have fallen sloppy dead" would appear to be a reference to two different things. It is most obviously a reference to psychoactive drugs, which can alter both one's sense of proportion and have an often adverse effect on one's sense of logic.

Sources:
http://mercurie.blogspot.co.nz/2008/03/white-rabbit-by-jefferson-airplane.html

White Rabbit - Jefferson airplane (Further Research)

This was a time of naivete, innocence, confusion, hard decisions, stress and thought provocation. White Rabbit acknowledges that advice from older generations do not seem to make sense in our current world, and we are more open to look to unconventional solutions. Everyone was looking for better answers or explanations and looking in some unfulfilling places (like drugs). This song seemed to offer some very good advise using an "Alice in Wonderland" analogy. Alice was naive, innocent and looking for answers. In pursuit of her answers she follows unfamiliar elements to a unreal world. As she wanders through this world looking for answers she experiences and learns many lessons. White Rabbit advises us to ask Alice (who has already tried the 'unreal' route looking for answers) before we accept, try or count-on alternate sources of answers - 'don't take drugs' is the message I heard. Keep learning and acquiring knowledge to fill your head with better understanding of the real world is the best course for us to follow and not get 'lost' down a rabbit hole. Open our eyes to see and live in the real world with all of its imperfections; not to retreat into a world made up of wishful, unrealistic 'trips'. WAKE UP! Learn from Alice's mistakes. Don't wish for things to be better...work for them to be better.

Sources:
http://www.lyricinterpretations.com/jefferson-airplane/white-rabbit

White Rabbit - Jefferson airplane (Research)

Lyrics

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

This was written by Grace Slick, who based the lyrics on Lewis Carroll's book Alice In Wonderland. Like many young musicians in San Francisco, Slick did a lot of drugs. She saw lots of drug references in Carroll's book, including the pills, the smoking caterpillar, the mushroom, and lots of other images that are generally trippy. She noticed that lots of children's' stories involve a substance of some kind that alters reality, and felt it was time to write a song about it.

One of Grace Slick's earliest songs, written during either late 1965 or early 1966, uses imagery found in the fantasy works of Lewis Carroll: 1865's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass, such as changing size after taking pills or drinking an unknown liquid. It is commonly thought that these are also references to the hallucinatory effects of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Characters referenced include Alice, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse.

This was one of the defining songs of the 1967 "Summer Of Love." As young Americans protested the Vietnam War and experimented with drugs, "White Rabbit" often played in the background.

Sources:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1250

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rabbit_(song)