Food For Thought - Narrative Ideas

        At the moment, one of our main concerns is how to incorporate the documentary aspect of this module into our narrative. Fiona and I have quite differing ideas on how to approach the topic, and indeed what the main focus and message of our animation should be.

        We have perhaps made a big mistake on beginning the design process without first having a firm idea of what we are trying to communicate. Now we must develop our narrative to suit our setting, which is tricky as some of our later ideas (about the impact of the meat industry on the environment) would, I feel, be better suited to a farm setting than an abattoir.

        As we have been quite ambitious in deciding to create a stop motion animation with minimal digital assistance (we will be building our sets, rather than creating them in Maya, and creating all the props required in a slaughterhouse ourselves), I feel it would be best to keep the narrative simple. We could approach this brief as a 'poetic documentary', depicting some of the things we have seen and read, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusion. Then again, we could take an 'observational' approach, showing what Animal Aid's investigation claims is taking place in UK abattoirs. 

        An animated interview is my preferred approach. After searching the internet (I felt that it would be difficult to find an abattoir worker willing to disclose their experiences to us, as it is quite a controversial topic. Plus, neither of us have any connections to the meat industry, so where would we start searching for an interviewee?) I managed to come across two interviews which could possibly form the basis of our narrative. 

        The first comes from a former employee of a halal slaughterhouse. This could be problematic, as we were hoping to avoid any religious of cultural subtexts, as this is not an issue of religion, but of animal welfare, and we don't want to embroil ourselves in additional controversy. The second is more promising. It is an extract from a book, and the contact details of the interviewer are given (if we needed to contact her to request permission to use her words). There is no mention of the interviewee working in a religiously or culturally specialised slaughterhouse, and as the animals are 'hogs' this would rule out the abattoir producing either halal or kosher meat.

        The content of this interview is quite graphic and disturbing in places. While we could chose to animate these horrific scenes, it may be more effective to handle the visuals more sensitively, and leave out some of the more horrific things we have seen and read during our research, allowing the impact of the interviewee's words to sink in. The aim is to draw attention to the shocking treatment of animals, but not to frighten the audience away. I have isolated a few passages from the interview which I feel would be best suited to being animated, and have a high impact:

• "I've seen hogs beaten, whipped, kicked in the head to get them to the restrainer. One night, I saw a driver get so angry at a hog he broke it's back with a piece of board."
• "Management was constantly complaining to us about blown loins. They claimed that when the stunner voltage was too high it tore up the meat. The supervisors always wanted it on low stun no matter what size hogs we were stunning. When you got big sows and boars in the restrainer, the stunner wouldn't work at all."
• "When hogs end up in the catch pen alive, the shackler beats them over the head with a lead pipe a couple of times - until they're dazed so he can get a chain around the hog's leg - and then he hoists it up. By then they may have come back to life and be squealing their heads off."
• "The managers would say, 'that's just muscle reaction, nerves. It's not alive.' I'd say, 'then why's the damn hog trying to bite me? Just how stupid do you think I am?'"
• "After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they're dunked in 140 degree water. That's to scald the hair off...there's no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they're still fully conscious and screaming."  

The rough storyboard I began developing based on the animated
interview concept.

The alternative idea we are looking at attempts to incorporate wider reaching environmental issues, in a more docudrama style set up (I like this idea, except for the visual representation of the greenhouse gases):

"Starts off in the Locker Room

Sven and Gordon are putting on their boots, tying laces, grabbing aprons from locker and putting coats in the locker, and putting on hats/hair nets etc. They also clock in. Credits on top, enter slaughter house and switch the lights on. The lights flicker, title screen.

They go to wash their hands, as the water pours out (can use sellophane or something like in the bigger picture), fact overlayed in post, It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat and only 25 gallons to produce 1lbs of wheat.

As the taps are turned off, you hear footsteps walking away and cattle noises then it cuts to the plastic curtain wafting and cows stomping, a bit of dust here to come from under the curtain, at this point the other butcher is testing the stun gun. Red and yellow flourescent strip lights in the cieling really flicker at this point (red lighting behind curtain and maybe above where the meat is hung up?) blue lighting comes out of the stun gun to make it more dramatic. Another fact on screen here, I think the blue stun gun should come out in the pattern of a tree, and be related to farming animals worldwide deforestation. I’ve found a few but they are quite long so I need to find a more succinct one.

Cuts to the other butcher hitting a cow with a sticking into the stun gun area and the cow rearing backwards kicking, cuts to the other one putting the gate down, cow shits itself. Zooms into steamy poo, fact about green house gases here - livestock is more than 18% responsible for greenhouse gases, more than cars, planes and fossil fuels. (18% doesn’t seem like a lot maybe we could find a more dramatic fact. )

The cow is beaten a bit more in the pen to settle and is stunned once. Then the cow cries, close up on tear. Fact on screen about the stress of farming animals puts on ecological systems and how it spoils diversity, or could be one on how it’s contributing to overheating the planet.

So the butchers stun it again and then hang the cow upside down, and cut it open. The cow bleeds out and the camera cuts to the blood pooling on the floor, in post we add fishes swiming and dying in the blood and have a fact on screen about the deadzones in the ocean from the run off from animal livestock. Whilst this is happening theres sound effects of the cow being skinned (still writhing but we don’t actually see this). The skin is thrown in a tub and and we can see footsteps as it builds up to another cow being stunned and the lights flicker.

I thought at this point we could cut to a black and white shot of the scene, like it’s from a cctv camera in the corner of them hanging a second cow up and moving them round, we coul dhave the butchers being really naughty here, drawing on one of them, or taking a selfie with them. And here we could include a fact about CCTV recently being made compulsory in slaughter houses but animal cruelty still happens. The camera could flicker on and off to suggest a lot more time passing (they normally have the time in the bottom corner. We could then cut to having nine cows all strung up and the two butchers hosing the places down. I think at this point we could have text on screen that talks about not all slaughter houses being like this and local butchers aren’t as pressured by demand and follow a better protocol, and treat the animals with more respect. The two butchers then push the carcasses behind the plastic curtain sound of a truck driving away and they come back wash their hands and talk about how they are strapped for cash as the put their shoes one. And we could end with ignorance is bliss but you could save yourself money if you eat less meat and source locally and family butchers.

Or another idea I had was one of the butchers could be new and he could be really shocked by everything. But I haven't really thought this through as much. I still think there's a few holes in this but I think it could be more of an orginal concept, but it probably would take quite a bit more ad libbing work to flesh it out. (flesh gerrit?)"

Fiona's initial storyboard drafts.