"Tam" Project Proposal

Summary

The working title for my grad project is called, “Tam.” My goal is to produce a 5-6 minute animated short about a father’s story of endless hardship and survival of growing up in Vietnam after the war to when he immigrated to Canada to start a better life.

Synopsis

My film is about a boy attempting to shorten the distance between him and his father by trying to understand his father’s past life in Vietnam during communist persecution.

Description

The project is intended to be a heartfelt and emotional piece as one boy feels that his relationship with his father has been distant throughout their lives. The boy tires to understand his father, attempting to shorten the distant between them. Intrigued by his father’s past life, Boy begins to look back on all the stories of hardship and survival he’s been told since childhood. Throughout the film, questions are asked about the father’s past life and the boy tries to make meaning out of the answers he is given. The film is intended to tell a heartfelt narrative while at the same time remind and educate people about what Vietnamese refugees went through during the eighties.

Visual Treatment

The medium of animation that I’ll be using is of a mixed media digital cutout puppet animation. I’ll be collecting and hand painting textures to use as assets for the film. The backgrounds and puppets are going to be hand painted, scanned and compiled into Photoshop, assembled and animated on After Effects.

Samples:

Visual Prototype

Boat People from Toan Nguyen on Vimeo.

Puppet Test:

Assembled and rotated:

360 Cutout Puppet Rotation Test! from Toan Nguyen on Vimeo.

Sound Treatment

I’ll be using narration for the most part of my film accompanied by sound effects and a score. I recently interviewed my father and have recorded our conversation. There will be voice over from the boy as he communicates his internal thoughts to the audience, asking questions about his father’s past.


Production Schedule, copy and paste into new window

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asp8xaM-XvjNdC1VbUk1S3hzU2V1T0o5LU9xS292TUE&hl=en_US

Budget, copy and paste into new window

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asp8xaM-XvjNdHBEZHA5MnRJUDdQMjlFS3oxTTlRRlE&hl=en_US