Animation Mentor - Class 5 - Week 2 - Short ideas, feedback welcome

Here are my story ideas so far. Feedback greatly appreciated. Please let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any ideas that would make the story better... Different ideas also welcome.


Story 1
Title: Tricks for Treats

Pre-Pitch Structure:

Setting: Guy's Back Yard
Time: Day through to the Evening
What and Who: A Guy and his dog

Pitch Structure:

We open with the dog owner looking at a Dog training book. We see a shot of the book cover. It guarantees to teach the dog the incredible summersault trick! The owner opens the book to the incredible summersault trick and rubs his hands together in expectation. There is a funny drawing of a clipart dog doing the summersault trick.

The owner then turns to the dog with a treat in his hand. The dog gets super excited seeing the treat and starts trying to please the owner.

The owner starts giving the new command and the dog starts attempting tricks... Sitting... lifting his paws..... laying down... rolling over... the dog is obviously confused and has never seen this command before.

The owner is getting frustrated and takes the book and shows the dog the clipart diagram. The dog looks back cocking his head to the side obviously confused. Fade out...

Time has gone by... the shadows have changed... the sky is turning orange... by now the owner is tired, hunched over... tired of trying... he's obviously been trying this for hours....

Finally he gives up and throws the bone in the air as he turns around to leave. It is then when the dog in trying to catch the bone, jumps up in the air and does the incredible summersault trick. Landing on his feet and lays down to eat his bone. Fade to black and the credits roll.

Alternate ending:

Owner is upset that the dog can't do the trick so he throws the bone at him, and the dog does the trick as he jumps in the air. The owner gets super excited and so does the dog eating the bone... the owner pets him and hugs him as the screen fades and the credits roll. As the credits show I could flash a couple of pictures of the dog doing the summersaulting trick in different venues.

Ideas for humor
have him throw the bone at the dog and the bone just slams right into the dogs face, that would be funny, maybe?

I could also have him look at the book, and on the page is a picture of the trick (ex. siting) but the dog only roles over, never sits, but then when the guy turns back to the book, the dog sits down... then the guy looks at the dog, dog stands up... looks at the book, dog sits down... then he decides to forget that trick and move on to the next trick. (this type of stuff might lengthen it too much).



Story 2
Title: Lite as Air

Pre-Pitch Structure:

Setting: Guy's Garage
Time: Daytime
What and Who: A Guy, his dog, and a girl across the street

Pitch Structure:

We open with a thin skinny guy is in his garage, garage door open. We see that his dog is by his side looking up at him with a dog toy in his mouth. The guy looks over and something calls his attention. We see a camera angle of his point of view and realize he sees a girl across the street listening to some music. He looks up and thinks... there is a flashback.

We see a strong guy at the gym curling a dumbbell with 100 LBs written on it. An excited girl is looking at him lift. Flashback ends.

The skinny guy looks down at his muscles and his arm looks pretty sad and he kicks a black ball that was laying on the floor next to him and his dog.

A bell goes off and he gets an idea. He picks up the black ball and looks at it...

The next thing we see is him walking past his dog and sitting on a bench right outside his garage and putting down a towel. He has a dumbbell on the floor that looks peculiarly like the ball he had kicked earlier but now it has the words 100 lbs written on it. He picks it up and with the same pose and expression as the guy in his flashback starts doing some curls.

He puts it down and wipes his brow and waves to the girl next door. We then see the dog who is chewing on his toy look at the dumbbell and we hear the familiar bell sound, he gets an idea. He sees one big toy instead of a dumbbell.

He drops his toy, and walks over the the dumbbell, picks it up with his mouth, and runs off with it... The guy looks down at the dog, looks back at the girl all embarrassed and chases after the dog.

Credits roll.