As my original idea for the monkey was for him to be the barker and introduce the acts changed as my project developed I've been trying to work out what he can do instead. I know I wanted him to do a repetitive act, stuck on a loop or a circus trick.
Playing around with him, I realised he's got quite an inquisitive face so interaction with the camera would be a good start. I like the idea of him being curious and I was performing him to interact with objects to get a feel of what he can do.
The concept behind my film is developing more as I go along and now I feel more definite that it is like an early children's TV programme, spooky little characters that are only on screen for a short while doing something that captures the child's attention. These sorts of programmes are quite repetitive in their nature so I want to take advantage of that and show the darker side of these characters being stuck in an endless cycle.
I thought about an object 'appearing' in his space and him lifting it up to find another object underneath, he looks at the camera, places the bigger object over the smaller and lift it back up to find the smaller object has magically changing into a different one. This action of the monkey revealing different objects would be repeated a few times.
But then I realised that I wasn't sure exactly how to do this in the time I have left. I don't have time to make more stuff as I only have a week left in the booth and still have to animate Pip and film the monkey. I thought I could use photographs of found objects (having a rather large collection of antique toys I'd have plenty to choose from) and I could either pixelate the 2D upright photos or composite them digitally in After Effects. But that's when I had to drop that idea, as my knowledge of After Effects was quite minimal and I didn't want to waste time doing something that I may not be able to get right.
Another thing I noticed was that he took to hats quite well. I played about with bottle caps and things to act as hats and thought that he could try hats on using the camera as a mirror, so interacting with the audience that way.
Here's one of the little video tests I did...
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