A Long Look at A Bird Story-Chapter One: One Tiny Rapscallion
The story wastes no time introducing us to its protagonist - a tiny boy of school going age. Finding Paradise, the next mainline game in the franchise, formally names him Colin, and, for convenience’s sake, I shall refer to him that way too.
Scene Description:
It is night, in the middle of a heavily built city. Colin is on his balcony, accompanied by nothing but laundry lines, a potted plant, and a bowl of water. He stands silently at the balcony railing, contemplating the night city. Many a moment passes before he leaves.
He peers intently into the potted plant, expecting something, or perhaps someone, but finds nothing. He’s briefly dejected, before being startled by a flock of birds suddenly taking flight near his apartment. He turns back to the city view, and pulls out a paper plane. Sad music starts playing as he walks back to his balcony’s railing, hurling the paper plane across. He reluctantly makes his way inside, and the camera pulls slowly towards the potted plant. The light in his room goes out, and the scene fades, but the potted plant lingers a while longer.
The opening scene here establishes the writer’s visual vocabulary pretty thoroughly - while the story may not use any words, much of mood and setting can be conveyed through visuals and music just as well. Almost every major element of the story is introduced here, in a natural fashion, and without giving out too much information. Indeed, visuals and music are probably this author’s strongest storytelling tools, as evidenced in sequences like these.
However, this scene, smart as it may be, isn’t perfect. It doesn’t provide any hooks for the viewer, and plays up the emotional angle too early. If a character is barely known, stirring up emotions for them is often futile -people need to have a reason to care. This was one of my major complaints about To the Moon, and this issue showing up this early in the story is quite the bad sign.
Scene Description:
Inside, the scene opens with an empty green book and a pile of papers in focus first. A moment later, Colin is seen in his pyjamas, at the room’s big lamp, presumably having just turned it off. He closes the empty book, turns off the smaller lamp, then heads to bed.
Elsewhere, two birds fly over an open field, marked by trees on two sides. The camera shifts to show a clear, somewhat starry sky above. Back in his bedroom, Colin tosses and turns, unable to sleep.
A rather bland interlude, though I give props for smartly maintaining continuity with the first scene through the big lamp. The brief cut to a currently unknown, random place was probably intended as foreshadowing, but mostly comes across as a complete non-sequitur.
Scene Description:
Eventually, Colin does fall asleep. In his dreams, he is transported to a faded out, dull world, where he literally traces his steps back through time. On the way back, he rides a huge paper plane, runs into silhouettes of himself hanging out with a bird, and finally stops in front of a large building with a clock up front. It chimes a few times, gains color, then reveals itself in a fully colored classroom, with Colin in attendance.
Finally, an interesting event! Notice that this scene not only represents his mental journey through easily digestible metaphor, it also provides a clever framing device - it’s in his dreams, so it can look like whatever the author wants, within reason. But, it’s also him reimagining his own life, so the events within are embedded with a seed of truth somewhere, and can’t be dismissed as just frivolous thoughts. Readers familiar with the franchise as a whole may also recognize how this is similar yet distinct to how mind travel is done in them, another flourish of cleverness from the author.
Scene Description:
His teacher writes something on the chalkboard. A whimsical tune kicks up, as Colin proceeds to ignore her entirely. He folds a page from his notebook, then stares in rapt attention outside the classroom windows. There’s two squirrels running about there. He’s so lost watching them that his classmate, next to him, picks up his paper plane, hurls it at his teacher, and sits back in their chair before he can do anything. The camera comically zooms dramatically on his teacher, as she angrily turns around. His classmate blames him, and he’s made to stand outside class.
A brilliant scene, this one solidly characterizes our protagonist as a lazy daydreamer with more than a fair fondness for mischief. And all it takes to do that is a few understated yet energetic actions. It also throws a fair few hints about the classroom he’s in - the teacher shows little hesitation in punishing him, and his own classmate readily takes advantage of his absentmindedness to prank him. He’s clearly regarded as a bit of a clown around here.
Scene Description:
Outside, he tries walking away, but is immediately stopped by the teacher scolding him. He looks around for a while, and catches sight of a bunch of students leaving. The whimsical music kicks in again, as he observes the crowd and gathers the courage to leave. His teacher yells at him, and startles him twice, but his determination wins out, and he makes his way to the school playground.
Another brilliant piece of characterization, this solidifies him as a mischievous, playful boy who’s just too shy, and needs encouragement to break past his shyness. In this case, it comes from other students leaving and not being under his teacher’s thumb.
Scene Description:
The school corridor gives way to the playground, where Colin take the see saw. He waits for a while, but none comes to play. He leaves the playground, and heads home through the forest.
While this is mostly a plain interlude, it conveys the first example of the absurd, yet plausible visual shorthand used to connect scenes. The school corridor literally gives way to the playground, yet it doesn’t come across as absurd in context of the framing device, and is easily understood as an abstraction of convenience. This is a fairly strong use of the framing, working in favor of both the viewer and the writer. Naturally, it will be used quite a bit later.
Scene Description:
Back in his apartment, he awkwardly steps away slightly from his occupant in the lift, drawing a curious glance from them. He walks down his apartment corridor, and the ambience quickly shifts to a very creepy tone. The lights flicker out for a bit and rats scurry away from him. Fortunately, nothing actually happens, and he makes his way home.
While still blatantly an interlude between notable moments, the narrative cleverly sneaks in some drama here, playing on his shyness while later highlighting his tenseness over truly being lonely, away from home-the corridor is short, and nothing dangerous actually exists there, but it’s the first place he’s been to without any incidental company, and that scares him enough to change its mood in his head.
That’s enough for now. Join us next time as he spends a day at home, draws silly things in his notebook, and possibly has a very choice encounter.
