Script and Screen: CingKus – Water

3

August 7, 2014 by bck1402

When it comes to animation, anything is possible. Anything you can imagine can be put on screen. It doesn’t always have to make sense, there may not be a coherent story, but as long as you can imagine it, it can be animated and therefore be a cartoon. Bill Plympton is one of those who constantly experiments with animation. He’s a one man show that still dabbles in traditional hand drawn animation, producing surreal shorts (Your Face, How To Kiss) to strange mind-bending features (Hair High, Mutant Aliens).

After all, only in animation can you have the brilliance that is Bambi Meets Godzilla.

When it came to this episode of CIngKus, I had a rough idea of Cing and Kus trying to beat the heat. Not entirely original, I’d admit to that, but given that it’s a cartoon, there were numerous avenues for lots of crazy silly stuff that would suit the cartoon. At least, I thought so. I could play up the characteristics of the core duo and throw them into this silly situation and see what they’d do, maybe fill in the dialogue later.

SO, I just wrote scheme after scheme, keeping in mind – this is a cartoon; anything can happen. The notion to let things play out led to the decision not to include dialogue. I thought this would be a great throwback to the early cartoons where we would thrill to the antics of the characters trying to overcome their situation.

I ended up with 12 pages of action beats, descriptions and all sorts of craziness. Things I felt you would find in a typical cartoon, things that could happen in a typical cartoon. When I submitted the script, I said that it was something different and felt that it would be a great homage to the cartoons of decades past, like a certain cat and mouse duo, or even those from before that.

I can’t recall exactly how the producers felt, I can imagine the director probably scratching his head, and just maybe the animators themselves had no idea how to do much of what I had written. On top of that, no dialogue?

I’m never precious with these scripts primarily because it is work for hire, and it is their property that I’m working with. The director, producers and stars would know the characters better than me, so my approach was that they could make whatever changes they needed to suit their needs. I remember insisting that it really didn’t need any dialogue – which if you each the attached video, that was one of the changes, including adding in the line “Who wrote this?” Ultimately, I don’t know who wrote the dialogue bits. The actors may have improvised; they may have gotten another writer to help out; the producers themselves could have done it.

I knew changes were being made, I just didn’t know what, and I got very curious to see the final product and what would be retained. I knew they were going to close the season with this episode and they wanted to get as many of the other characters in there too.

At this point, I’ll let you judge things for yourself. This is the last of the CingKus Script to Screen articles. Do feel free to comment too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the series.

Here’s the script

Here’s the cartoon.

CingKus Blues is copyright to 3rd Rock Creation