TITLE: Rainy to Sunny Log-Line: “Promise me, be happy forever.” My film “Rainy to Sunny” is a story about love, company and growth. The film describes that a girl feels very sad about the death of her old cat “Sunny”. In a rainy day, she opens umbrella for a white cat which is exactly like her dead one. The cat then becomes a handsome boy and invites her to go to the pleasure ground. So the girl gradually becomes happy again and has a lovely day with this boy. At the end of the day, the boy lets her to promise to be happy forever and then slowly disappears. As a result, the girl believes this boy is just the soul of her dead cat so she feels very beatific and regained courage to go on. Since the heroine of the story is set as a middle school student, my audience orientation is teenagers and students, especially girls. Because of puberty, teenagers may be confused of life and death, temporary and permanent. And they begin to realize the complexity of life itself. Meanwhile, their emotional needs keeps increasing, which means they desire to be loved by people other than their parents and gain encourage from outside. Many of them may be increasingly interested in romantic adventure story about love and growth. The popularity of Alice in Wonderland and Hayao Miyazaki's films can be a good proof. As a result, my film “Rainy to Sunny” tries to convey a kind of warm and healing force to smooth the pain and sorrow that the audience may face on the growing way. I hope they can understand that love is the eternal theme of human beings, even death could not cut such precious emotion. Although our lost things could not come back again, we can still feel love from them and continually gain courage to look forward through our whole life. “Rainy to Sunny” will be a cartoon film with obvious Japanese anime style. The location in cartoon is Tokyo which is characterized by typical Japanese city environment: high-rised modern buildings, busy business streets and falling cherry blossoms. This film will adopt a lot of contrast shots to impress the audience. For example, at the beginning of film, the heroine in bright red uniform walks along the street while all the other people are in gray, holding oppressive black umbrellas. Over their heads, there are only leaden clouds and reinforced concrete. Through this strong color contrast in one shot, the screen could properly reflect the heroine's inner sorrow. At the middle of the film, when she opens the umbrella for the cat, the girl is seen to be much larger than the small cat and the umbrella in the girl’s hand is tilted towards to cat. However, in the nest shot, the cat becomes a boy who is higher than the girl and umbrella changes to his hand, titled towards to the girl. These two contrast shots may make audience feel interesting and surprised.
And when they are in the play ground, this colorful screen makes strong contrast with the beginning screen of the film. leaden clouds and reinforced concrete are replaced by blue sky and green trees, which indicates that the girl’s inner happiness. Moreover, form the inverted reflection in puddle, it is can be seen that the boy is a white cat. Through this interesting contrast, audience may feel fantastic. As for the end of the film, when the boy disappears, there will be some special effects. The boy’s body gradually become broken and fly off, just like red dandelions. For animation films, there is no need to pick real actors to perform nor set up studio. So scene production and character drawing become the key factors to achieve best visual effects. As a result, the Japanese animation producer Makoto Shinkai and his team can be the most appropriate choice, because Makoto Shinkai is famous for his exquisite CG technique and he is good at portraying characters of boys and girls. Last year, his film Your Name got great success so that he was regarded as Hayao Miyazaki's successor. Apart from visual section, character dubbing is another key section for animation, so the choice of voice actor is very important. In this film, the girl is quiet but kind-heart, and her mood changes from sad to happy naturally. I think the Japanese voice actress Noto Mamiko is suitable because Noto Mamiko’s voice is smooth and pure, just like crystal. Her representative work is the character Enma Ai in Hell Girl. As for the boy, since he is very gentle and soft, so in my opinion the Japanese voice actor Hanae Natsuki is proper. Hanae Natsuki’s representative work is the character Kaneki Ken in Unravel Ghou. For animation, music is also very important to convey emotions. The music in the early stage that the girl has not met the cat should be blue and sentimental, such as My Soul. When she meets the cat and finds the cat becomes a boy, the music becomes intangible and mysterious, such as My Sweet Valentine. Then the rain stops and there is a rainbow in the sky. The boy and the girl go to the play ground, having a lovely day. In this situation, the music should be bright and cheerful, such as Flower Dance. Till the boy disappears, the girl cries but still smile, so the music should be a little blue but hopeful, just like Beyond the Memory. When I was in lectures, I found that many films widely adopted contrast methods to convey emotion and information to audience, especially the visual contrast. A great example which using contrast method to a peak is Life is beautiful. Therefore, I tried to tell a story including contrast elements: life and death, temporary and
permanent, sorrow and happiness. I hope the audience could feel be loved and have courage to go further.