The Treatment

Premise

Flyby is a short animation about an old war veteran pilot who is living a rather troubled life after he came back from the war. During one of his routine medication, he is hit by a remote control plane and swallows all of his pills at once, causing him to imagine he’s back in the war.

How will this imaginary war unravel?

Treatment

Flyby is a short animated action comedy following the main character, an old war veteran pilot, as he accidentally takes all of his medication pills at once and starts imagining he’s back in the war.

The animation will last for approximately two and a half minutes and is targeted towards teens and up. The animation style will be cartoony and snappy with many quick shots. The final movie will be rendered and composited to have a uniquely stylized 2D appearance.

An early morning in a modern city park sleeps our protagonist, an old WAR VETERAN, on a park bench accompanied with a couple of empty beer cans and cigarette stumps. His clothes and attitude indicates he’s had quite a problematic life after the war. He’s wearing some old and dirty jeans, some worn shoes and his old pilot jacket with a rusty war medal hanging from his chest. The old man wakes up and drowsily tries to take a couple of his daily medication pills, but this morning, right after he have got the pill box opened, a little propelled REMOTE CONTROLLED PLANE hits him in his arm and he empties the whole bottle all at once. With all of the pills taking affect, the environment surrounding him suddenly transforms into a large desert battlefield and the RC plane grows into a full scale fighter plane and starts to attack the old veteran as he once again finds himself in a war dodging incoming bullets and bombs.

The veteran quickly drops to the ground, barely evading the attacker. He looks around for anything he can use to defend himself with and immediately spots an aircraft in an abandoned hangar not far from his location, so he takes his chances and starts sprinting towards the abandoned plane. Bullets are raining down around him. As a miracle he isn't riddled with bullets when he jumps into the cockpit of the aircraft, fires up the old engine and takes off from the very bumpy runway.

A dogfight ensues as the two planes start chasing each other at low altitude throughout the desert environment. There are some acrobatic skills shown as they fly under and around natural rock arches, cliffs and other rock formations. They reaches the end of the canyon and skyrockets into the sky. As the battle escalates the veteran gets angrier and angrier with the enemy fighter pilot and starts flying more and more aggressively till a point where they both are flying side by side and the veteran, furious with anger, climbs out of the cockpit and onto his left wing. He jumps and lands on the attacker’s right side wing and start wrestling with the plane, tearing it apart with his bare hands. The aircraft catches fire and starts losing altitude fast. The veteran is just barely hanging on as the enemy fighter plane is closing on the ground, now in a straight vertical angle. The entire shot is filled with smoke as everything impacts the ground below.

As the smoke dissipates, the effect of the medication pills have finally lifted and the veteran is sitting on top of the RC plane, which is now broken beyond repair. Next to him lies a broken shopping cart which used to be his aircraft. The veteran wakes up and notices a little boy with a remote controller in his hand just about to cry. Right beside him stand his hulky dad who takes a few determined steps forwards as if he’s just about to avenge his son. The screen suddenly goes to black as the dad is about to punch the veteran.

The art set and animations will be created using Autodesk 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop. Other necessary software that will be used in the creation of this short are The Foundry Nuke, Pixologic ZBrush, Adobe Flash, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Soundbooth and Audacity.