Anchor treatment

Kavinda Rathnayake

Siy07248704

Major Animation Project

Treatment

Characters: A Boy called Jimmy and a fish called Anchor

Title: Anchor

The front door of a suburban home opens after a doorbell chime, revealing jimmy, an 8 year old boy on the front step. His mom is worried because he is late from school. He is holding a fish bowl up in front of him, comically large, certainly bigger than his head, with a little Blue Fish in it.

The fish bowl is kept on a table in their living room. We see the fish inside its bowl suddenly it dodges to one side. A small stone sinks into frame, bubbles trailing behind it. Jimmy is peering down at ‘us’, the fish bowl. He is holding another stone, poised to drop. Mom asks him to stop hurting the fish because she knows that jimmy is not going to leave the little fish alone and this is not the first fish he brought home. The little fish gets terrified, now he knows that jimmy is not going to let him live, which makes him thinking of escape.

Through the water we see the door of the bedroom open. Jimmy steps into the room and looks to the fish bowl, empty! Aghast, he looks from left to right, then to his feet turning in a circle as he does so, calls his mom. We hear a PLOP and see the fishbowl from Jimmy’s POV, but this time the little red fish is there, blinking innocently. Jimmy gets angry.

Jimmy pulls a welding iron from behind his back, reaches behind his head and flips down a welders mask. He is going to seel the top of the bowl. Fish’s eyes bug out of his head and he darts around his bowl desperately, turning quicker and harder with each pass. Through the water we see Jimmy approaching.

We look along the length of the windowsill from one corner of the window frame to the other. In slow motion, little Fish leaps into view, over the window sill and out through the open window. At the apex of his majestic, Free Willy leap for freedom, the colours fade to greyscale, and time slows down almost to a stop. As he begins his descent, reality hits; his face changes from ecstasy to terror. The colours of the scene return. Freeze frame on the fish’s face of terror.