Episode: Literature

Problem: The kid has to write a fictional story for his class, but he does not see the point of writing fiction because he does not think it serves a purpose in the real world. The Imaginauts need to show him that literature is great for learning!

Possible worlds/people to visit:

1. Dr. Seuss -- The world should look very Seuss-ical (but not so much that it's copying...). Dr. Seuss talks in really strange rhyme-y ways and explains why it's good to allow your mind to stray into the fictional world.

2. Edgar Allen Poe -- This part can be really dark and creepy (maybe even scary?), and it should show how real and inspiring literature can be.

3. Greek Gods and Goddesses on Mount Olympus -- (because we wanted to include mythology) They would obviously talk about Greek myths and explain how the lessons from these myths helped people in real life.

Episode: Music!

Problem:

The kid is being forced to take piano lessons/practice piano, even though he thinks it's lame. Also, his dad is a professional musician, so his entire family thinks music is really important, but this IDIOT of a kid disagrees.

Possible worlds/people to visit:

1. The Baroque period - the Imaginauts appear in a garden with a bunch of little kids playing. A woman comes out and yells for "Wolfgang" to come entertain. So all the kids run inside, and a 10 year old Mozart plays the harpsichord while people dance.

2. The Doors - there's a 60's, Yellow Submarine-inspired world; we meet the Doors playing in the middle of a desert with a bunch of hippies dancing around. The lesson the kid should learn from this world is that music is all about feeling and that it should only be taken but so seriously. He should have fun with it!

3. Jazz -- Louis Armstrong..?

4. Pop music -- Lady Gaga (we could show her crazy pop side as well as her softer, acoustic side)

5. SO MANY OTHER OPTIONS! I think the main thing we have to worry about here is showing a variety of different styles of music from all different cultures and time periods.

Episode: Sculpture, Architecture

Possible title:
Boxed in

Episode: Sculpture, Fashion

Possible titles:
Snowed
?? This is getting hard

Episode: Color and Light

I think it would be an interesting conceptual episode to deal with the interaction between the seeing and the blind, and find a way for our problem character to explore the different ways to explain what seeing is like, or how the senses can be conveyed in alternative means. Think of it as a synesthesia episode!

Possible problems:
Our problem character is hosting a foreign exchange student at his/her house for a night. Suprise suprise when the student ends up being blind.
A kid and his parents are visiting his blind grandmother.
A kid loses his glasses and has to go through a school day without them.

The artists could be musicians who try to convey the idea of color/vision, and artists who portray other things than the visual with their art.

Episode: Photography

Possible titles:
Pouting Portraits
Impatient Pam, Look at the Cam!

Episode: Art is Everywhere

Possible titles:
Dull Drew, Here's to You
World Weary, Art Leery
Don't Frown, Art's All Around

Episode Topics/Assignments

#) Topic - Assignee (possible world/subjects within)
 - potential problems

List after the jump

Episode: Dance!

I was going to save this for our meeting tomorrow, but then I wrote it out and I mean why bother.

For the Dance episode, I was thinking that we could arrive at Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, where the lines and blocks of the painting are dancing and changing color all around the characters like some sort of crazy colorful city that was constantly rearranging itself. Mondrian, all blockliney, comes and shows the imaginauts how to dance with the city. Maybe we invite him to our imagirave later?

I like the idea of bridging different forms of art together, blurring the lines of genre until we see nothing but the act of creation. Dancing>painting. Stage lighting>Caravaggio? A writer of historical fiction visits a museum to better understand the mindset of itinerant nobles at the height of the rococo, and ends up imagining themselves into the paintings? That one might not work so well.

Still! Chase down those elusive Hyper-Lynx, guys!

Here are some words that Lynda Barry said and I read:

"What if drawing was a way to get to a certain state of mind that was very good for us? And what if this certain state of mind was more important than the drawing itself?

I believe making lines and shapes and coloring them in can still help us in the way it helped us when we were kids. When we used paper as if it were a mere place rather than a thing. A place where something alive can happen through motion. The motion of our bare hands--the original digital devices; wireless; bio fueled; completely ours."

*jonathan*

Notes from an early brainstorming session!

A while ago, Jonathan and I got together and talked about some stuff...

Here are the notes I took!

List of Episode Ideas:

- Filmmaking

- Exploring

- Music

- Cooking

- Dance

- Architecture

- Painting

- Journalism

- Animation

- Typography

- Printing/Engraving

- Color and Light

- Theater

First Episode:

- Imaginauts graduate from the Imaginaut Academy

- Head of the Academy (David--like the sculpture) calls them into his office and tells them that levels on the Imagimometer are dangerously low, and that he needs them to begin inspiring immediately

- There will be some sort of explanation of what the Imaginauts do, and then a normal episode will follow

I'm not sure if anything we came up with for that first episode still applies, but it was in my notes, so I included it. We'll figure it out next time we meet :)

Episode Brainstorming

Topics:
1. Television episode
2. Videogames
3. Comics
4. Imaginauts are given assignments that are the reverse of their specialty
5. Postmodernism
6. Performance art
7. Sound art
8. Video

Specific Problems:
1. Supermarket dissatisfaction
2. Cooking conundrums with a chef

Also, given that our first episode is basically our pilot, we decided that we would need to fit a typical Imaginauts episode in alongside exposition with all The Imaginauts knitty gritty. It should probably be double length to accommodate all of the things we want to fit inside of it.

The basic outline of the pilot:
1. Exposition of academy/Imaginauts
2. Problem
3. Assignment
4. Pan through a kaleidoscopic view of all the painting worlds (perhaps even sneak peaks of worlds to come in the next episodes!)
5. The first painting world they visit
6. The second painting world they visit
7. Resolution