Day of the Fish

The theme I decided to go with when I started making Poy was "coping with loss". This theme has stayed pretty constant throughout my development process but the content of the plot varied until I had a solid idea. The story I have now takes some influence from the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (Dia De Los Muertos) festival, where a celebration of remembrance and prayer for those who have died takes place every year. It is believed that the souls of the dead visit the living during this time.

I adapted this for Poy - the idea being that when people die, their soul escapes from their bodies in the form of flying fish and on the day of the dead festival they fly through the town in which the main character resides. The basic plot for the film was that Poy's mother had died prior to the animation and upon noticing her soul flying past on the day of the dead she sets after it. This brought up the issue of how I would be able to explain the concept of souls/fish and how the audience would know it was Poy's Mother she was in pursuit of.

My initial resolution to this was to open the animation with a pan across a wall mural depicting people dying and their souls escaping in the form of fish, then to cut to Poy holding a photo of herself with her late Mother. The problems here are that opening a short film with a pan across a wall mural would frankly be boring, use up time and that Poy holding a photograph is a poor way of conveying the plot and a bit cliché.

The solution I have now is to open the film with Poy beside her Mother on her death bed, passing away and her fish escaping. This would make for a more interesting introduction to the film and should be easier for whoever is watching to catch on to the idea that the fish is a soul.