Script V.1

This is the first draft of my script, which I compiled with software on a website called Celtx. At the moment, the female protagonist is referred to as F, and her new boyfriend in the final scene is referred to as B.

Certification

After researching BBFC certification, I have decided that this short film would be a 12A. 

Moderate language will be used, there will be no violence nor much 'threat'.

Though I do not want this to be pitched to 12-year-olds, I think my core target demographic is more around the 18-25 bracket, the themes in the film fit in the 12A rating.

Soundtrack

When I went to the Edinburgh fringe festival I went to see a production by Manual Cinema, who are a company of actors, designers and puppeteers who create films live in front of yours eyes using paper and acetate that is projected onto a screen using old projectors, silhouettes of actors that are also projected, along with a live band to soundtrack the film. Lula Del Ray, a coming of age story about a young girl obsessed with a popular band, was unlike anything I have ever seen before and really expanded the way I think about cinema. 

Here is an short excerpt from their work, showing how it all works:

 

I was particularly inspired by their soundtracks that were performed live and were synchronised with the action. I liked the way that such a small band could create a strong mood and tone for each scene. I think their minimalistic style of music would work well with the themes in my film.

Here are the trailers to my favourite productions from them, and links to the soundtracks for each of them. 

https://manualcinema.bandcamp.com/album/ada-ava

https://manualcinema.bandcamp.com/album/lula-del-ray

I also really love the use of piano solos in film- I think it adds a very melancholic tone to a scene and really aids the visuals, whether the music is contrapuntal or parallel to the action.

American Beauty achieves this very well as it establishes the main theme of the music at the point when Ricky discusses the beauty in the everyday, and at the end after Lester dies the theme returns but is more developed, and his voiceover references beauty again, saying 'it's hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world'. I have been a fan of Thomas Newman's soundtrack for many years now and would like to develop some of the themes that he uses. 

Below are two scenes from the film in which the main theme 'Any Other Name' is heard.

A Series of Unfortunate events was also soundtracked by Thomas Newman, and I like his balance between the minor chords and then modulating in the piano. It feels quite bittersweet which is exactly the mood I want. If you were to replace the harp in 'the Baudeliare Orphans' it could be a successful balance between Thomas Newman's work and the Manual Cinema soundtracks.

Here is the Beaudelaire Orphans track- I like the first minute of the piano chords, and then 1:54- 2:27 with the violins.

I have commissioned my very talented friend Eliza to soundtrack my film, and she will take inspiration from Manual Cinema and Thomas Newman, which I am sure will work brilliantly with my film.

old home videos: american beauty

A film that has really inspired me to use old cameras to show memory is American Beauty, as Ricky is obsessed with filming everything in his so when he watches it back, he doesn't miss the beautiful moments of his life.

In an interview for a behind the scenes documentary, Wes Bentley, who plays Ricky, says that 'he uses the camera to remember things: it's not that that's his eye - well, when you look through a camera and a camera can zoom so tight, he gets to see something that maybe we all miss'.

I really love Ricky's motivation for using home videos, as I think this would also be why my male protagonist would film parts of his life. What appeals to me the most is the way that, as Wes Bentley said, older cameras allow you to have a smooth zoom that moves in really close in without the whole camera shaking. It has the ability to show a character's point of view and allows a character to see someone up close without actually moving towards them. It's a much more personal way to show a scene between too characters without having too many shot-reverse-shot scenes. 

I would like the opening of my film to be in a similar format the way American beauty opens: a short home video clip that establishes the theme for the film, followed by the title of the film. 

Instead I would like both protagonists to be speaking so we establish who he is talking to, and I would like it to reflect happier times- when they promised they would be friends forever no matter what comes their way. This tone will contrast with the title of the film, which will be more serious and downbeat.

Proposal for my short film

The idea from my short film has been incredibly developed from a brief initial proposal last year that I had for a thriller opening before I collaborated with Meg, and thus the idea was dropped. The conventions of the thriller genre have been lessened- now there is more of a focus on the two protagonists, without amnesia or the interrogation scene, to make sure that a concise narrative can be developed in the five minutes and make it much less melodramatic.

Themes

The key theme I have focussed on is the role of memory within a relationship. I was really interested in how short films juxtapose memories and the present day in a relationship that has potentially fallen apart, what we choose to remember and how more memories come back to us with time. Many of the short films I have researched surround these themes, and there are more short and feature length films. It will also explore contrasts between old and new technology: photobooths and photos on computers, old home video cameras and social networking sites.


Brief Plot Summary

A man and a woman who were in a relationship have been apart for several months after they left school. Although their last discussions (seen through the old home video in the opening few seconds of the film) were about how they will stay friends forever no matter what happens, the man has not been able to contact her at all despite his best efforts- she has cut off all communication from him.

The scene after the titles I would like to take place at the waiting area in a station. The male protagonist walks in- he is wearing a suit, and has an internship in the city that he is going to. He sees the photobooth in the corner of the room, and which triggers a flashback to months ago when him and the female protagonist go to use the photobooth.

We cross-cut to a new scene in the male protagonist's bedroom: he is sitting in front of his computer, frantically searching through social media sites to see if he can find the female protagonist. A friend walks in and asks him what he's doing, then insists he needs to get over the girl, establishing with the audience that they have not spoken in months and she has essentially 'ghosted' him.

We cut back to the scene in the train station, and through the same POV shot we had before, we can only see the legs of someone sitting in the photobooth. The curtain opens and the female protagonist comes out of the photobooth, and catches the eye of the male protagonist. They're both as shocked as each other. He runs over to her and immediately ask where she's been all this time, it was like she vanished. Instead of answering his questions, she looks over and another man walks over to her- he is clearly her new boyfriend. The new boyfriend explains they have to get going to the post office, and the female protagonist explains that she's getting her passport- she's leaving for good.

The film ends with a shot of the woman and her new boyfriend leaving the station, leaving the male protagonist behind.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Volume

Volume is a short film directed by Mahalia Belo, about a young man who's world gets turned upside down when the girl who lives at the house he gardens at, Georgina, goes missing. In a community where nothing is said about the incident, Sam tries to piece back together his memories of what happened with him and Georgina.

I really like that the opening mirrors the final scene of the film, and we get to see the neighbourhood from the perspective of Sam on his bike (who's perspective is revealed at the end of the film) and the attitude of the neighbours after Georgina's disappearance. We get to see on the trees as the camera tracks along the 'missing' posters with photos of Georgina, and unlike the final scene, the neighbours look straight to the camera instead of ignoring Sam altogether. 

The scene uses a lot of voiceover so we can gain insight into what Sam is feeling, and his memories of Georgina. Here we see a long shot of Georgina in the swimming pool looking at the camera; due to the perspective that the water gives, she is closer to the camera underwater, reflecting the scene later in the film when georgina tells him a secret underwater. This is one of the only times she opens up to Sam, and perhaps the only time she really opens up to anyone. 

The title shot is also used as a cutaway later on in the film, but then we get to see Georgina diving into the pool: here, in the opening, the editors decided that we only get to see the bubbles left after she dives in, representing the small part of Georgina that haunts the community once she disappears.

It is clear from the scene with Sam's friends that he is a bit more of outsider in the group. He is presumably much less experienced sexually than his other friends are, which also makes him feel left out, one step behind them. This is also shown literally as he stands in the ditch of the old pool while he looks up at his friends who are standing at ground level. Most shots of Sam are over the shoulder or just of him with his friends out of focus in the foreground or background, which shows how he, the introvert, is the more important, interesting and complex character. 

There is a clear difference between the relationship Georgina has with Sam and the affair that is implied that she has with his father. In the above scene we see this intimate moment between Georgina and Sam when she first gets to see his room. She walks round it, meticulously looking at his shelves, similar to the way in Hotel Chevalier that Jack's ex-girlfriends looks at his belongings in his hotel room to try and get an insight into what he's been up to. The whole colour palette has been edited to make the room look rose-tinted; it creates an almost romantic atmosphere, and also reflects the innocence of their relationship. It is not sexual, unlike the relationship she likely has with his father- this is even emphasised by the fact that in this scene she even encourages him to pretend with her that they are having sex in his room to freak his parents out. She can manipulate him as she is more self-assured and blunt with what she wants, but by the way that she acts around him we also see she feels comforted. 

When Sam realises that his dad may have harmed Georgina after it is heavily implied he had an affair with her, he gets into a physical fight with his father. The colour palette in this scene is incredibly dark and blue, reflecting the cold, melancholic and deeply sad tone of this scene; we witness a boy coming to terms with his father's betrayal and potential crime or action that might have hurt the girl he loves, and how their relationship is now broken. I love that it is dark outside with only natural light but the interior of the house that we see in the last shot above is lit artificially with warm colours- it shows how the family tries to present itself to the outside world as happy and cohesive, but in reality it is a facade, and it is in fact collapsing.  

The final scene shows how Sam is pretty much the only person cares for or remembers Georgina. The shots from the opening when Sam drives round the neighbourhood on his bike are used again, but this time the neighbours look away from him, immersed in their daily lives. We hear the sound of a honking car in the distance, and it is in fact Sam's dad, but instead of stopping he looks up at his son and puts his arm up, symbolising the barrier that is now between them, and drives away. Both Sam and Georgina's house are bathed in bright warm natural light, connecting them and the purity of their relationship amid a broken community.

I love the final shot of this film: the camera tracks away from Sam, and he simply turns and walks away. I would love to use a shot similar to this as my final shot for my short film. It shows his defeat but also we feel a sense of closure, as although he has given up he knows that she is gone and he can do nothing about it, hence why he chooses to walk away and move on.

The entire narrative structure of a mixture between the past and present, the sense of longing for another person that slips away from you, and even the bittersweet closure at the end of Volume are themes that have influenced my own work.

I have shown how this film has inspired my short film in my post and video on shot influences.

Low Tide

Low Tide is a short film directed by Hussain Pirani and Joe Simon about a young couple who are coming to terms with their relationship as told through a series of flashbacks and one interlocking scene- playing roulette with a gun. The inspiration I will take from this film will be the simplicity in the dialogue, the naturalistic way in which the couple discuss their relationship along with their shared past and their hopes for the future, and its cinematography.

I really love the shallow depth of field in this scene which is particularly visible when we see shots of the gun, as one part of the gun is in focus while the rest is blurred. It is established that she is the pushy one while he remains more submissive in the relationship, which makes us question why she acts in this way. 

The cross-cut to the next scene is punctuated by non-diegetic sudden crescendo in the atmospheric eerie soundtrack into a piano solo and a montage of the couple out and about together, which we presume is a flashback. The juxtaposition is really striking and shows the audience the kind of relationship they had before and what they have now lost. 

There is a variation in the shots used in each scene, which is quite important considering that the whole film is a series of conversations between two people, so one could quickly fall into the trap of simply using shot-reverse-shots. The establishing shot at the beginning of this scene makes the landscape look eerie and almost haunted, coupled with the empty swing set representing their lost childhood. 

The conversation that happens at this house is very naturalistic and is something that I find myself doing sometimes; just imagining who would live in that sort of house. This scene is only made up of two shots, a close up and a wide angle long shot which I would definitely use if I had long establishing shots. I like that the simplistic editing and camerawork reflects the simplistic dialogue, but if this editing speed was used for my five minute film it would be to stagnant, slow paced and a little boring for my audience, so I would like to use more of a variation in my own work.

I love the pathetic fallacy of this scene- the waves crashing on the rocks and the cold colour palette reflect the instability of the relationship and and their emotions. The low-key lighting means that the scene appears more dramatic, and the dark tones reflect the trauma she felt that eventually lead her to abort her baby. 

The final scene is in stark contrast to the previous two scenes due to its general change in tone supported by the high key natural lighting, very warm, saturated colours. The juxtaposition is made even more ironic by the fact that the final scene takes place on the same beach as the scene discussed above, but with a completely different change of mood. There is still ambiguity surrounding the time of each flashback which came first, and what the real resolution is at the end. The mise-en-scene really reflects this happy time in the relationship, and though we know they don't end up together, we get to see the couple at their best before the credits roll.

This is one of my favourite shots of the film, mainly because its colours are so bold and unique, and are so different to the mise-en-scene in so many other contemporary films. 

To be brutally honest I have seen this film many times now, and still don't completely understand the exposition of the plot! It's such a shame as everything else is done really well in this film, and I still felt sympathy for the characters even though I didn't understand what the gun meant, why they had it in the first place, why they were playing a game with it and why she seemed to be fearlessly pushing him to play along. Unfortunately the difficulty with short films is that in the short amount of time you have you need to leave a lot of things unsaid and make the audience work for themselves, but if this is executed poorly it can mean that the plot is easily misunderstood. The saving grace for this short film is undoubtedly the cinematography and visual style, perfectly matching the tone of each scene. I hope that I can take inspiration from it particularly in the way it is structured as a short film, but also learn from it and understand what to make obvious to the audience and what can be left open for interpretation.

Hotel Chevalier

Hotel Chevalier is a beautiful short film directed by Wes Anderson starring Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman, and is a prequel to one of his films 'The Darjeeling Limited', looking further into the relationship of Jack and his ex-girlfriend. 

The film is very simple in its dialogue, but is honest and beautiful, and a lot is told through visual imagery as in true Wes Anderson style. He stays true to his own way of filming, making use of his iconic tracking shots, slow-motion long shots, high angle shots and whip-pans. The colour palette is also similar to his other work, warm orange tones in an intricately designed set.

The opening establishing shot is the only shot that is not inside the hotel room, other than the final shot on the balcony. We are introduced to Jack by showing his hotel room- clearly has been here for a long time and it very settled. There are key examples of symmetry in the cinematography of the first couple of shots which is again another feature Anderson frequently uses. 

When his ex girlfriend arrives she is not obviously eager to see him, and does not hang up
 the phone as he opens the door; she stays composed, trying to hide the guilt that she feels for hurting him, which she says she feels later in the film. Jack puts on a piece of music as soon as she rings on the doorbell that he has picked especially for her entrance, and is played throughout most of the film until they start to kiss. The images below are all from one shot, the camera whip pans to Portman looking back at Schwartzman. She is in control of the scene, she controls the dialogue and even the the camera follows her movements. In a following shot it tracks along the apartment behind her head as she walks into the bathroom, again showing her control of the situation and of the relationship. 

Portman remains in the centre of the shot while she brushes her teeth, the focus never steers from her while Jack stands in the background. This reflects the role he plays in the relationship, he is more submissive to her. In the shots below you can see how they talk to each other for the first time properly, addressing why they have been apart and what Jack has been doing in Paris. They are both positioned far from the camera in shots by themselves, the other character is not in the frame with them, showing how distance has been created between them after the time they have spent apart. They both seem very out of place due to their accents and their dark clothing against the warm colours of the room.

When they lie on the bed they are suddenly in equilibrium as they are both equally placed within the frame. He finally gains more control, as despite her questions he shows that he has been able to stay away from her for months. He doesn't show any signs of wanting to go 'home' as she suggests. Though they have a lot of history together which is shown in their dialogue, there is no intimacy even when they lie on the bed. Compared to a short film like Memory 2.0, the shots show them to be distant, each composed meticulously with a still camera, which reflects the state of their relationship, awkward, stagnant and all for show. 

After they begin to get intimate, he notices that she has bruises on her skin, implying that she may have been physically abused, but nothing is said about it. I really like in the dialogue how they both ask each other whether they have slept with anyone else: the pauses after they each ask the questions shows they could be lying, or trying to show that they have truly moved on. Portman's character pauses for the longest, showing that she may not want to tell him the truth in case she hurts him again. I would love to develop these subtleties and use them in my own script for the short film. As she begins to apologise for how she didn't mean to hurt him off camera, the camera holds on a close-up of Jack, staring at her unemotionally. He has clearly been hurt by her but still is under her control shown by his minimal replies and that she is lying on top of him so he cannot move. His obsession with his ex-girlfriend is developed in Anderson's film 'The Darjeeling Limited', and despite the fact that she is the reason the relationship ended, he still has feelings for her and feels little resentment towards her.

The penultimate shot is the iconic Wes Anderson slow motion tracking shot, seen in his other feature films. The music 'Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) that was played at the beginning, and she puts on his dressing down from earlier. 

I love this ending long-shot, it again shows a lot about their relationship without having any dialogue. The orange dressing down she wears stands out against the cool toned landscape and Jack's grey suit, and shows that in the end she does not belong here, and does not belong with Jack. 

Pulp fiction poster

This is a short video analysing the poster for Quentin Tarentino's Pulp Fiction.

Memory 2.0

Memory 2.0 is a short film directed by Dugan O'Neal starring Jenna Malone and Wilson Bethel, set in a society where memories can be stored and viewed electronically, externally to the brain. A man sets out to push the limits of these memories and relive time and time again moments with a past lover, no matter how dangerous the consequences. 

The film opens with a scene that is later discovered to be a memory, distinguished through it's natural bright light, frequent use of close-ups and in particular the shallow depth of field. You can identify that something isn't normal through the sometimes abrupt editing, interrupting a movement and cutting into a new frame without continuity editing. 

The second scene is a stark contrast to the first due to the use of artificial light, often in red to signify a more artificial and dangerous world. It is clear through the ambiguous dialogue used that it is a risky world to delve too deep into, which we assume could be for physical or even mental health reasons. The room looks much more artificial due to the clean white surfaces, strip lighting and simple colour palette, which we associate with hospitals or medical facilities, hence why it seems like a dystopian society as technology greatly improved to allow such procedures. However, due its dangers it may not be deemed as ethically moral and therefore could be an underground organisation.

I particularly liked the way the recurring motif of the photo strip has been used to show how important she is to him and to link together the past and present. In these three shots, he looks down to the photo and up to the door in the apartment that she passed with the photo in her hand, and cuts to the memory of her in the past standing at the door. The past and the present are separated by the contrast in lighting and colour despite the same location, but it does not seem out of place or too disjointed due to the photo and that the man looks up to the door where she stands. This edit allows us to see what he is imagining and the memories he is being consumed by. 

The second full memory that is revisited develops the original memory of the opening scene, as well as mixing with other memories when the woman seems distressed. It is cleverly edited with the use of special effects so that in one shot, panning back and forth in the room, we are shown three completely different scenarios in different time periods, shown through her different outfits and her significant mood changes between each scenario. Other special effects are used to layer her movements so it looks like she is drifting across the apartment like a ghostly figure. It helps to show that this relationship was not always as perfect as he wants to remember it to be. 

We are again shown another side of this shady world through the meeting at night when the protagonist turns up unexpectedly at an address seen on a piece of paper in the second memory. The low-key lighting again shows that this memory retrieval is even more dangerous than before. However, by recognising him from the photos, there is a sense that despite this underground organisation and the secrecy behind it, there is still a sense of connection and community between the business man and the client, but we do not know what his motives are: he could be persuading him to unlock the memory only to make him more dependent on the service/drug, or he has really witnessed the benefit of storing and viewing these memories, and the reconnection people can make with their loved ones. 

The cinematography is really beautiful in the above scene due to the lens flares in the shots and the return to the theme of the red lights as seen in the other scenes at the memory retrieval building. The set implies that the man who lives in the house is a young adult and is doing these sorts of procedures to get money to support his family as he lives with his mother. He explains how he has the ability to unlock more memories to him, and injects him with presumably some sort of drug to achieve this. In the final memory he can walk outside of the building into the bright open space and talk to his lover, reflecting the sense of freedom that he feels by unlocking the new memory, and the diegetic sound is muted so we are left in suspense, questioning what she said to him and why it was so important. 

The final scene was particularly beautiful as it used more shots and went into greater detail of what happened in the first scene. There is a clear development between the two scenes even though they are one memory, which reflects how this new drug with the injection has really helped to enhance what he remembers. The small details of the things she touches and the way her hair looks and feels is almost tangible. 

I am really keen to take a lot of inspiration from this film as it has similar themes to what I would like to have in my short film. In particular I want to have many shots in close up on the characters with a shallow depth of field, and to use shots that capture everything about a moment to show the significance of the memory to the character- the feeling of someone's hair, the light in their eyes, what they touch before they leave the room. It was nice to see a film where the man is hung up on the girl in a relationship and the woman is the more mysterious character who has moved on or been separated from him, as it is typically the other way around in a lot of other films. 

I also think that the use of the photo strip is a really good way to link all of the scenes together, so I would like to use a photograph or another similar prop to do this in my own film. I think it's a really touching and personal way to show a physical memory. 

It was a really touching way to show that memory is incredibly important to us, and the lengths that people would go to just to relive another memory once again with their loved ones. 

https://vimeo.com/98225249

Cosmic Divide

As part of a mini series that Bertie Gilbert created called 'what's the story here', a collection of very short films in which the viewer is flung into a scenario and has to work out within a few minutes what the plot could be. In this 3 minute short, a young man ends a call with an unknown caller, who through voiceover explains he has not seen in 5 years. At the end of the film, we discover the caller is his twin.

I love these beginning shots as they are so striking and have such a shallow depth of field which means that the lights of the city blur in the background. As the title appears in the background the man walks away out of focus into the blurred lights, showing how he has lost something without the person on the phone. 

The film is made almost entirely through montage editing of the two brothers' lives, except the opening and ending scenes with diegetic sound of the brothers talking. It means that in the short three minutes we have to piece together the locations and the circumstances of the characters, and an exposition and solution can be set up in a short period of time. 

The use of voiceover is particularly important throughout this short film, with the quality edited down to sound like the man was talking on the phone, establishing the position of the person giving the voiceover, whom we presume to be the protagonist, but it is left ambiguous at the end after they meet as to whether it is in fact the protagonist or his twin who is talking. Hints to this are found in the cinematography, most notably the double reflection in the window, which would reflect a dual personality in other circumstances, and the visual imagery of the 'wait' sign signifying the time they have been apart, waiting to see each other again. The man that is outdoors is actually the long lost twin travelling to his brother's apartment, not the brother who we see dial the phone, which is shown through the difference of colour palettes between the interior and exterior locations different costumes. It is concealed by the fact that both twins have the same haircut and therefore makes the ending more of a surprise. 

 

The colour palette of the final scene is much warmer, and after the brother opens the door they are both held in bright light, representing this significant moment in both of their lives. There is still ambiguity as to who called who and why they have been kept apart for so long, so we are kept in suspense until the very end. 

For such a short film I think that the narrative has been developed well as an exposition is clearly set from the start, and there is a cliff-hanger at the end as we question why twins have been kept apart for five years, and we want to know what the brother at the door will say. Though it is beautifully shot and the colour palettes are so bold, I wish there could have been another way to show the characters' situations without a voiceover and the montage editing. In retrospect, it makes sense to use this editing as it actually shows the brothers' different lives without giving too much away, and it it seems that using this format to create this narrative in a short space of time is the best way to go about it. If this were a longer film, the voiceover may not have been needed as more could be represented visually, but for a three minute film it is really well executed.