Our next group project is making a short film. We brainstormed our ideas and put ourselves into groups depending on which idea we wanted to use and after some deliberation I joined with James and Ant. We decided to do a short psychological thriller piece entitled So It Goes, following the last few days of a schizophrenic man's life through his own journal entries, found by a mysterious woman who seems to be obsessed with finding out about this man for reasons we only find out at the end.
It took us a while to get all the details of the plot and storyline down, since we started with a much simpler idea but have since modified it to try to make it more original and avoid the trap of predictability. We decided after speaking with Mike that if we only made it centred on the man, it would follow a storyline that's been done many times over. By introducing the mysterious woman though and making the film mainly about her and why she's trying to find out about this man's life, we hope to put a twist on the plot and make an original, interesting and thought-provoking short film (full details of plot, proposal and treatment can be found in the PowerPoint presentation in the blog about our pitch at PaintWorks Studios).
When we spoke with Mike the first time about our idea, he suggested we go by an acronym used in script writing: CDOG. He said that we need four elements to make a good storyline: we need a Character, there needs to be a Desire, there then needs to be an Obstacle to them getting that desire and finally there needs to be a resolution, reaching the Goal. This helped us in forming our storyline below:
Character - We decided to put a twist on the story and instead of the man who is narrating the piece be the main character, make it the mysterious woman seen in the beginning of the film.
Desire - This character's main desire, that we only realise at the end, is to try to find out what is wrong with her mentally by following the footsteps of the man she suspects has the same mental condition.
Obstacle - The obstacle will be that as soon as she realises that there is someone else that is suffering from the same symptoms that could be able to help her, she starts following him attempting to find a way to approach him. However, she loses him in the city and finds out later about his death by reading about it in a newspaper. This shatters her hopes of finding out what it could have been they both shared in common, but she is determined to still find out all she can - hence the obsessive collecting of anything to do with him we see scattered across her desk in the title sequence of the film.
Goal - After stumbling across his diary of his last few days before his death, she finally realises after reading the last page that he had a split personality - and leaves with a newfound hope realising that this is the condition she had as well, knowing that now she can finally get help for it now that the mystery is put to rest.
We would like to shoot this film in a style influenced largely by a music video shot to a song by the band The National, called Daughters of the SoHo Riots:
We would like to film the main part of the film which takes place in the past through the man's narration in black and white as shown above, using specific lighting to highlight certain areas and black out others. We want to emphasise the contrast of his different personalities by using high contrast in the filming and make use of silhouette lighting as much as possible.
Timeline -
Proposal and treatment for group video project 22/01/10
Pitch for group video project 02/02/10 at Paintworks
Complete peer assessment of group projects 23/04/10
Complete group projects 04/05/10
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