Story development and meeting with Directors #8

Saturday 14th November

MEETING WITH DIRECTORS (RODRIGO, VICTORIA AND LEAH)

As I'm assisting in driving the narrative, Vicky and I arranged a meeting with Rodrigo and Leah to try and pull the story apart more and make sense of it; try and find a clear structure. I met with Vicky first, as I knew that she had a potential idea for the narrative and so did I. We thought it would be best to have a brief discussion just with two of us to be completely honest with each others ideas before we were to discuss them with the other directors; basically cut out rough edges and finalise before the proper meeting to try and get things moving quicker.

Rodrigo then joined the call. Vicky asked him if he'd had any further ideas about the narrative. He started by saying how he liked the opening concept of the bulb; having our protagonist examine the light as the first thing he does when he enters the room. The character will first go towards right side of the brain. Doesn't think it's important to know who the character really is as he represents all of us (I'm not sure i agree). The character then passes over to the logical side. He find letters and stamps, old counting devices. Interesting to go towards the creative side first and then going to the forced side, the logical one. That's where he can find the mirror. Regardless of what the lighting would be, it would be clearer from the narrative perspective to go from side to side.

I put my idea forward as i believed that it started to resolve the issue of no beginning, middle or end. I felt like this had a progressive structure:

We need a sense of who our protagonist is and what happened to make him enter his mind so deeply. Why does he need to explore it? I had the idea of making use of the brief that states we can use up to 5 words of dialogue. We begin with a close up of a man's face; clearly distressed. He looks into the camera and says "I'm losing my mind" (4 out of the 5 words). He then closes his eyes firmly; in a bid to remember something. We cut to the camera panning up in a first person perspective to reveal a building within the middle of a dark void; light pouring from the window. We walk towards the house, peer into the window, then enter. A room filled with strange objects from his past. He starts to piece these things together; picking things up and placing them elsewhere in an effort to try and piece the puzzle together. We still have the objects and lights reacting to what he's doing and sounds being emitted from each one he touches. We see a shadow enter the shot. This shadow represents him watching himself. The shadow almost represents an out-of-body experience; him watching himself in an out-of-body form. We then end with a close up back on the man, who opens his eyes and either smiles or looks more distressed than before. It's then up to the audience to decide what has happened or what exactly it was that he was trying to piece together but maybe couldn't. 

Do we still have projections on the outside of the house? Do we still include shadows moving on the interior or will it be too much? 

Rodrigo mentioned shadow work and having him actually interacting with the shadow. I was intrigued by this idea so I looked up the official definition of shadow work:

Vicky's idea was that maybe our protagonist could be involved in a car crash and he enters a coma. That's what brings him into his mind. We can then play a lot with lights and sounds; siren lights and noises for example. I really liked this idea so we mentioned it to Rodrigo. He liked it but we kept discussions open and explored other avenues as well.

Rodrigo put forward the idea of different dialogue: "so you've finally found me?" This will be from the shadow's perspective if we were to have the two interact. We have a voice over of the shadow (that we can't see at this point) while the camera is on the man. I like this idea but i feel like it maybe confuses things a bit too much.

Rodrigo still wants the mirror smash and likes the choreography of him navigating the room and the objects.

However, our character still needs a motive.

Drug overdose? We could see him at his most vulnerable, taking a drug such as heroin then entering his mind. Rodrigo suggests that he still goes about smashing things but leah mentioned meditation. I took from that idea and suggested maybe we show two ends of the extreme. We have him chaotic and manic at the beginning with the overdose but when he enters his mind, it's more calming. Maybe when he goes into his mind, it's more meditative. It's a cleanse. He goes into to compartmentalise his mind, as he wants to get out of the loop of taking drugs. 

Leah mentioned how maybe an overdose is too dark. I agree with her to a certain extent but then i mentioned how the majority of the film would be positive as it would show our character trying to change by organising his mind.

Rodrigo suggested that maybe he cleans up one side of the room but trashes the other depending on which side of the brain they represent. Cleaning up stuff that hurts him/ the stuff that he doesn't like?

Try to organise objects in a really peculiar way/ like a Tetris game/OCD.

Leah asked if we could describe the story and we couldn't.

Who is the man? Why is he going into the room? What is the quest? 

Middle aged man. Will we hire a middle aged man or will we just use a uni student? As students, we have so much going on in our minds. But then it makes it seem more like a student film. 

Maybe the man is a failed musician/accountant- very loose narrative. Based on objects in the room. Feels a bit random. 

I feel like we were all openly discussing and that was a positive but in all honesty, i feel like solutions were put forward but they weren't necessarily directly listened to. We need the man to have a motive, which he still does not. An overdose probably isn't the best solution and i think we all know that, we just need something to guide his exploration through his own mind.

Vicky suggested that we each go away and brainstorm our own ideas to make it more coherent and then come back together in a few days. We all agreed that would be best.

We need to go A, B, C, D story wise.

Felt like we went round in circles. The mirror idea needs some work and i don't feel like we should still smash up the set in the end. The art department for one don't agree with that idea. We see why the idea is there but i feel like we can do better ending wise. Rodrigo has many brilliant ideas but i feel like we can guide them to a more cohesive end. All directors and I are more or less on the same page but i feel like we need this time to write our separate visions down and them try and piece them all together and also dissect them.