Rhea caught a case

Not of Coronavirus, but she said she got sick on Thursday so she didn't come to class. A part of me was questioning whether she was sick or whether she caught a case of senioritis. But alas, I should be trusting in her process and believing that she did fall under the weather. She did miss quite an important class. Today we sat as one big group and had an intervention for one of the students...

Ok we didn't have an intervention but we met as a collective group and discussed the concepts we had for our portfolio projects. Everyone pitched their ideas and we helped our peers flesh out their ideas and get a more concrete concept for their stories.

As for me, I got the chance to get some more ideas to flesh out my film. Stoklosa brought up a concept I will definitely explore more and look into. When I had brought up the more positive spin on the short film with the loop she talked about the idea of a character that is used to the loop and always lives their life like that. Then the character gets thrown out of the loop and they struggle as they try to get back into it. After hearing that I had really liked the concept so now I am searching for a way to try to pull off the idea. I shall report back once I have found more. Have a great day!!!

A schedule has been crafted

Ah yes after trying to sort through Rhea and I's hectic schedule we finally came up with a draft for one.

So the schedule is everything in the beige purple-ish color. Now our biggest issue... You see that schedule? Wow. I mean wow. We both have so much to do. Like I had talked about before, Rhea and I are both part of Cypress Bay television, a club we have here at our school, and she is the president and I am the equipment manager. The biggest issue we are having is finding time between balancing TV and media. We also have a big trip to Washington DC coming up so where it says, "STN," on that calendar, we are gone and not in Florida at all.

So it's a little difficult to see but each event on the calendar is a landmark for something we should have done or need to get done that day, and of course since it's me I'm going to put my spin on it and title events with names like, "please PLEASE film," and, "rhea gone god help me." They embody my energy of stress and hoping that we can manage our time properly and have everything done. That's all for today... Have a good one!

Brain storms and Burritos

No I’m not referring to the iconic film, Sharkboy and Lavagirl.




Although this does make me hungry for The Land of Milk and Cookies...





But, two weeks ago my partner Rhea and I, began to brainstorm ideas for our short film. The adventure began at Chipotle as we left 4th hour to delve into what concepts we could conceive there. As I munched on my burrito I opened up the note in my phone with all my miscellaneous ideas for stories that come to mind. Some of the idea that came up were synesthesia, which is a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia puts objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people's names with a sensory perception such as smell, color or flavor.


Another idea we were thinking of is this concept I had for a film playing with the theme, “ignorance is bliss.” In that film you would see a character who’s really smart slowly lose his intelligence and become happier with his life and start to enjoy the little things even more.


Today we ventured out and went to get some sandwiches 🥪 from the one and only Jersey Mike’s Subs (also my place of work). We discussed more ideas that I had considered and come up with recently. In all honesty I don’t know how these ideas just pop into my head it just happens. But let me show you what we did.





I swear I’m not crazy. I don’t need to go to an asylum. These are actually sketches of timelines. Yeah I know you're lookin at them now and wondering what the hell I think of but the main concept we were trying to stick to to portray in our short film is the alternative narrative. I have always loved that idea (like I talked about in my last blog post) and I wanted to pursue it for the film. So the first timeline is the most simple and it’s the one I used to explain the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.





I told her how the film is structured (and sadly spoiled it but she was ok with that) and how genius I thought Kaufman was. So each number on the timeline represents the order of events and how the movie presents it.


The next timeline is how we were thinking of structuring a film that loops.





So the loop would be presented as a plot loop. The concept (in short) was a guy sees someone sneaking into his house. He kills that guy and then goes on with his day and then when he comes home at night he forgets his keys and sneaks in and then he gets killed by his younger self. Something along those lines. That is the simple version of the story and I have a much much more complex version that I’ll discuss in another post.





As for the timeline above, that basic story is one of someone who is also stuck in a loop. It’s a similar story of a guy kills someone at the start but the idea is that the guy actually liked the feeling. As he slowly drifts into insanity (that’s why the colors coordinate) he contemplates whether to kill again. The red is his lowest point when he goes to kill someone again but when he tries he gets killed. By a younger version of himself. So he’s constantly in a loop.


We also started to think that most stories presented in the form of a loop are always negative so what would be a positive version we could explore. We couldn’t think of many ideas for that one though but it’s part of our list of options.


For the final idea, the timeline for ignorance is bliss.





So for this one the way it’s staggered like that is cause it is a mix of his previous events in his life coming into his current events. It’s weird and would be easier if I explain it in person, which I might do in a vlog style video.


But yeah those are the concepts we are thinking of. I’ll talk more when we get more into deciding which one.

KAUFMAN HOW DID YOU DO IT????

sO...

Alternative Narratives...

By far my favorite structure for films. So I looked to see what films did the best versions of that, so that Rhea and I could find out how we were going to structure our short film.

My first and favorite film of all time

The one and only Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Written by one Mr. Charlie Kaufman, the film is the embodiment of the alternative narrative, throwing their viewer for a loop with every scene. Just when you think you've figured it all out and had you're, "AH HA," moment, they throw you back around and make you question it all. When I was pondering how Kaufman had structured the piece I thought it was going to be extremely disjointed and chaotic but the film is just in reverse. What confuses the viewer is the aspect that Clementine is being erased, so then the story gets extravagant. 

The next piece I looked at was Love Death and Robots

The 24 episode anthology series is the perfect show to look at is I want some inspiration for a short film. Each episode is only an estimated 10-20 minutes in length. But the perfect episode to look at for what I wanted to create is, "The Witness." The plot is the perfect loop and is a concept I had wanted to explore for a while. In short the episode start by watching a man kill this girl. From the building across you see the another girl watching him. He notices and chases after her to kill her. But when they finally catch up with each other the girl goes and kills him. Then she looks out the window to the building next to her where the man is watching her do that. One seamless loop. So I wanted to Maybe take a look a concept like that.

Anyway that's all for today. Rhea and I will be meeting tomorrow to discuss more story ideas. Have a good day!

Meet Me My Mate

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