Thursday, April 26, 2007

in·vert
verb (used with object)
1.to turn upside down.
2.to reverse in position, order, direction, or relationship.
3.to turn or change to the opposite or contrary, as in nature, bearing, or effect: to invert a process.
4.to turn inward or back upon itself.
5.to turn inside out.
6.Chemistry. to subject to inversion.
7.Music. to subject to musical inversion.
8.Phonetics. to articulate as a retroflex vowel.
–verb (used without object)
9.Chemistry. to become inverted.
–adjective
10.Chemistry. subjected to inversion.
–noun
11.a person or thing that is inverted.

("invert" Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 26 Apr. 2007)

Decisions, Decisions

I'm supposed to shoot tomorrow. I have no actor. I have a crew of two, including myself.

That's what I have against me.

For me, I have a solid array of equipment. I have a soundstage (DXARTS' Fremont studio). And I have a pretty damn good idea.

I also have a ton of storyboards. Which brings me to now. I'm still boarding out my shots. I have 22 shots as of right now. I have four shots left to parse (iow, fill the 'tweens of the keyframes). And I'm stuck.

I'm not sure how to get from the guy climbing up the wall, to him leaping up to the ceiling. I'm really not. It's too sudden for it to occur right away. There has to be some logical bridge between the two. But not something throw away-able. Something that furthers the story.

So what's left to tell?

Conflict?

This would be a good place to start foreshadowing the end...But the foreshadowing can't come out of nowhere either. Foreshadowing needs to be foreshadowed.

Foreshadow 1: His wet hand in f/g as he fully opens his eye.

Foreshadow 2: (Now) When he goes up the wall, before he walks out of frame, we stay on the dark again.

Foreshadow 3: Reverse OTS as he reaches for the pool, transfixed.

End: Sits up into black, walks out of frame, leaving us to linger on black.

In the darkness, there is room, it is open. At the apex, there is only water and a reflection. A cramped space. Is his curse that he only travels toward the light?

Should the final shot be the darkness?

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Qualitative Distractions

I've been...not procrastinating...but avoidant on this project because of one simple reason: it frightens me. The sheer scope of what's involved in realizing the vision I have for this thing is daunting.

I'm daunted.

I've gotten some good support from my instructor and several classmates who are game to allow our mutually chromagreen sets to commingle, so I feel better now. But I still feel as if I haven't actually done a whole helluva lot on this thing. Part of it might be that after six months of three-week turnarounds on increasingly demanding projects, it feels terribly awkward to not be maintaining that same level of corporeal intensity.

The other part of it is that I'm finally, at long last trying to get my general studies degree off the ground at the UW, and it has been occupying most of my time at the beginning of this quarter. I got it approved by the board last week, and now tonight I put together one of two cover letters for the professors I have to obtain sponsorships from. It's stressful, to say the least. No blanket security of set benchmarks for progress, no assurance of acceptance due to my wildly variant academic record. I don't think either of them will be able to question my passion for cinema media. But there is the little matter of academic formalism. The very world implies formalism. Academic. Academia. I wouldn't blame Shawn for not wanting to attach his name to a student who has a 0-point-fucking-0 on his transcript. Shit, that's what...a whole 3.3 GPA points lower than my lowest grade in high school? And a whole 2.4 less than my next lowest grade in college (which still is a shitty grade though)? Even though I'm planning on retaking the class, I'm still frightened to death that I won't do much better the second time around. I really do not have the discipline, patience, or attention span for programming--and that class not only revealed my weaknesses, it assraped the chinks in my rusty armor with a lance whose splinters only grow more painful by the day with pussy infection.

Nice metaphor.

Back to the topic at hand: in the next few days, I'm going to be completely boarding out my film, creating a storyreel, breaking down my shots into components, casting, crewing, equiping, planning, doubting, re-planning, crying, and finally, hopefully arriving at a gameplan that falls between the sometimes exclusive realms of possiblity and quality.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Storyboards for the Untitled







Apex of the series

I have been procrastinating on posting information here for the last two weeks. It doesn't help that a notebook is more convenient for ideas than a blog, but I'll do my best.

I am about to commence work on sketching up my key storyboards for the capstone piece I'm working on, those will be on here later, but first I wanted to take a few minutes and formally stretch my concept. Get in the game, so to speak.

Let me start by recapping the concept: there is a pyramid that exists Somewhere. This pyramid is hollow and the interior of each of it's four "walls" is really a Plane. Each Plane is a locus of special gravity. That is, a field of gravity is unique to each Plane. So essentially each Plane can be "down", "up", "right wall" or "left wall", depending upon which plane a person is standing on.

Such a person, in the form of a man--no offense, but I'm a man and it's easy to stay writing about the same sex--lands on one of the planes near the base of the pyramid as the short film begins. The "story" being told is of this man as he "walks" up the plane, toward the apex.

Speaking of which, the apex itself is obscured by the intensity of the white light that emanates from it. The interior of the pyramid is grayish-white: the further from the apex, the darker the shades of gray are, until they eventually crush into black; the closer to the apex, the brighter the shades of gray are until they eventually blow-out into impenetrable white.

Now this will not just be a monotonous "walk" in an obscure environment. The "conflict" of the piece is that as the planes of gravity converge toward the apex, narrowing as they do, their locuses of gravity begin to exert more of an influence upon the subjects of the other planes. As the protagonist goes along further, first his hair, then whatever clothing he has, and ultimately his body itself begin to be pulled toward the different planes. He is also able to first walk then jump to adjoining planes and, eventually, is able to leap "up" and land on the "ceiling" so to speak, which then becomes "the floor" making the initial "floor" now the "ceiling."

He ultimately reaches the top, attains enlightment, reaches the pearly gates, etc. but as he--and we--find out, nothing is quite as simple as that.