The second year of university has begun, and my strand choice for semester 1 is Drama. Over the last week we have been given exercises about how to tell story and to develop character.
At the end of last week we were given a character development exercise, in which we had to come up with a characters: name, age, want, and why they can't have it. We had to base it on what was written on a sheet of paper we picked at random. The one I picked was "her secret obsession". I came up with a couple of idea's, the first being a woman who sleeps with any famous person she meets because she wants to be married to a wealthy man, but she can't have it because she makes herself to easy and does not respect herself.
The other idea was someone obsessed with Leonardo Dicaprio and how he has never won an OSCAR (basically taking a play on the internet trend)and wants him to win one but can't as the academy awards never give certain actors Oscars.
I woke up today, when the assignment was due to hand in, and taking into consideration that this character may be enforcing the two minute piece, I decided to scrap the two ideas with the former being to complex to tell in 2 minutes and the latter just being silly. So, I then formulated a fresh idea, and just thought about what woman obsess over. My first thoughts were jewellery, and I drew necklace from that. My basic reason for the woman not being able to get the necklace was that it was to expensive. I then thought about how I could raise the steaks and why she wanted this particular necklace. From that came the idea of the necklace being a family heirloom that was stolen from her grandmother. Obviously antiques can go for a high price, so it made sense for me to have it sold at an auction. Looking back at the sheet of paper picked at random, only one more question needed answering...why a secret obsession?
Thinking it through I decided that this antique is a necklace with pearls and inside these pearls are hidden diamonds. In hindsight the original owner could have had the maker hide the diamonds as the family was going broke, and passed the secret to each descendent, over which time the secret was lost. Obviously with todays access to internet, my protagonist could have found this secret out online, and because she hates working, it heightens her need to get the money for this necklace, so she can own the diamonds.
We got into our production groups today and I am now currently in a group with: Marcus Owramenko, Kieran Woodhall and Bryony Rogers. As cinematography is my strand choice for this semester that was the role I instantly brought up. Marcus opted for director, whereas Bryony and Kieran are currently debating over who will be editor. We put together our ideas, and decided to go with a mixture and create this dark 20-23 year old woman who is feeling isolated and alone as our piece for the two minute project, and have come up with a concept that she is ignoring phone calls and is either waiting for this certain person to call her, (who in turn has no intention of doing so), or we go down this route that she's so alone that she has become scitsophrenic and has resorted to calling herself off a mobile at home.
We seem to be leaning mainly towards the scitsophrenic idea, and have been discussing ways to shoot it. I have suggested cold chlostraphobic lighting, and a lot of emphasis needs to be on the face. We also agreed that little sound will be needed to tell this feeling of loneliness and that the phone would be a dominant sound.
However, Marcus seems to favour a horror style, single shot piece with lots of music as a soundtrack, he is the director so I am not going to cancel out his vision, however I have said I want to show what I can do cinematography wise and while this singular shot he has in mind (phone on table, actress walks in the walks off after phone call) is good, I have made it clear that I prefer it as a recurring shot rather than a singular. And the fact we pretty much agreed in session to have almost no sound, he puts forward the idea of music. It may work, but I am worried that he is losing touch with the brief when it says focus on the emotion clearly, and I think he is doing to much thinking for it, and the fact that he's strongly hinting that he wants me to use his camera, I get the impression he's scared to try something he's not comfortable with. I like his creative vision and ideas he seems really adventurous, but I'm hoping it doesn't turn into him running away with his own ideas and forgetting to incorporate with rest of the group.
I have set up a Facebook group for us, and the plan is to meet and discuss ideas over the weekend into how to portray the emotion.in the meantime I personally will go away and look at examples of cinematography demonstrating someone's feeling of isolation and loneliness, as well as looking at scenes with phones that demonstrate the emotions as well as fear. I will bring these up when contemplation on how to shoot the film.
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