As part of Unit 11 we are undertaking a film project in collaboration with the drama students. We were given a choice of 4 scripts/poems with which to base our film upon and told to come up with a creative and imaginative story.
Option 1 – Script 1
This is quite a dark script focusing on a conversation between ‘Person A’ and a voice. I liked how some of the ideas and themes in this script are quite abstract and would leave a lot of room to build on various metaphors such as when it mentions running from monsters and a sea of yellow people surrounding them.
As a group we discussed a few ideas, the most prominent revolving around the idea of schizophrenia. If we decided to follow this idea I imagine that the story would take place inside ‘Person A’s’ head, conversing with this ominous voice. The film it’s self would of concentrated on the visuals that could be drawn from the script and/or character.
Option 2 – Poem
This is another relatively dark piece of work and talks about the idea of there being ‘real’ and ‘fake’ people. The general consensus for this piece of work was to create a film based around the idea of an individual standing out from the crowd and how some peoples lives can run almost like clock work.
These then developed, leaving us with the idea of focusing on the differences between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ people. We talked about having a family of doll like characters with the exception of an edgy teenager to represent this. We also discussed setting the film around a kitchen/dinning room environment in order to try and create a fake 60s porcelain feel. The porcelain members of the family would be going about their morning in a robotic almost abstract way until this is interrupted by the arrival of the ‘odd’ member of the family who would break the image of the fake family by interacting with very contemporary movements.
This is the idea and ‘Script’ that we are currently considering undertaking.
Option 3 – Song
This song seems to centre around the idea of the imaginary boundaries we put up to separate people depending on their religion, where their from and their possessions. I think this one would be good to focus on visuals and symbology with to represent the themes of the song.
An idea we had for this piece was based upon a form of protest. We thought about featuring a selection of story strands that we could use to depict the variety and individuality of peoples lives depending on their background.We would then converge these strands to the climax of the film where they would all be attending the same protest in an effort to highlight a theme of the song; bringing everyone together regardless of backgrounds to share the same world.
Option 4 – Script 2
This is a script featuring a single character set at the entrance to a mansion. We struggled a little more to generate ideas for this one but we were tending to focus around the idea of addiction or some kind of connection.
A rough idea we had was based around someones dependence and love of Pot Noodles. We thought about starting off quite dark, trying to show the negatives of addiction and how it effects somebody to then finish with a comedic reveal of their dependence on Pot Noodles.
Chosen Idea
As a group we have decided to use the poem as our inspiration for our film and to use the idea we had of a doll like family to represent the differences between fake and real. This was a fairly easy decision as everyone was on board with and motivated by the idea.
I think this was a good idea to choose as there is plenty of room to experiment and try new things. A big part of this film will be set and costume design in order to achieve the 60s doll like feel that we want. We also talked about including some choreography of the dolls moving to a classic style piece such as ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ to further solidify the theme of fake and porcelain.
Other versions/developed chosen idea
Another idea we had when discussing other ways of presenting the theme of doll like or real/fake people was based upon someone getting ready for their day. The film would begin with them getting up to go and start their day but the process of them getting ready would involve them ‘Dolling’ themselves up and creating a fake image of themselves. They would then exit into the world to revile that everyone has this approach of creating a front to hide behind.
One other idea we had involved people using dolls as a way to interact in the world. For example a character might walk into a coffee shop carrying their doll then place it down alongside other peoples dolls. The dolls would then be the ones that interacted with each other, communing and drinking coffee rather than the real people. This idea was again based on how people create a fake image of themselves to present to other people and the world.
Finally we talked about an idea to further explore the differences between a broken and fake world. The film would feature a young child playing with their doll house in order to escape from the real world. Their family and house would be shown in a dark and negative light in order to contrast with the bright and vibrant world inside the doll house where they had created their idea of a perfect happy family.
Matthew Tucker 