Pitch/Logline

Oh god, don’t make me think about this ever again. Like I stated earlier, I am completely burned out from this project, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. But here goes… back to the beginning. The very, very beginning.

The moment the reflections project ended, we were tasked with writing a pitch and logline for our films. There was really no buffer time in between. This project started all the way back at the tail end of September, which is so long ago that I’m not convinced it even happened at all.

I’m really good at creating, but I’m not good at starting. I can plow through fine details, but I can never find a starting point. I didn’t really know what to pitch for this film, so I ended up pitching a story based upon my inability to come up with an idea at all. I wrote it in my notes on my phone on the train ride back from my therapist just before class on the day it was due. I presented mine on Friday anyway, so it didn’t really matter, but I did it anyway.

The name I pitched was “Self-Fulfilling”. Well, that was the second name I came up with— I won’t repeat the first on here, even though I much preferred it.

The logline was “A teenage boy finally pulls the massive stick out of his ass, only to realize that he doesn’t know if he even wants it gone at all.” Juvenile, I know. I liked it. It would have looked great on a movie poster.

The pitch I gave is as follows: A teenage boy is a straight A academic honor roll student who is at the top of his game at school. He is hell bent on getting into some prestigious colleges and becomes extremely anxious and a perfectionist while doing his applications. He has his essays all done and his peers all say they’re very very good. But he leaves them all printed and lined up on his desk and looks over them as he edits his drafts. He is high strung and losing sleep and his friend wants to help him relax by going to a downtown festival. The main character is feeling better until he sees a soothsayer booth set up and can’t help but ask if he gets into the colleges. Soothsayer is clearly a meanie and says no, he doesn’t. So the main character is stunned and kind of dazed but doesn’t tell his friend what he learned and tries to enjoy the rest of the day. Meanwhile, his friend tells him immediately what was predicted and it comes true almost instantly, proving the soothsayer legitimate. Upon coming home the main character crumples up his essays and tosses them into the corner of his room. Over the next few weeks, he begins ditching class, underperforming in school, and slacking off to hang out with his friends. He starts being happier as he is no longer weighed down by the effort of doing goddamn anything. When his parents and friends remind him that his applications are due, he freezes up for a minute before eyeing his crumpled up earlier versions and passing them over with a clear regret he tries to ignore. So then he carries on the same way, avoiding anything that reminds him of the whole dilemma. This goes on for a few months. He is finally confronted by his teacher about it and he declares that he’s done trying to do anything. At which point, depressed as all hell, he returns home only to find that he got accepted into the colleges he applied to. At which point his brain explodes, probably not literally, and he can’t sleep all night long. When he gets up and goes to school he is kind of dazed but has found the motivation once more to get his work done. But he still can’t shake the confusion of how the soothsayer was spot on about the friend but somehow got this wrong. They both agree that the more he thinks about it, the less likely he is going to get tonight’s math homework done. And so they agree that sometimes things be weird and it’s not worth dwelling on and they should just move along with what they can. The end.

I should add that I actually wasn’t stressed about my college apps at the time. I hadn’t done them yet, and I wasn’t going to until about two or three weeks from then, but I just needed to find something that I could tie into perfectionism somehow.

Synopsis

I ended up latching onto Ethan Clark’s idea for a film called “The Brothers Dim.” Here’s a synopsis he wrote that is entirely outdated, but it vaguely describes the original plot we had in mind. We were unable to focus specifically on one specific story at this point in time, so the synopsis isn’t very clear. I’ll leave it here, but I’ll just save you some time and advise that you don’t bother reading this.

Acting Scenes

Despite the growing nightmares of the senior narrative project, we did a brief acting unit shortly before it all began. Coming from a vast theatre background, it was really weird having to act for a camera— no more projecting, no more cheating out, and no more having to “throw” your facial expressions. It was shockingly different.

My partner was Dylan Bartlett, who unfortunately left our film not long after. It took me a while to find any good two person scenes to do, surprisingly, but I ended up settling on a scene between Todd and Neil from Dead Poets Society. We didn’t set aside any time to rehearse the acting scene, so when it came time to perform, he didn’t have it memorized too well. Which I really don’t blame him for— but it did mean that I had to switch around the order of the lines every time to try to have it make sense. I sort of forgot to think about acting as a result, but I think it still might have turned out alright. I wasn’t in the best mood at the time, so I didn’t feel amazing about it. but it was definitely interesting editing the 2-camera setup later on.

Dialogue Scenes

Our first real introduction to audio was an exercise where we performed a pre-written dialogue scene between the unspecified characters Robin and Taylor. We were tasked with shooting a master, which shows all the characters in the scene during the conversation and establishes their locations, and singles, which are closeups of the characters, used for their specific dialogue. I was working with Jamil Yeung, Mezi Iroaga, and Katherine Sun on this scene. We were crammed into a tight time frame and recorded the scene in one afternoon. I stayed up until about 3:40 AM editing the scene, which was late for me at the time. It became standard procedure shortly after. Hell, I’m writing this at 1:47 AM right now, and I’m just getting started!

Here’s the scene we ended up with. Pardon the demonic editing at the end; I think Satan seized the reins of my computer.

Lighting Scavenger Hunt

We had a lesson on lighting on a day when I wasn’t here, and then I returned as we were assigned a lighting scavenger hunt, where we had to get a shot using every lighting technique we could. I tried to learn the techniques as we went along, and I did manage to learn a significant amount. Of course, none of this was really used when it came to actually filming. I mostly just learned how to use the bounce light. That’s pretty much it.

Here’s the scavenger hunt. I worked with Aiya Yankovskiy, Kirsten Andrews, and Madi Gubser on this assignment.

Screenplay

Now… back to the grind.

I’m going to have to drop in three different variations of the screenplay, all written using YouMeScript. The first draft of the script was far too long and unfocused. I ended up writing most of it in one night, and by the time I got to the third act I remembered that we never decided on what was actually going to happen there. So it’s clearly BS’d there. I liked a lot of the script, but it ended up being 39 pages long and the class would have fallen asleep during the read through if Alex Beattie and Richard Fukuda hadn’t saved it with their over-the-top performances. This draft was completed on October 17, 2019.

The writing of the second draft was delayed a long time for various unimportant reasons. It was finally completed on December 1, 2019, with extremely noticeable adjustments to the story. The run time was still too long, but the story had been completely rewritten from scratch, with only one or two scenes remaining in their original states. I had to “kill my babies”, as Mr. Taylor said— sacrifice clever jokes and writing for the sake of a feasible story.

Finally, the third and final draft killed almost all my babies, trimming the script down to 20 pages for the first time ever. This draft was completed on January 26, 2020, as it was morphed and adjusted variably after the onset of the filming process. We had to make a bunch of adjustments regarding the time frame and loss of location that we probably should have expected we wouldn’t be able to use. This draft was completed very early in the morning (some time around 3:00 AM, I think) before a film shoot. I didn’t sleep much that night. Here it is.

Shotlist/Lined Script/Breakdown

Now, things began to get really iffy and go downhill for this project around the beginning of December. We divided up the final pre-production duties and I wrote the shotlist over the span of what probably amounted to about 22 hours total. It described each and every shot specifically, as well as the type of shot it was and its respective scene and number, among other various details. It was actually really fun writing this and coming up with the shots. However, this was written for draft 2 of the script— when the script was adjusted over time, I was on a tight schedule and I had to sacrifice any recreation of the shotlist. I tried to adjust it and utilize it for the first three shoots, but quickly gave up and winged it on the next, as that’s just the unfortunate way this project turned out. But regardless, here is the shot list.

Here’s two pictures of the lined script I created using the shot list. This lined script shows exactly where the shots would start and end in the script to give the director an idea of how long to film for and also what shots to do simultaneously to save time. I attempted to remake a lined script for more shoots than I tried to make a shot list for, but I eventually stopped doing that too.

Ethan created a script breakdown that showed all the props, characters, and specific variables throughout the script to keep in mind for filming. I do not know where it is.

Schedule

So, you may have guessed at this point, but a schedule was not really specifically laid out for this film. An attempt was made. But we didn’t get very far. Here’s the first production schedule I tried to make.

At the end of December, I attempted to create a final production schedule. It got really far, and I used it to coordinate scheduling with my actors to know how much time I needed to squeeze in there. The schedule was used for most of the shoots, and I gave up on writing them down after a while. But you can see what I was going for here.

The Final Product

The final product will be uploaded at some point in time.

Also, here’s a picture of the sequence of clips for the rough cut. All video footage is on the top; all audio clips are on the bottom.

Reflection

Okay, so I’m going to be perfectly honest here. I know it’s 2:40 AM right now, but I’ll reflect as best I can. Currently, I have less than one day to edit the rough cut into a final cut, which is something so completely impossible that I don’t know why I’m going to bother trying, but I’m going to bother trying anyway.

This project has been a weird period of my life that I’ll try to forget for a while but I’ll never succeed in doing, and will probably be happy that I didn’t. I’ve acted snarky throughout this page in describing the project, but I never really explained why it went the way it did. I don’t need to get into details, but it wasn’t a smooth ride out.

That being said, I’ve learned a lot. And I know that sounds like a complete 180, but I’ve really truly learned a lot from this project, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity, even if it was a disastrous process. I have a much stronger grasp on this entire process. I only wish I could do this all again, but get it right this time— and I’m considering doing so for my Zenith project. I managed to learn a hell of a lot about how to actually use a camera efficiently, and figured out how to effectively film using equipment such as the slider, boom microphone, boom pole, and my favorite beast, the Steadicam. I wish I had more time to spend with the Steadicam. I finally gained respect for proper lighting conditions, even if I only messed with the reflector to create any special lighting. And I learned that if I have everything I need, I can actually make a damn good shot. And I wish I could have done more for this film here.

I’ve lost many, many hours of sleep to this project. I’ve missed many days of class due to sleep deprivation or flailing mental health conditions. I’ve been driven to the brink of unbridled insanity and back again. I’ve glimpsed everything I’m capable of and tried my best to capture what it is. And I’ve come to find that there’s a lot more there than I ever considered. I’ve failed, and that’s the only way to ever grow.

There are many things I’d like to do with my future. And I’d like to get to them as soon as possible. This film was a great learning point and hurdle in my path, and given the cards I was dealt, I’m damn proud of what I have done. In fact, I’d be surprised to see anyone try and do better. Given that I was about ready to throw away this entire project some time in December, drenched in exhaustion and completely overwhelmed and sickened by this whole fiasco, I’d say I did a pretty good job of clinging on and making it to the end. In a little over a day, it will be over. I’m ready to move on.

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