Creative Brief:
Background:
My story mainly revolves around three main ideas. Firstly, the idea of one feeling burdened by guilt and depression, second being how much one’s decision-making ability is altered by the first, and third being the possibility of irony in the whole situation, and to what extent it changes things.
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My film is a study of a small part of the human mind, which controls emotions like fear, guilt, depression, sorrow, etc. Through this film I would like to explore the conditions in the mind, which drive people to extremes. A part of my film is based on true events from my life that I have experienced in the recent past, and other instances are pure fiction. The idea behind using such a topic is to find out what leads to one’s depression, and what other possible emotions or instances can alter the degree of this depression and therefore lead to a certain decision, one that might even be totally ironic to the depression itself.
Log Line:
A guilt-struck guy, who is on the verge of ending his life, confronts his worst nightmare in a day-dream.
The story starts with a guy on top of a building who is about to kill himself. He closes his eyes, and sees a day-dream. It is hard to realize that he is day-dreaming in the early segment of the dream because it starts with him waking up, and the surroundings look more real. He wakes up and sees a message on his phone that gives the audience a clear idea that he has done something wrong to someone. As the dream follows, events occur which are, his worst nightmares coming true, all because of the burden of guilt on him. All these events reach a peak where he is frightened to the core and closes his eyes tightly.
When he opens them next, he is back on the building. Here the audience realizes that what they saw till now was a dream, and reality is him being on top of the building. He is about to throw himself off, when certain events occur which alter his decision-making.
Motivation:
The story of my film, like I mentioned earlier, is based partly on true events. These incidents have had a significant effect on my life, and the way I deal with things. Of course, these incidents did not lead me to do things that are often referred to as rash, extreme, or radical. I have self-control.
But many people don’t.
Many people suffer from things that I have suffered. Difference is that to them, clarity is just something else. When they are in that moment, they love nothing. And they hate nothing, either. They feel most alienated from everything around them. This leads to extreme steps.
I have wanted to find out, what differentiates us. Why am I clear in my head and more controlled, and why can those others not feel the same way.
My study began as reading about the human mind and how it controls our actions. I read the scientific side of it, trying to figure out what alters the brain activity so radically that rash decisions are taken.
I have always been motivated by sadness. Depression, guilt, etc, have become tools and methods, in a way, to pour out thoughts and ideas.
I decided to take these events that have happened with me, and put them in a character that is not like me, and then study the character and create a scenario that leads him beyond sanity. I decided to create situations given to him that were not given to me, so as to see what would still lead him to take extreme actions, and how the irony of it all would come into play.
I had decided. I am going to make a film about a ‘me’, who is more insane, more morbid, and has more options.
Research Questions:
Some of the questions that have been in my head stem from one main question that I have been trying to find an answer for –Why is it that I am always writing about anything and everything that is not happy? Why are all my stories and thoughts put down on paper about some kind of sadness? Why can I not write happy stories?
The idea of depression, or guilt, and similar other emotions have been of great interest to me. Sometimes I think why there cannot be any other emotion but guilt or depression, why can’t I feel absolutely nothing instead of feeling guilty or depressed?
This project and the questions for which I was finding answers, were mostly divided like this –
What makes me love the idea of something morbid or sad or depressing? Why am I, as an otherwise happy person, so attracted to such emotions?
Why do we feel guilty and what is it in our mind that triggers off the very emotion of guilt or any related emotion?
What role does the brain play in triggering off these emotions? What are those circuits in the body that are activated by situations leading to such emotions, and how do they get activated? (I looked at the scientific side of it, wondering if there could be something that can change in our brain to make a person happier instead of any kind of sad.
Some other things that I thought of when I was just in the initial stage of my story, were –
Why am I doing this story, when I have heard a lot about how my stories are always like this? Isn’t this dangerous? And wouldn’t it be labeled as a comfort zone of some kind?
But then I realized, that this story, is more of me trying to go deeper, than sticking to a comfort zone, because, I still feel this is a vast subject, and I hardly have studied it. Therefore through this film, I am trying to explore the area of guilt and depression as pure emotions, and why and how one’s decision-making abilities are altered by those emotions.
The technique I will be using to do this film will also define and differentiate the dream from reality, and so it will play a key role.
My research on the technique I use will be determined by how I can keep the reality in the film as close to the reality my character sees and feels. I will also be trying out a different technique for the dream bit, still keeping the character real, to show the surreal feeling of a dream, and therefore keeping the dream his own, and not a generalized idea of a dream.
What my character goes through in my film is really described by the visual treatment of the reality section and the dream section. The treatment and visual style is presented below.
Treatment:
Visual Style:
The film has two aspects to it. One is as close to real as can be, and the other, is a dream.
The technique I will be using for the character and for the reality scenes is called Rotoscoping. The reason for me to use this technique is to keep reality as real as possible, yet, have my own style and exploration for the character define the idea of his own reality according to his mind’s condition.
I will be giving a dark, hazy feeling to the reality bits, to ensure that the character’s sadness is portrayed. It will either be monochromatic, or grayscale.
The dream bit of the film will have the character rendered as he is in the reality section, but his surroundings here will be different. I plan to use colors, extreme perspective, and strong lighting to enhance the essence of the dream, and to make it look surreal and magnified in a way.
Sound:
Sound in my film will itself have a narrative because it will be all about conversations on the phone. I plan to record all the dialogues as phone conversations. So basically everything will be recorded from a phone. The soundscape will also consist of pre-recorded messages that we get, such as the ‘number busy’ message, the ‘phone switched off’ message, etc. which will altogether drive the story forward in terms of dialogue and voice-overs at some instances.
There will be hardly any music in the film, and whatever there is will be provided by strings or piano or a guitar.
References and Inspiration:
Films: Stranger Than Fiction – Marc Forster
The Machinist – Brad Anderson
Requiem for a Dream – Darren Aronofsky
Wristcutters – A Love Story – Goran Dukic
Karthik Calling Karthik – Vijay Lalwani
Fears of the Dark – Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattoti, Richard McGuire
Shutter Island – Martin Scorsese
Edward Scissorhands – Tim Burton
Vincent – Tim Burton
Control – a film about Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division.
Dead Man – Jim Jarmusch
Books: The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
No One Here Gets Out Alive – Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman
Into The Wild – Jon Krakauer
Blankets – Craig Thompson
Moonward – Appupen
Music:
The Doors
Joy Division
Learning Outcomes:
1. To study, explore and portray human emotions in terms of a visual form, by using the platform of dreams and surreal situations in combination with reality. This will include understanding and therefore portraying the feeling of the character’s guilt and depression, why he would want to kill himself, and what makes his day-dream a deciding factor to do so, therefore drawing out a comparison between his dreams and reality.
2. To explore a visual style which will be able to achieve appropriate visual quality that is required in the story to portray a person’s day-dream, and even portray reality as we know it and the reality at that moment that the character sees. This will include choosing appropriate camera angles, perspective(in dream sequence), handling character vs. his surroundings (both in dream sequence and reality), and choosing a color scheme(palette) that would make differentiate between the two scenarios perfectly, and still hold the viewer’s attention till the end.
3. To be able to work with sound and create a sound-scape that within itself, is a narrative, independent of its visual format, and therefore adds even more to the concept of dreams and perception of reality.
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