A Blueprint for Our Story: The Rework

     So, previously in one of my post I talked about my storyboard and the general idea of what me and my group are going to do. However, we decided as a group to rework certain things, like the interaction between Asher and Austin, as well as, the second scene that shows Asher several days before the incident.

Original

    Here I want to compare our previous storyboard to the newly made one. On this first page of the original storyboard we have don't really have an establishing shot that gives us an idea of where these characters are at. It also gives in to a very cliche interaction between Asher and Austin, which doesn't really introduce us to who both of these characters are. Another thing is the lack of detail between different shots that does not help develop these two characters. 

    Because of these issues, we decided in adding an establishing shot in order to give the audience context on where our characters are located. Another thing we change compared to before was to make Asher sit down and do work instead of walking, so the scene feels more believable, where as Asher just walking around doing work would seem unrealistic even for someone as smart as him. Then, we thought about how Austin would interact with Asher by thinking of a way to avoid Austin bumping into Asher; this is where we thought that since Asher is already doing their work Austin should sneak up on him and talk a little bit and then attempt to take away Ashers work. 

Rework

    Now, for the second page of the storyboard is where Asher gets to his tipping point and decides to kill Austin with his pencil. Not much changed for this part except, honestly, the how Austin provokes Asher, since we felt it was pretty tame beforehand. Also, we felt that there was not much attention to the weapon in the first storyboard as in the second we focused more it. Something that our group got suggested to do, which we thought was great, was to add a shot where Asher is sharpening the pencil in order to have the best shot at killing Austin and to develop Asher's messed up character.

Original

Rework

    For our third page of the storyboard, this is where things start to become a bit more developed compared to before. In the original we cut to a black screen that comes in place as Austin gets killed. Then shot cuts to the evil eyes of Asher that are followed up into a match cut to Asher's eyes but several days prior to the incident, which pretty much sums up the page. 

Original

    In the reworked version we show Asher jumping towards Austin, into the black screen which is also the title card, into a medium shot of Asher's back facing the floor, to a shot of Asher's bloody pencil, which then finally cuts into the shot with Asher's eyes to the match cut. Overall, I feel that this creates a bit more understanding for us as a production team and also it develops more meaning into the story for the audience. 

    

Rework

    In addition to all of the different things we changed, we also added the second scene of the film that wasn't even started in the original storyboard. In this scene we begin with the eyes of Asher from the match cut, which then zooms out of his eyes into a tracking shot of Asher walking into his house, to his room. This scene is meant to work as a look into Asher's personal life, that describes a little bit more on who he is and what his environment feels life. It always works as a great way to continue the film since the end of this scene is concluded by entering Asher's room where there is a computer that has very important information regarding the story.

Audio Time

     While visuals are critical in developing and creating meaning in a film, sound is just as important. Sound builds the characters, environment, and structure of how film is perceived by an audience. This is why, me and my group are going to focus and have attentive ears on what we develop in the films audio.

By Jackson Lee Nesbitt

    First of, I want to talk about the score of the film, which we mostly just have an idea of what it'll consists of. Right around the time in which Asher kills Austin we want intense music, likely violins, to build up suspense right up until the title card, then when the title card ends we start once again with some more music up until the match cut with Asher's eyes. The whole point of this is to build suspense and to show the build up of all of Asher's emotions taking place and turning him over the edge. Which personally, I feel would be a great way to develop more of Asher's character without the use of visuals. 

    Then I want to focus on the dialogue, The dialogue is going to obviously be based on the script, which I'll be talking about in a later post. In this dialogue we want to build emotion and character, so we want to have both actors, me and Brennan, to be solidified and hyper focused when filming so we can get the right emotions out and properly adapt the audio into the film. Also, while I know this is not the best thing to do, if anything goes wrong we plan to use voice overs just incase. Another thing that we want to do with dialogue is incorporate while the camera is on someone that is not speaking but instead receiving so it feels as if the character and the audience are getting the same message together. One last thing, that I want to mention is the fact that we will be using microphones so we can have seperate layers when filming so we can adjust the voices properly. 

    Finally, we get into the foley part of our audio. Here we want to incorporate foley in instances where Asher, is working on his paper or when Austin is walking towards Asher. This will heighten the suspense since the audio will be more in tune with what is going on. Then, we also want to use foley for specific sounds that are hard to come by. For the environment, we are going to have a mixture of both sounds made by us and sounds found online from websites such as, Pixabay. Our reasoning for this is quite simple, since it better helps us find sounds that cannot be recorded without interruption of there sounds and since it allows us to have more control when editing. 

    With everything mostly planned out, we fell that we have a very good understanding of the things we'll do in terms of audio and quality as a whole. 

The Locations

    For our project, our scenes contain only two possible locations, a park and a house. We've already established these location from our knowledge of places around the area. 

    First of the park. We decided we would go to a local park called, Indian Trace Park, which is a very reliable park since it is close proximity to all of us. This park is normally crowded depending on the time, but we already established that this scene would take place between 2-3 PM, where, from experience, there is normally not many people around due to the heat. So, because of this we felt this part was perfect as well as it having tables which is critical for our first scene. 

Indian Trace Park

    Then for our second scene which involves the home for Asher, we decided we would make it take place at Brennan's house since it'll be easy for us to incorporate Asher's mom, which would be Brennan's mom in this case. It's also reliable since it's one of the home's of one of our group members meaning we have a little bit more freedom in what we can do. Additionally, this environment will help us by already having an understanding of where everything is going to be at. 

    With everything already being established, we feel that these locations will work best due to not only reliability, but also visually due to the tidiness and comfort that these places bring. 

Meaning in the Light

     In order for me and my group to capture the emotional disparity within Asher we felt that colors/lighting was the perfect way to represent Asher.

Taxi Driver - 1976

    We want our film to have a cool tone that doesn't have many vibrant colors that could distract the audience while focusing on our protagonist, Asher. This cool tone is meant to resemble the difficulties and challenges that Asher goes through within the film and it capitalizes on this in the very first scene. It's meant to create an atmosphere that follows the emotional state that Asher is in, which contrast his physical appearance. This contrast between him and what the audience sees visually, in terms of color, acts almost like in similarly to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, where the main protagonist begins in a more normal state and with the films colors he turns into a mentally messed up character. We want to create a similar environment and have a tone that plays into Asher's emotions. 

    For the first scene where Asher is given a hard time by Austin, ultimately leading up to his murder, Asher will be wearing clothes that highlight his "innocence" and the tone of the film will tell the audience that there is something wrong in the atmosphere which leads up to Austin's end. It also works in a way that symbolizes his home environment, which is very depressing. 

    Then in the second and last scene, where we get a glimpse of Asher's home life, we are going to use darker tones that give into the idea that while Asher is this intelligent, oddly organized man, he still struggles with his home environment. In this scene he has some unusual things going on around to resemble him going through "Murphy's Law" and these darker tones will reveal the depressing ambience that follows him in his life. The lighting here, once again is darker than usual, so even though he's at his house we're going to likely add a tint with the use of Premiere Pro and tools like color grading, which is something I forgot to mention we will do in the first scene as well. It'll allow us to have more control over what our colors will look like, but we'll also focus on incorporating physical products/items that give this sense of tone in both scenes. 

Ray Ouladi - Color Grading Essentials in Premiere Pro

Developing Asher & Austin

     Asher and Austin are to completely different people in terms of personality and image. Asher shares a more formal and OCD like perspective of life, while Austin struggles educationally and has a more "out there" personality. 

    Asher, is 15 years old, a straight A student, only child, and has OCD which keeps him very organized and clean. He also dresses in a very normal student-like way, by wearing a regular white shirt and khaki shorts. This all builds up to hide his mental and psychological problems that are only seen through actions and not looks. The traits and characteristics portray him as a innocent and timid individual that wants no harm and is the contrary of what Austin is. Another thing that we felt would give this character an idea that something was unusual was his name. Asher's name feels as if this person has an outgoing, fun personality. Which in this case would resemble a weird fixation between how Asher is with people and how he is with himself alone. It helps build up the characters portrayal of a double personality. 

    Now, we have Austin, who is 17, has a single Dad, younger sister, is involved in boxing, well-known, and struggles in school. It may seem that even though Austin is not the main character his representation is not as valuable, but it is. He plays a part that constantly demeans Asher, and through his physical appearance it exemplifies the person he is. Austin wears baggy clothes, that makes him appear bigger to work as a reinforcer of his demeaning personality. His background, adds detail and lore on why he struggles so much in school as his relationship between his dad and sister is very complicated. Which works as a way to inform us on why he needs help from Asher on his school work. Also, this name was chosen to help visualize someone who is innocent, but once seen in person it builds a scary looking person that intends to abrupt the peace where ever he is. 

    Both of these, characters contrast each other physically and emotionally, and helps develop a difference between themselves. 

A Blueprint for Our Story

    Following on my previous blog post I feel that I should give a little more information on how my opening will go. I'll be doing this giving in-depth analysis on the first couple of scenes in the opening. It's also worth mentioning that I used the storyboard template from my, "Bringing it to the Board" blog. 

PART 1:

   Starting of the film, it fades from black, straight into Asher's legs as he walks across a park. The shot then cuts to a medium shot of the back of Asher. The shot after then shows Austin who's the "bully" from his side, walking the opposite direction of Asher. Then it cuts to a close up of Asher's face as he sees Austin walking towards him, where the camera cuts to a side shot of Asher's face. Then a medium/long shot of Asher and Austin, shows the moment where Austin intentionally bumps into Asher, to get a hold of him.

    During this sequence there's not much going on, but it helps the audience identify that these two characters do not like each other and or even have a past. Also, something that isn't showcased is that in this scene, Asher has a paper and pencil while walking. Which is a subtle foreshadow of what happens later on. 

PART 2:

    The second part of the storyboard, focuses more on the dialogue and conclusion of these two individuals. Here there is a square with, "Dialogue" which is to give us a blueprint on the familiarity that this part is going to have to when they bump into each other. Then the second square shows their conversation has ended, leading to Austin walking away after demanding Asher for something. As Austin walks away, Asher is paralyzed and stands still turning around to face Austin's back. Here the camera cuts to Asher's hand showing the pencil from earlier, to identify and tell the audience that he is "armed." Then the camera cuts to a long shot of Asher running very fast towards Austin, with his pencil in hand. Then it cuts to over the should-ish shot of Asher about to kill Austin.

    In this scene the whole point is to show the switch the flicks off on Asher, as he gets ridiculed by Austin. The pencil was the subtle foreshadow I mentioned earlier and it works to demonstrate how sick Asher is, through killing someone with a pencil. Furthermore, the murder scene is very abrupt and portrays a sickened Asher. 

PART 3:

     Now, to transition into the resolution between Asher and Austin, we see a black screen right after the pencil makes contact with Austin's neck. During this black screen we hear a thump to signal that Austin has been killed. Then we cut back to Asher to his scary, dangerous eyes, which is used to transition through a match cut of Asher, days prior to the murder. 

    The reason, why this is where this scene ends is because as a collective group we are still pondering on what and how we can represent Asher's psychological problems caused my "Murphy's Law." Our plan is to have him in his room showing unusual things that represent his problems, and here is the main part that we are trying to solve. We are likely to solve this issue when we finalize our script next week and have our foundation completely set. But, yeah so far this is what our storyboard looks like and I'll keep updating any changes as we go on. 

It's Just an Idea

     For this portfolio project that I'm working on with Vanessa and Brennan, we've come to think of different directions our story could go into. Some ideas were mostly based on some kid either discovering some mythical item, or finding a new "world." However, we landed on the idea that we we're going to base our story on a kid that got bullied by this older kid and the bullied kid would murder the older kid. We ran with this idea and started to develop it even more. 

    We evolved and expanded this story, by wanting the story to begin through its end like Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects. In this film, the story begins with the ending and the film itself explains the events leading up to the mysterious conclusion between all characters. We found that showing the murder at the beginning of the film would be best to introduce the protagonist, Asher, whom, in this case would be the bullied kid. Then the rest of the films story would showcase the mental and psychological events leading up to the murder. This storyline, would show scenarios that are in relation to Murphy's law, where "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Meaning that Asher would go through traumatic events through the film, fueling him to the point of the murder. 

    One thing that I believe and have received feedback on is the cliche archetype that comes with a kid getting bullied and killing his bully. I say this because in the opening Asher gets confronted by the bully to give him his homework and that's what ends up fueling Asher's rage. So, from the perspective of what my group and I think, is that we should anchor somewhere else on in terms of a new idea. Meaning that we believe we should try and have a similar bases of the story, but switch up certain aspects where Asher instead of being bullied, he gets assaulted or something along those lines. The whole point of this is to make the scene feel more authentic in terms of how the audience feels about the encounter. Next week, we are going to try and develop the story just a bit more so we are able to then finalize our script, since we, in a way, are trying to make a more realistic interaction that creates a justifiable reason on why Asher kills this other demeaning kid. 

    Now, just after the part of the murder, we want the next scene to be the actual beginning of the story where we see the mental weaknesses that Asher has. As of now we want to create a match cut with whatever the first part of the opening ends with to transition into the beginning. Once we are set in this new environment we want to create and show things that Asher those that show his messed up characteristics. So, maybe Asher is researching something out of the ordinary that could possibly be incriminating or maybe he is playing with an object in a strange or eerie way. This is to build up and develop Asher's character, in order for the audience to know, straight away, that Asher has psychological/mental reasons on why he decided to kill this kid in the beginning of the film. It's almost a form of foreshadowing that works to slowly build up Ashers way of life. 

    As of now, this is what we have and feel our story is going to direct itself in. Hopefully by the end of week four we'll be set and finished with our script so we can begin our planning and production.  

FILMS THAT INSPIRED:

The Silence of the Lambs - 1991

The Usual Suspects - 1995

Zodiac - 2007