Introduction
I’d like to start by giving some context for how the Film’s senior narrative normally unfolds. In years of yore, film students would start their planning and preproduction work in about November, start the production work of filming in December, and then finish their editing by early February so that their film might be featured in the Freestyle exhibition. My class did start the Senior narrative unit around the time we normally would have. That is about the only similarity in terms of schedule. We didn’t actually start real production work until well after February. The goal deadline for our films is mid-April. Nonetheless, we press on or at least try to.
The senior narrative film project is generally hyped up as being one of the biggest freestyle projects because of the level of complexity and sheer magnitude of effort required. We are tasked with making a dialouge driven story in a roughly 10 page screenplay and then in an accompanying film.
Dialogue Scene
For an in-class exercise, we formed groups and filmed a short dialogue scene with a script provided to use by Mr. T. The goal was to get some real practice of the skills we had previously only talked about in class. The result is featured below.
Also fun fact about my group’s dialogue scene, we ran into the Freestyle Alumnus Eric Rustum while filming. He came by to wish us good luck on what he guessed was our senior narrative and offer condolences that it was behind schedule from COVID. At that point, our class still hadn’t officially started filming the Senior narrative.
Pitch/Logline
We were all required to pitch our own movie for a possible Senior Narrative. My Pitch which I didn’t end up going with was for a film that I titled “Snowy Hearts”. The Logline was as follows “a heartbroken high school girl is tricked into a weekend ski vacation by her friend, despite her not knowing how to ski”.
The Senior Narrative that I actually ended up making with my film partner Ryan was based on his concept. His original logline was “A grieving teenage recluse uploads dreams of her late brother to her secret computer”. It has changed a bit since then.
Screenplay
We liked the idea of a somewhat experimental story centering around technology. The story has changed a lot as time went on. We scraped the idea of the protagonist, Rei, uploading her dreams into a computer and instead opted for Rei to build an AI program riddled with glitches. I also introduced new characters such as TAY–whose name is actually VHS after being put through two ciphers–and the brother–later changed to a neighbor after casting. The title that stuck was “Lost in the Wires”. I also was attached to the idea of the brother/neighbor climbing a fire escape to try to get into Rei’s apartment but that wasn’t feasible so that section was changed to instead be about the neighbor breaking into the second story of Rei’s suburban home. In retrospect, there are things about the script that I think could probably be improved but I feel it is a good start for a first-time screenplay.
Shot lists
One of our assignments was to assemble a shot list reminiscent of what is created in the real film industry, by including specific details.
Narrative Breakdown + Lined Script
As part of our preproduction work, we had to line the script to plan out the different shots as well as do a script breakdown to further plan out the elements we would need. We split the screenplay in half and each practiced marking up the script in the two different formats. Once we finalized the script I also went back and lined the new version just for my own personal benefit for planning out the shots.
Link to my updated Lined Script
Stripboards
Mr. T also had our class be the first to try making stripboards for our films because preproduction kept getting extended. Stripboards as I understand them are a mix between a shortlist and day planner for the film shoot.
Narrative Film
Production
Reflection
I think in total we were working on this film for a net total of about 7 months thanks to COVID. I like how the practical & virtual effects turned out because they created a cool atmosphere for the film. The actors all crushed it and I also like how Ryan’s music further builds the vibe of the film. The film isn’t perfect, and in my opinion, some of the weakest parts are probably the result of my lack of experience in screenwriting but I still poured a lot of myself into the film and am proud of the result. Despite the strange circumstances of this schoolyear I still feel like this is one of the strongest films I’ve made so far.