Beach Chair

A new film idea came to me a few weeks ago and it was unusual in the sense that when it came to me, I got emotional about it myself. The idea involves reminiscing over the good times of your youth and looking over things with regret. This is something that I no I will probably not be able to avoid in my own life, but if I go for the world and come back with dirt I know I will have at least tried.

The film starts off with an elderly man, who is dressed in a bathing suit, arriving on the beach and setting up his favourite beach chair. A young boy comes over to the man and sits right next to him. He asks the man what he is looking at and the man tells him he is looking at what could have been...cue the entire film in flashback involving the man in his childhood, at school with the girl of his dreams and we follow him throughout his life as he deals with all that life throws at him, including missed opportunities but also the successes of his life. The film will end with the old man achieving his dream of sitting on a beach chair while crying as the young boy fades away.

This idea is possibly one of the more artistic ideas I have had. A few kinks need to be worked out but all in all it is shaping up nicely. I want to focus on the way the elderly look back on their past and create an effective film out of it. Up was a film that did this well but did not go deep enough into key stages of the protagonist's life, probably because it was a kids film. You may be thinking why a Beach Chair but I heard the reference in the Jay-Z song of the same name and it sort of stuck with me. I like the idealism of a beach chair, in that you can relax in front of the ocean and underneath the sun with the world at it's most peaceful.

Otis is finished in the planning stages, I have reworked the step outline and now I feel like I am ready to write it, I just need to be signed off by my tutor and away I will go.

One last thing to mention is that I was considered for a TV programme development internship at NBC/Universal. I didn't even apply for that job but apparently they thought that my CV looked good enough to be considered and that I made it to the last 5. Pretty chuffed that they thought I might even be close to be good enough for that position. Hopefully I will get a similar position one day.

Keep On Running

Another week has passed and a lot less sleep has occured than it did in previous weeks, mainly because I had a dissertation draft to hand-in. I had a tutorial at uni for which I had to produce a step-outline, a detailed scene-by-scene list. I had this written out on my bedroom door for a long time, with colour coded cards for each act of the film. This helped me to have fresh eyes look at it every morning and move scenes around or take scenes out if they didn't make sense. When I went into the meeting I felt quite nervous that the outline was going to be lambasted by my tutor but the reaction was totally the opposite. I was told that it was a quite brilliant piece of work and my tutor even admitted to getting emotional towards the end of reading it. I gained a great deal of confidence from this, for once, I had a film idea, which has garnered universal appeal from all that have read about it and discussed it with me. Confidence in my work, is something I have never really had and is something I have been told I will need to have in order to build my way up the ladder. With me giving my work to people to read more often, it has enabled me to be able to talk about my ideas openly and listen to their reactions. With this in mind I have been able to mold my ideas into far better pieces of work and Otis has become first of, hopefully, many fruits of labour.

If anyone would like to read my step-outline just drop me a line and I will send you a copy.

Next week I shall be posting another new synopsis, which has seen me deviate from my usual style and is a bit of an experiment.

IG

Stranger

An idea that I have been toying with for a long time now is inspired by films such as: Blade Runner, Inception and Mr. Nobody. This is going to be my labour of love for years to come while I write other screenplays purely because it will be a complicated piece involving different realities that I would want to get just right before having any chance of even trying to make it.
The film will involve a man not knowing who he is or where he is and arriving in the future where society is in ruins. He fleets between different realities without knowing why and has a recurring memory of himself waking up in a room with his dead wife and son on the floor.
The soundtrack will have elements of Vangelis' score for Blade Runner and I want it to be quite a philosophical film, which will encourage people to think about the film afterwards.
I don't want to give too much away about it purely because I want to develop it more before getting feedback on the idea.

As for Otis, it is coming along nicely and I have now sorted out the ending for the father, which I'm hoping will keep the film's quirky style while completing an emotional journey perfectly. Trying to stay clear of comparisons to Forrest Gump has been difficult but I think that film relied too heavily on sentiment and therefore ended up feeling like you were being hit in the face with a wet fish. Otis will be more reliant on creative means to draw the audience in rather than sappy storyline and hopefully it will turn out to be a lovenote to all things creative and achieving within your means. I'm definitely looking forward to the writing process of the film but in the meantime planning is the name of the game.

IG