Homogenic

Now that I have finished uni life has become a lot slower and I have become extremely relaxed. This has been reflected in the music I have been listening to. Bjork's masterpiece 'Homogenic' has been on a constant loop through my speakers. I then found myself dreaming of being alone in an icy landscape with the stars beaming down on me and my breathe clearly visible. I hear something scuttling in the distance. I walk towards the sound and the song 'All is Full if Love' starts to play. As I walk further on, I notice a small light in the distance so I run towards it. The closer I get, the brighter and larger the light gets, the song plays louder. I run faster and faster as the sun starts to rise. I get to the edge of a cliff and realise that I have been following the sun rise. The music stops and I turn to my right and see a doorway standing in the middle of the ice. I slowly move towards it and open the door to a pathway, which has hedges placed either side of it. At the end of the pathway there is an impressive looking spiderweb, which is coated in icicles, making it look like a large snowflake. I break a part of the web and climb to the otherside to another doorway. The door opens for me and the song starts again. I end up on the ice again and lying in front of me is a bed of roses fully blossomed despite the cold.

This image overwhelmed me massively and got me thinking about the relationship between music and images. This lead me to coming up with the idea of making an audio visual film utilising Bjork's 'Homogenic'. The film will follow a young girl named Joga, who is abandoned by her parents in the snow of Iceland. She makes artificial flowers as a way of making money and surviving. Eventually she is taken into an orphanage where she meets a young boy. They become fascinated with each other and eventually developna relationship with each other but the boy is taken away to be housed with a family. Joga makes it her mission to find the boy and travels across Iceland to find the boy.

This will be one of the most rewarding and challenging screenplays to write but I am looking forward to it.

The Chain

Yes this post has something to do with the awesome Fleetwood Mac song but more on that later. First of all, Otis is finished! It feels like such an achievement to have written a feature screenplay and one that I actually feel is reasonably good. I'm going to miss writing about all of the characters, especially Laurence, but now is time to move onto...more screenplays. First on my list is to complete the trilogy, yes Otis is part of a trilogy. The trilogy is more about theme than actual sequential story lines. It is called the Road trilogy, where the main characters go on a journey in relation to losing the most important woman in their lives. The other two films that complete the trilogy are Rabbit In Your Headlights and Eye For An Eye.

Rabbit In Your Headlights is the next tick box on my screenplay list. I'm looking forward to setting my own deadlines for that film and having the time to give my work to people with them not being rushed for feedback. Devon and Cornwall won't know what hits it when zombies arrive and bring carnage to the sleepy west country. I want to avoid having comedy involved in this film and it be really emotionally involving for the audience.

Eye For An Eye, the Western I spoke about in an earlier post, has it's opening scene. I'm so excited by this because it just sounds awesome to me. Here it goes: The saloon is completely rammed and the local drunks are shouting abuse, singing songs and smashing glasses. The anti-hero steps into the saloon and The Chain starts to play but it's only instrumental. He asks for a drink but the barman has to have a look for it when one of the drunkards starts on him. The protagonist tells him that he shouldn't have done that. The drunkard smashes a glass on the table and says that he wants a fight. The protagonist turns his head sharply and everything goes slow motion. The bass kicks in and he starts to tear apart the bar, beating up and killing everyone in the saloon before leaving. The barman returns with everyone unconscious. We see the protagonist riding off in the plains. This is going to be a sprawling epic and highly stylised. Going to have to watch a lot of zombie films and Westerns for research in the coming months. Not such a bad thing.

Woooo. I Tell Ya Boy, I'm Never Gonna Be Too Old to Boogie

SECOND DRAFT - Otis needs a lot of work to bring it up to a level, which I will be happy with although I fear I will never be 100% happy with the end product but at some point I'm just going to have to leave it be. Reading over the dialogue again showed me that is an area that I vastly needed to improve on. There was no back and forth between the characters resulting in monologues each time people speak. The description is too minimalistic and doesn't set the scene well enough therefore then screenplay loses a lot of it's value. The pacing was uneven, which is something I knew was wrong as soon as I finished Otis the first time around. Jordan needed to be changed, his character was all wrong and became somewhat schizophrenic. I want him to come across as a bad father but not a bad person. In order to do this I need to make sure his work ethic is made clear because work is his only escape from thinking about his wife or eventually Otis running away. I am going to place more emphasis on the Wizard of Oz because it sort of appears and then whimpers away by the end of the screenplay. These things are to be expected from a first draft and I am learning every day that I work on Otis. I am also learning a lot from watching a lot of films. Understanding dialogue and what makes good dialogue is what is going to take me to the next level. One thing that I am pleased with is Laurence. I enjoy his character so much and feel he came across well. I am adding another layer to his character, which is to show him as what he is and not necessarily what he wants to be seen as. What I am talking about his him being an old man, who is feeble and vulnerable. I drew from what my granddad who says that he can still do a lot at the age of 75 but when push comes to shove, he needs a lot of help with certain tasks now. His pride gets in the way of letting someone help him out.

The second draft of Otis should be done by Tuesday, so if anyone could read it and give me feedback that would be awesome. I will pay you in kind, probably a drink or two.

I am have also developed an interest in making music videos as well. I always watched them on The Box, Smash Hits or more prominently MTV 2. A good music video usually makes me like songs more when really it should have no effect on it whatsoever. I have gone as far as emailing a band a synopsis for a music video idea I had a few weeks ago, no harm in trying. This is my favourite music video at the moment:
TV On The Radio - You by doyukno

Enjoy

IG