9/11/2020
When given the theme of ‘Topsy Turvy’, the first thought that came to mind was the current pandemic we are in. I had to self-quarantine with my sister when returning home from London for two weeks in a small room separated from the rest of the house. I remember feeling disoriented and as though I was put in a new space even though it was a part of my house that I frequented. The thought that I couldn’t go outside also depressed me, even though, as my sister had very kindly point out, I don’t usually go outside. I felt that that didn’t matter though. The suffocating thought came more from the idea that my choice to go outside wasn’t there, regardless if I was going to take it or not.
A few artists came to mind at that; artists that create something surreal out of scenery that are at first glance, normal. These artists include MC Escher and Jan Švankmajer. An artist whose work I found very interesting from the briefing was Jonathan Djob Nkondo, specifically his film ‘DARK DAY‘ that played with angles and perspective as the background rotates.
I created a mindmap on a padlet which I will be updating as I develop my ideas.
N A R R A T I V E S T R U C T U R E
11/11/2020
A great writer thinks not only of what the character would do and feel, but what they want the audience to feel
In the lecture on narrative structure, I learned the differences between a feature film, a short film, and short form content with regards to the different elements and difficulties each type of film comes with.
When told that the main aim of any film is to elicit an emotional response, I began thinking back to all the writing and storytelling I had done in the past and how much of that aspect I took into consideration when writing stories.
I realised that a lot of the lecture’s content are what we as viewers already knew perhaps subconsciously, but here it was pointed out and listed into categories which I found very useful. It made writing a film making something more tangible with a certain structure as a guideline instead of a secret abstract work process that was dependent on the writer’s talent. It was also very interesting to see the types of villains or plot points listed out and finding how many films fitted these categories despite how different they were.
As the assignment for this project is to create short form content that is only 40 seconds, I was very worried as I had always been one to go over the time limit. But when given the plot points and film elements that were vital for short form content, I felt a bit more reassured.
Though my ideas are still developing, I had begun thinking of possible storylines that follow the guidelines of short form content which will hopefully become more refined as my ideas become clearer.
What I have currently are rough ideas and quite similar to one another, though hopefully that will change as I begin to gather more ideas and have a more resolved concept.
Possible storylines so far include:
- The character is stuck in an Ecsher-esque environment with stairs and hallways going into different directions and has to find their way home, encountering rooms with tigers and dogs and bubbly outdoor scenery before discovering that they are protected by glass walls. The character feels relieved at first before realising that they also can’t get out of the glass room they’re in.
- A character is confined in a small square room living their life day-to-day reading, watching TV shows, washing their hands, playing with a dog standing outside the room, eating with utensils that are wrapped in plastic, washing their hands, playing video games, and washing their hands. The cycle becomes so repetitive that everything begins to morph together and they start to go insane before a door is opened by another character, who invites them into a slightly bigger square room with a few more people inside.
- A character is confined in a small square room with a small hatchet that served food wrapped in plastic. The room is bare and clean and sterilized, with one small window that shows a scenery of a forest. The character sits around all day and feels themself going insane, banging on the walls before one day a door opens and they step out just to realise that the scenery they’ve been looking at is a painting of a forest.
LOGLINE: Tai is stuck inside a small square room with one small window as he begins to go insane.
SYNOPSIS: Stuck inside, Tai is left sitting inside a room where he’s served sterilized meals and watches TV. There is one small window in the room where a clear blue sky can be seen. Days past with the routine repeating itself over and over and Tai grows agitated, trying to find a way out though it’s to no avail. Boredom and stress begin to eat at him as he hears every single sound from the TV play at once and he trashes the room until he faints. When he wakes up, an open door suddenly appears and he desperately sprints out to find a larger room, with a painting of the sky set up in front of the window.
I’ve created a mood board for the environment and crucial moments in the story, keeping in mind how I want the audience to feel at each point and what the character will go through.
C O N T E X T U A L R E S E A R C H
With the idea of being confined inside a room, I researched some films and historical events that portray this same idea.
OLDBOY (2003) starts off the film with its main protagonist Oh Daesu waking up in a small motel room where he couldn’t leave and was given the same food for every meal. He was held captive for no reason for years until he was suddenly released one day and set out to find his captor.
There is an apparent transformation in Daesu’s appearance (his hair and beard growing) to show the passage of time as well as the events occurring in the news. There is also a clear shift in his character at the start of his captivity, ten years in when he grew insane after witnessing the loss of his wife on the news, and when he was suddenly released.
Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (1998) is a controversial Japanese reality show in the 90s. For its challenge entitled Denpa Shōnen teki Kenshō Seikatsu (“a life out of prizes by Denpa Shōnen”), the show put its raffle winner, Nasubi, in a small apartment with no food, clothes, or appliances except for a table of envelopes and a rack of magazines. The challenge was to survive on sweepstakes from magazines by mailing them in with the provided envelopes. The only way to win the challenge and leave the room was to reach a monetary value of one million yen (approx. 7,218 GBP) worth of sweepstakes.
Nasubi spent 15 months naked and filling in contest entries before he reached his goal of one million yen, with a viewership of 17 million for the show. He was taken on a trip to South Korea to celebrate before being locked inside a similar room and told to earn enough prizes to equate the price of a plane ticket back to Tokyo. By that time, he was no longer accustomed to clothes and human interaction.
A similar transformation can be found in Nasubi’s appearance and personality from his happy-go-lucky attitude going into the challenge, and his complete bewilderment at the sight of an audience applauding him after 15 months of being naked without any human interaction.
White room torture is a psychological torture method where a prisoner isolated in a white cell designed so that there is no sound or shadows, aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation. Prisoners were found to have lost their sense of identity and experience hallucination as well as psychotic breaks.
C H A R A C T E R & E N V I R O N M E N T D E S I G N
18/11/2020
Based on my research, an effective way to communicate to the audience the transformation from sanity to insanity is to create a character that appears to be naive with short hair who ends up insane with long hair and rough appearance overall.
Tai’s character design
For clothing, I wanted to create a sense of unease as well as portray the idea of topsy turvy as things not seeming right. I thought about our attire in quarantine or working at home, where the top half that is shown on the webcam is prim and professional while the lower half that is off-camera is comfortable.
The final design I went with is the first one on the left, where Tai is wearing a neck tie with sweatpants and a cardigan as well as a pair of shoes. The combination of casual and business clothes may seem off or even comical, but plays well into the unease and uncertainty of the pandemic, not knowing when it will be over or when one can go outside but also too anxious to lounge around.
For the environment, I went with a simple white square room like in the moodboard. The room has a TV screen on one side and a window on the opposite side so Tai would have to choose between the two. There is also a small dog door big enough for a tray of food to pass through, but not big enough for Tai to crawl inside of.
I modelled the environment in 3D on blender in order to work out the angle of the billboard filling up the window as well as reference for the different camera angles when I draw the storyboard.
M O D E L S H E E T S
I tried to take into account all the possible facial expressions and poses Tai would be in and the different angles this could appear in in the storyboard.