Depict - Proposal

Chosen Idea
Film Title: "Past"

Proposal

My short film focuses on one character, Shaun Howard. He is kept awake during the night and has a past which haunts him wherever he goes. I have tried to keep the traumatic memory relatively secret leaving all the focus towards how he is feeling and coping with his everyday life. Using reflections from mirrors, glass and water I will show how this memory haunts him; the memory is a burglar that broke into his home and murdered his wife, Jean Howard. I will show this however by memories of his wife's face and eyes clashing with the face of a burglar, as if the burglar is invading those memories. He cannot think of the happy times with her without being haunted by this burglar's image. I will show him having one friend from work, Stuart Adams who is supportive, lively and happy.

Shaun is restless and distressed, he goes to work everyday only to hear the repetitive clicking of the mouse and keyboard and the constant ticking of the clock. In his world time seems to drag out far longer than it should; he is a broken man. To represent this I will use the blending options in Premiere Pro to create a broken glass effect over his body. I will use slow fades so the audience can stay with scenes longer and think about them and I will use tracks to create smooth camera movements and draw us closer to the character.

I have been inspired by a few pieces of work for my idea. The first video when thinking about this project was 'The Black Hole' by Phil and Olly as part of 'Future Shorts' this sparked off my ideas. I loved the colour tones of the office making it look so dull and boring, I would like to use similar tones for my film showing how his day to day life is not the same and that he is suffering inside. I also liked the idea of discovering something that is an escape, giving you a chance to break free but in this film he becomes trapped because of his greed. A range of ideas came from that idea of a black hole on a piece of paper, I thought about lots of things that involve escaping from reality and finding a new world but I realised it was more interesting to focus on emotions and memories, something that is real.
I liked the idea behind 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' having a object that reveals what emotions and secrets lie within a character, which is a painting that changes. The painting shows his true self which is evil as he becomes morally corrupt. I want to use a similar idea but use reflections as a way of showing Shaun's real emotions and memories that he cannot express. Every time he looks at a reflection it's like he is looking inside himself, haunted by his past.
I have also been inspired by the film 'Mirrors' for the way it shows reflections as not being yours but more of a puppet for an evil spirit to control. The reflections that Shaun's sees are personal and not real, its his mind that is creating them and he only finds peace when he meets the girl at the end of the film.

I have kept to minimal dialogue as we can look more at the emotions, there is only a few lines with his friend Stuart in the office and Emma White in a café at the end of the film. The ending will be his life turning around and starting to look up, he sees a girl walk in and they both glance at each other and smile. She approaches him, sits next to him and the two introduce each other. He then looks at the glass window to see his own reflection smiling, she continues to talk as the screen fades to black. This is symbolic of being released from his haunted past suggesting that this girl could change him.

I will use some dramatic blue and grey colours for some of the scenes where he is haunted by this memory in his reflections but use more warmer colours like oranges and browns for the café scene where things begin to look up for this character. The lighting will be quite dark inside his house and the outside scenes will show over-powering shadows from his figure and his surroundings. I will use some scary ambient music for the haunted reflections and some dream-like ambient classical music for the café scene, there will be some muffled scream sound effects, fast heart beats and heavy breathing to really emphasise his trauma.