The story starts off with a man (who's name is undecided), walking down a deserted street. We intend on shooting this at night which will emphasize his isolation and loneliness as well as reflect his character as being a depressed person. Our main objective of this location and time is to effectively generate the atmosphere of dankness and sensation of being alone, so often expressed in film noir.
The man then walks into a bar and drinks excessively which portrays his depression. "Drowning his sorrows." As he decides to leave, a waitress places another drink on the table. Confused, he tells her that he didn't order it but she says its on the house. On drinking it, he notices a note at the bottom of his drink which tells him to meet the waitress outside. He ignores it and turns to walk out of the door, but the waitress, Natalia,(who has now changed into "attractive" clothing) is blocking him with one of her legs across the doorway. This is the first instance of the "seductive", femme fatal character. The man is aroused slightly, but still uninterested.
Using phrases like:
Man: Who are you?"
Nat: "Whoever you want me to be."
and
Nat: "Aren't you the impatient one."
It illustrates the seductive and playful character of Natalie. However, despite this the man is not interested. Getting desperate, Natalia cuts to the chase and claims that she knows about his father's death. The man is now engaged. He starts questioning her and she tells him that the murderer that killed his father did the same hers. The scene ends with them agreeing to avenge their fathers.
Throughout our scene, the themes expressed are "depression" (demonstrated through the mans indulgence in alcohol and the darkness of night), "seduction" (personified as Natalia) and "evil" (as Natalia leads the man off his path onto the path of darkness.) We also utilize the imagery commonly used in film noir such as dark streets, possibly smoke, neon lights and alcohol.
For our location, we plan on using a Cafe in Discovery Bay. The advantage of this location is that there is a lot of "red" there, the seats and table cloth and umbrella are all different shades of red. What we hope to achieve is by having so much red is to express both the seductive mood as well as the "heat" of the atmosphere. In the story, as the character starts getting intrigued with what Natalia is saying we hope to use the redness of their surrounds to express the intensity and heat of what their talking about and what they plan on doing.
Throughout our story, there will be minimum movement with the occasional short distanced walks and touching when Natalia is playing with the man. Because of this, we will be using mostly close angle shots; mainly POV and behind the shoulder shots. With the subject being so close to each other, the things that we have to pay close attention to is the 180 degree rule as well as the rule of thirds.
One special thing suggested by Louise was that we could have a running commentary of the man as he goes through the various events of the scene. The commentary will indicate his progressive thoughts which may not be reflected in what the man says. In other words, through the commentary, the audience will know exactly what the man is thinking, what he is feeling and how he disguises and suppresses them when he speaks to Natalia. This demonstrates his internal conflict which pays homage to the film noir atmosphere.
Overall I think that this was a very productive lesson. We all weighed in to help develop the story as well as the characters. Ashley had come up with a very compelling and intriguing storyline. Personally, I think that I could contribute even more and share my ideas, being more of a "risk taker" and being "open minded to the suggestions of other's. Using all the "knowledge" we learned in class, we applied it best we could to our project and from what we have so far, I think that we have made amazing progress and are ready to create our camera/shot log for next period.
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