Group Meeting #1: Keeping it (Not Very) Clandestine

Ignore the title, 'clandestine' is just such a funny word. I will not hide anything from you, reader.

Jd

I'll start with my own story first, keeping it short as you will hear much about it in blog posts to come. I was a little shy when I started explaining my project, at first thinking, "Oh God, they're gonna think I am such a nerd..." I was partially accurate in that statement.

Anywho, I started by explaining the overall film plot in a very surface-level manner, explaining how it was a psychological drama/coming-of-age centered around religion and morality, and being comparable to the film Midsommar in the representation of a community based around a cult. This was very vague, but I did this intentionally in order to first test the waters. This was quite stupid though, as in order to get anywhere we would have to really delve deep into our innermost secrets, our psychological tendencies, and debates about what it means to live in such a doomed society. Just kidding, we just had to explain all the plans we had so far.

I did exactly this. I explained the main character and her relationship with her father following her mother's death. I explained how the film was not an attack on religion, but rather looked at the meaning of life with and without the promise of an afterlife. I explained my plans thus far on the opening itself, giving a shot by shot walkthrough. This plan is now outdated. I then explained my influences, mainly referring to Love Exposure (2008, dir. Sion Sono) as it had similar themes. Last, I delved slightly into the psychology behind the film idea, and how it was influenced by what I have noticed in myself and people around me. I did not go too deep though, as I aimed to avoid the nerd allegations.

I did not receive much real feedback, but I was able to rethink how I approached my opening after listening to the others' plans. At the end of the group meeting, my partner ran to me with a wonderful idea he had been suggested. We both loved it and have incorporated it into our opening.

Jd, unedited (just kidding, this is a highly edited photo that does not represent my real-life appearance)

L

L is a funny guy. He told me he expected high school to be like how it is depicted in anime. I still cannot tell if he is joking.

At first, L had a very vague idea of what he had wanted. L mentioned his influences from zombie movies like Day Z and Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End. However, L's idea developed into something much more interesting than either of those films. Actually, I can't really say that as I have not watched them.

Anyway, L's idea started off extremely simple. The base idea was to open with the beginning of a zombie apocalypse and show someone getting killed by zombies that have entered their house. As high school students without much of a budget, we asked how L would depict zombies in a not-so-corny way. After much thinking (probably a few seconds), L decided he would only show the shadows of the zombies, which is a pretty novel idea.

After an explanation of the zombie apocalypse which was to be depicted in his film, it was clear that the real monsters are not the zombies, but the humans, who have been reduced as a society to relying on their animalistic desires for survival and greedy tendencies. To put the 'monster' of your story off-screen in the opening may seem cheap, but it directs the viewers attention to the human characters. This story is about the humans, not the zombies. Since our meeting, L has shown me their current storyboard and it looks great. I am excited to see the final product.

The character L compared himself to

W

W's film idea draws interesting similarities (in terms of the protagonist) to The Truman Show, which he was inspired by. The inclusion of our inspirations in our meeting was especially helpful in understanding each other's visions, as despite W's minimal description of story, I can see where he is headed with the development of his film.

The most important traits of W's story are as follows (these are just the notes that I wrote down):

Happy life
Gut feeling that something is off
Possible twist

Despite this not providing much information, I gathered that the film would be a drama piece focusing on a man who lives a normal life but suddenly gets a feeling that something is majorly wrong in his life. In navigating life beside our protagonist, the viewer and protagonist both struggle to grasp what could possibly be wrong. This is a major psychological element that would make the film so much more interesting than many other similar films. As far as I remember, W had not decided on a twist idea just yet.

"Gut feeling"

F

F's story was inspired by a story her father had written, modernized and modified to be translated into a modern film. I thought this was so cool. First of all, having a parent who is/was an author is such a flex, especially when everyone else's parents work boring jobs that have to do with reading e-mails for like 8 hours a day, or like selling high-speed tin-can death machines meant for transportation (wait, that actually sounds fun).

The story follows a man who enters a taxi, realizing it is the same taxi he had gotten into exactly a year ago before a fatal car crash. The story would see the main character grappling with the idea of death, and meaning in a life after death. We all realized the main character slightly resembled Dr. Malcom Crowe's character in The Sixth Sense, in the sense (haha) that both characters perceived life to go on normally following their death. We suggested F watch the film to draw inspiration for her main character.

The opening is straight forward, seeing the main character enter the taxi and realize the wallet laying on the seat is the same as his. When he opens it, he realizes all the contents are the same as his own. Finally, he reveals the ID, which shows his face and name, confirming it is the same ID. The date is the one year anniversary of a fatal car crash he had experienced while a passenger in a taxi, and it seems he must relive the experience.

We all left F with questions to think about, including:

What has the main character been doing all this time?
Does the main character experience this event on loop?
Does he know he is dead?
What does he learn from experiencing the crash over and over again?

I wonder if he can see F's protagonist

K

K's idea was very minimal, with only a few visual aspects, potential plot elements, and character ideas being known. K began with painting the picture of a woman waking up in a trashed room, looking quite trashed herself. Perhaps she was hungover. The woman stays in her room, lounging and eating when her friend knocks on her door telling her 'some news.' Some idea of pregnancy was thrown into the wind. No one reached for it.

Now, we all asked K what that news could possibly be. With no answer, we all began brainstorming. K seemed to like the idea that perhaps the news was footage of the main character the night before doing some embarrassing/harmful act that she knows she did not do. We prodded further, asking, "Was it her, or a doppelgänger?" K did not know yet, but that is fine. It got her thinking.

I suggested K think of an overall film plot first before tackling the opening idea, and hopefully K has taken this advice into consideration.

What could have been if we had latched onto the pregnancy idea

A

Out of the proposed ideas, A had the most interesting one as it had plenty of opportunity to progress in many ways. The initial opening idea for her thriller/mystery was for a girl to go missing (or something bad happen to her) at a party. My peers drew a connection of the setting to the film Project X. We all thought of a way to make this plan more specific.

A suggestion from W caught my attention, in that partygoers record multiple perspectives of the party from different video cameras. This idea of multiple perspectives and showing different reactions to the girl's disappearance showed a potential to show the attitude of partygoers toward a terrible event happening to someone in their close proximity. Some of the girl's friends and other partygoers may react with great concern, while others may not. It is reminiscent of the bystander effect, in which bystanders to a negative event may not act as they either believe others will or that they are not in the position to do so. We communicated these feelings to A and she seemed to dig it.