Where you be, homie g?

We went on a mini-location-scouting-extravaganza around campus today and have tentative spots for where we can film the inside of the mosque and courtroom scenes. Oddly enough, both of these locations are in the PKT basement which could look the part with some help from lighting and redecorating more so than other spots (eg Hoffman House) which look a bit too classy. That's all!

Hannah

Goodbye my hot-tub, goodbye my friend...

Dear Bloggy-blog,

Last week, our Latex-inspired dream crashed and burned, so our latest film, Requiem for a Hot-tub, is well on its way.

Actually, we're going to be making a play I wrote a while ago into a movie-- I'm a little apprehensive cos it's sort of the play-that-won't-die as it's weird revisiting something I wrote Freshman year. It's nervous excitement though, although at our meeting yesterday at 2:30pm we spent a lot of time going over logisitics to be able to pull it off:

• We chatted about different people we know of Arab descent not only to act in the film but to also borrow their clothing or maybe house? We have a handful of folks to chat to so we're all in the process of getting in touch with them.
• We read through the play (aaaah) and decided that we maaaaayyyy have to change the judge to a dad if we can't get a courtroom and we thought of ways to make the scenes more visually interesting so that it seemed less wordy and dialogue heavy. We thought of having the characters have more visual tasks (like with the cigarette) or having a small child in the courtroom scenes to add to the tension (but that's just a maybe incase we can't get a kid).
• For the first scene, we also decided to make it less explain-y (not explanatory, just explain-y) and less theatrical and maybe just open with a scene of the policemen beating up Layla and just having her cry out in protest but not fully explain it.
• We also want to make her character a little less naive so Nour comes across less as the evil-foreigner.
• We chatted about building a portion of a set with help from some scene-shop people so that we can do some green screen with it.
• We're also re-formatting the script into CeltX proper format after this so that we can get down to really working out the overly-theatrical knicks.

Bye for now, Bloggy-blog,

Hannah

9/20/10

Hello there Mr. Blog,

Yesterday the three us us got together to discuss possible ways we could convey the story visually on screen. They are listed below:

- similar color tones for clara and nate

- revolving shot around the hot tub, one take

- shoot Clara and Nate together and pete by himself in different shots

- Pete as nail biter to show is incompetence

- Robbie licking his lips to show sexual power over Kourt

- POV shot from bushes, voyeurism

post made by Jackson

The Look as of 20/09/10

Hi blog,
Yesterday at about half 6, the group met over at Jackson's Estate and we came up with a few things as to what we want the film to look like:

• Nate and Clara will be shot in two-shot-shots (so many shots) to visually pair them as a couple whilst Pete will be shot alone, mostly framed with a space to the side of him, sort of symbolic of the girlfriend he is not with.


• These tropes will be used before they all get into the hottub where we will use a revolving shot where the camera will travel around the tub as the three mates chat. Think the cafe-scene in Deathproof


• Pete will be shot with the camera looking down at him whilst Robby will be shown in low angle shots to give him more power and prescence on screen. Pete will get a fake-out moment where we will film him in a low angle shot to kid the viewer that Kourt's going to go back with him (this will happen when Kourt accuses Robby of lying about his allergy) but as soon as she ditched Pete, he'll plummet visually and within the narrative. There goes that false glimmer of hope.


• Nate and Clara will be wearing clothes with similar colours/hues/tones and, just to mess with the viewer more and give 'em hope, Pete and Kourt will be wearing a similar colour palette. (We also noted that we need to make a change to the script and have Kourt bring Robby a swimsuit as part of her masterplan, and, on a different note altogether, we discussed alternative places that the characters could go to get latex gloves so that we could steer clear of the shopping centre/supermarket thing: some suggestions were sneaking into Kourt's neighbour's house or going to Pete's/Nate's/Clara's house and having one of their mums or dads be a doctor--we're still pondering that though, but back to the look!)


• We are also going to play with character quirks to contrast Robby's and Pete's sexual energy/prowess (or lack thereof): Pete will be a nail-biter to show a sort of nervous tick; this will serve to make him appear smaller on screen, also, and more closed off or inferior. The next idea (which we are working on the logistics of so it's not just flat out creepy) is to have Robby lick his lips-- not in a 'ooh baby' kinda way entirely, but kind of confidently and subconciously but still cognizant of the fact that he's going to be getting some underneath the fireworks. The idea is that he is sexually more present and aggressive and less nerdy than Pete. Robby will also blow smoke in Kourt's face which we will show in close-up.


• We discussed playing with the brightness of colours on screen--either making it unnaturally bright or maybe having the orange of Pete and Robby's hair pop against every other colour.


• We also want to play with some extreme close-ups with shots of Clara and Nate exchanging looks whenever Pete says something particularly lonely (there will also be cuter-couple-ier looks between the pair) and also a close-up of Clara moving her hand away from Nate when he makes the remark about gawking at Kourt's chest in the 10th grade.


• As for acoustics, the three of us each know several talented composers and musicians who have said that they will work with us and we're still discussing the feel of the music we want-- we have a range of rock-ier artists, folk singer-songwriter types and beatboxxers.


• We also discussed not ever showing the fireworks (cos we're students and couldn't pull it off so we don't want to go tacky) but visually implying them with wide-angle shots of the tub with the empty sky above it---foreshadowing the display that never comes)


• I still don't have a phone (grr...Virgin mobile) so, as a group, we've set up at least two weekly meet-up times outside of class so that we don't need to track each other down to work it out.


• We have spoken to a few acting-major friends of ours and have a tentative-pretty-likely actor for Pete and we're on a quest to solidify the other roles or at least write up a more appealing synopsis to go along with our casting sheet.

I think that's about it, I'm sure the lads will write up anything I've missed--bye for now!

Hannah

I'm not a ginger. I'm a redhead.

Hi Blog,
Today the dream-team met twice, first at 3pm then at 10pm. During our first meeting, we shared our character profiles and decided to cut the character of Jake/have Nate, Pete and/or Clara say his lines. We did a preliminary read-through of what we wanted to keep and change in the script so that when we met up in the evening we would have a better idea of what each other wanted.
At our ten o'clock meeting, we did a line by line read through of the script, divvying up and deleting the Jake character's old lines and making sure the humour was both appropriate and inappropriate enough for what we were going for. Whilst we were working on our casting sheet, we discussed tentative actors and actresses for a few of the roles and particuliarised what we wanted out of the other roles. We also had a chat about the hot tub we are going to use and made sure we had a back-up just incase that plan fell through.
All in all, bang on sort of day, we have a revised script and a casting sheet, go team latex.
Bye Blog,
Hannah

9/15/2010

Dear Blog, today we discussed the character profiles that would help us decide the type of decisions that they would make throughout the story. We decided to omit one of the character because we felt that he wasn't necessary to the story. Then we rewrote some of the dialogue in the beginning.