EVOKING CHILDHOOD
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT OF INTENT
This
statement of intent is designed to train your mind, eye and heart to shoot
purposefully. Prepare it well before shooting. Briefly—but thoughtfully and
specifically—answer the following questions. Be sure to read the assignment
description carefully and make your answers specific.
1.
Use
these questions as inspiration and write about your childhood:
What was your childhood like?
Carefree? Painful? Glorious? Mysterious? What specific memories do you have?
Sounds? Smells? Tastes? Faces? What did the world look like to you then? How
did others see you? What scared you? What did creativity feel like to you? How
have things changed for you?
My childhood, looking back, can be summed up in one word: sad. It was
a time which I don’t want to live again. I was distanced from everyone. I was
only attentive to the things on my TV and computer screens, which usually
displayed cartoonish characters involved in frankly silly plots. Up until I was
17, my parents pretty much made all the major life choices for me, but that
doesn’t mean I didn’t think about many of them really hard on the inside.
I can remember when I was 3 or 4 and going to a Special Ed
preschool because I didn’t start talking until that age. I remember several
faces there of specific students and my teacher. While communication has always
been my hang-up, I remember thinking that I was smarter than those other kids
and I didn’t belong there. While not a memory of mine, a grown-up family friend
says he remembers a time when me and my first younger brother were only a few
years old, and he gave us both a grape in his kitchen. My brother shoved the
grape into his mouth and extended his hand out expecting another one, but I
just held that first grape in my fingers, looking at it, examining it, even
picking it apart to see what was inside.
That makes me think of times I do remember just staring at objects,
meshing and twisting their forms in my head into something else, then planting
myself in the middle of a cartoon world I saw on Nickelodeon. To me, the
important things in the world were boring, and nothing in it, even the people,
was important to me. I think the reason behind this old mind set was that I
could never get what I wanted right when I wanted it, and I usually was never
right when I did speak properly and when called upon, so I thought, “Why bother
anyone when no one makes me feel good?” There were also times that same brother
of mine, who was the exact opposite of me, would get on my nerves like nothing
else and make me angry with his constant annoyances at me.
When I tried being creative as a child, it usually came out as
rehashed episodes or video games I saw before; fan fiction I guess you could
say. Sometimes though, I could imagine myself in other places that I would like
to see in a movie or on TV that I haven’t seen before, though still without
plots. I didn’t start coming up with my own customized characters with original
stories until 7th Grade, with some help from a friend with similar
interests.
Today,
things have substantially changed in how I view creativity, and way more
importantly, the world. I am much more open with people, willing to listen to
others, and learning from the experiences I have in order to express myself
better and more positively. After a history of events bringing me life-changing
maturity, I now feel like, as an adult, I can finally function right.
2.
List 10
or more people, places, or things that remind you of your childhood. Can any of
these be used as symbols or motifs to communicate meaning and emotion?
Calvin & Hobbes
SEGA Genesis / Nintendo
Gamecube
Model train sets
Oakridge School in Provo (now
Provo Special Education Seminary)
Canyon Elementary in Spanish
Fork
The Andersen family
(life-long friends)
Cul-de-sac in Provo
MiniDV Camcorder
Macaroni and Cheese
My mother
3.
Before
continuing, consider how can you subvert our expectations and surprise us? What
individual images capture the essence of your experience? How can you avoid
cliché? Can you provide a hint of story--even if it is not elaborated on? How
can you imply rather than explicitly state? How can you use ellipsis to let the
audience fill in gaps? How can color, or lack thereof, help evoke emotion? What
about sound?
I’ll
film matching shots of objects set against a blank white wall in an empty room
with no windows. The uniformity and dark tone of the background shows how
isolated and closed-minded I usually was. For an added touch of uniqueness, the
camera will juxtapose to a location in the real world (or occasionally, a CG shot)
inspired by that object to simulate my imagination inspired by it. Then the
camera will cut back to the isolated room, just moved a little backwards with
each cut to the next object. Each object or set increases in real size, to
simulate growth, but still in the same shell. Each location will start off
exactly as we imagined then turn out to be unexpected eye-openers. A child will
interact with each object and be featured in each outer location, and these
shots will be significantly more colored than in the room.
4.
Describe
the progression--the beginning, middle, and end--of this film in three or four
sentences? In other words, what happens in this scene as it starts, as it
progresses, and as it ends?
In the isolated room against the back wall, a series of featured
objects will start out interestingly small, beginning with a single grape,
which move into calming images inspired by them, like kitchens and forests.
Then, as we see bigger objects, such as a TV and video game setup, the images
get more complicated as fights erupt between brothers and imaginations get
bigger by imagining flying through the sky. In the end, the distance between
the wall and the camera grows so great, we can finally see the open door/move
out the open door, and discover the outside world. A child resists the urge of
a computer in the room to stay, and walks out the door with the computer in
hand.
5.
What,
specifically, would you like the audience to understand? How do you intend to communicate
that information?
I want my audience to know that I was isolated,
distanced from the real world, until I found a way out of that life. The empty
room will be in at least half the shots, but after the camera sees the door, it
will become the film’s impulse to leave.
6.
What emotion(s)
do you want the audience to experience about your childhood through this film?
How do you intend to make this happen?
My emotion overall is sadness that I was in this self-imposed
bubble, and the audience will feel this as they see the child alone to console
himself or fighting other people.
7.
What is
the first image of the film? What is the final image of the film? Why are you
choosing these specific images?
The
first image is a grape sitting on a small plate on a small table in the empty
room, with a child staring at it. The final image is the child slowly opening
the door to the room and leaving with difficulty, with a laptop with a bright screen.
8.
Why is
this scene personal to you? Ask yourself, “Why do I need to make this scene?”
Only I know what goes on in my head as I see real things; and
sometimes, not even I can. I easily lost attention to whatever I was supposed
to give it, and whenever I was questioned why, I blanked out. No one else can
determine how I feel unless I give them clues. Making this scene can be
equivalent to telling a psychologist about my past and allowing him to reflect
back to me what he’s determined.
9.
Before making your shot list, consider: How can you subvert the
audience’s expectations and surprise us? What individual images capture the
essence of your experience? How can you avoid cliché? Can you provide a hint of
story--even if it is not elaborated on? How can you imply rather than
explicitly state? How can you use ellipsis to let the audience fill in gaps?
How can color, or lack thereof, help evoke emotion?
The empty room will be treated as a prison with an unlocked door,
which the central child willingly doesn’t leave. The images I plan to show
include simply a single grape, a comic book, a cartoon drawing, a camcorder
hooked up to a TV, an old video game system hooked up to a TV, and a laptop. To
avoid cliché, each imagined scene inspired by each object will have a different
tone, including meditation, annoyance, action, and domestic violence. No
dialogue will be used, just what I imagine myself to be doing with each object.
While the empty room will have no color to it, the imagined scenes will be full
with color.
Most importantly: How can you intensify your purpose or intent for each shot?
Can you will emotion into your
images?
The
transition between the objects and their imagined scenes will have a flash of
light off the corner and a rack focus going from focused to blurry and back to
focused. The more serene scenes will have tripod or tracking shots at a
distance from the child, while the more intense scenes will be handheld and
close up.
10.
List two
or three potential obstacles to creating a successful film. How can you be
prepared to overcome these? Be specific!
-
My desired emotions may still not resonate in
the scenes I choose to film. This may be because I have difficulty making solid
decisions about many things. I’ll try to be as precise on planning which camera
moves, lighting, and actor’s actions will be most effective before the shooting
day, so that I may go into it with confidence, which helps me think the most clearly.
-
I may not be able to obtain the desired locations
to replicate my feelings. There are both elaborate, realistic location options,
or otherwise tacky, small-value options which will require trickery to make the
audience believe is real. I must be looking with plenty of time ahead of the
shooting days for appropriate locations and make sure I can use them before
making the final decision.
