Luke Pietnik - Considering Our Options

It's Thursday, and things are beginning to gear up somewhat. I'm trying to arrange, with Max's help, a meeting for tomorrow. It's a busy time for all of us, so it's difficult to pin everyone down and decide on a time. However, we're building up our research and, amongst ourselves, making general decisions about how we want this film to be.

Thanks for the post below Scott, it's an interesting idea, using domestic or quite ordinary objects as a means of travelling through time. I'd say Doctor Who pretty much pioneered that idea (but then, I would say that). We could employ the same technique, modelling Gareth's time manipulation device on something like a TV remote. On the other hand, perhaps injecting an element of futuristic, science fiction design might add to the wonder with which Jenny experiences Gareth's appearance.

There is a budgetary issue, of course. We have little or no money for special or visual effects, which is why a domestic item might be neccesary. If we are to design a prop and create it, we have a number of options. We could buy something that is vaguely the right shape and then spray or treat it until we have what we need. Alternatively, one of us could actually manufacture a device using bits of things - junk, old phones, etc. There is another option in liaising with the design and technology department in the university and asking them to make us a prop.

I'm going to make a list of the things we need to discuss for tomorrow's meeting, including props and minor details, so we can clear them up once and for all.

Right, now where's that super glue...

Scott Marshall - Time Travel Devices

Time machines in the media tend to either be elaborate contraptions or relatively simple, everyday things that are tweaked or have otherworldly powers. The most famous time machines in popular culture are the Dolerean from the Back To The Future series, and the phone booths featured in Dr. Who and the Bill & Ted films.








The use of everyday objects acting as time travel devices is a useful tool we can use in our film. As opposed to a large, elaborate time machine, things like phone booths allow the far fetched notion of time travel to happen within a world that viewers can identify as our own. Due to the relatively large budgets available to producers of film and television, the act of time travel is usually shown through the use of CGI, something which we will not be able to utilise. This means we will have to show time travel through things like editing, or simply allude to it as opposed to actually showing it.

Scott Marshall - More Time Travel

Apologies for the lack of contribution thus far, its been a tough week.

Following on from Luke's list of uses of time travel in media, I have found a few more that deal with it in interesting ways:

12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (Peter Hewitt, 1991)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (Stephen Herek, 1989)
La Jetee (Chris Marker, 1962)
Les Visiteurs (Jean-Marie Poire, 1993)
Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

Luke Pietnik - The Words and Stuff

Cath is right. The script, at the moment, is the most important thing. Danny apparently made a start on the script last night, but said he thought he needed some plot. More than that, he will need some help writing it. I recommended he download the script writing software CeltX, which is an invaluable program for anyone trying to write scripts at a reasonable speed.

I think what we should do is, at our next meeting, which might be on Friday, discuss the script, and try to plot it. By that I mean, write down what key events should happen in each scene, and decide on key bits of dialogue. Once that's sorted out, two or three of us can try and work together to help Danny on the actual shooting script, working in CeltX. Then we'll show a first draft to the whole group, who can discuss it and suggest improvements or additions.

I might also write some character treatments before then to work from. They will help us decide on the characters' motivations, and what they might or might not do in certain situations. Once we've got most of a first draft, we can begin scouting for locations and casting.

So that's our main game plan, really. I told Max I was free on Friday, and he suggested Friday might be good for him, also. However, when I spoke to Scott about it, he said he and Max might be shooting their pairs project/film. So it's up in the air at the moment, but I'll be speaking to Mr. Voyse today, and hopefully we'll clear it all up. Rest assured, we will be meeting soon. All of us.

Ambiguity, be gone!

Cath Tomkinson - Scripting

Hey all.

Script and Storyboard are upmost importance atm. Would you prefer if there were a few of us there Dan or would the treatments etc be enough?

Have we any idea of a schedule? Might be best to have a rough idea of when we need to shoot and such so it doesn't come as a shock at the last minute. I can sort this out if thats ok.

About the lesson today - I think the most important thing we took from it was the 180 degree rule. I think Luke and I have got the grasp of it (hopefully) and I know we did some stuff on it last year so we can try use it to our advantage - not sure how active the camera will be in the end product but it is always worth knowing.

I'm going to skim through the Time Traveller's Wife to have a look at the dialogue, I'll post anything interesting I find - I can lend the book to anyone who wants a quick look as well.

We should meet up at some point this week (earliest possible oppourtunity) to get stuff sorted and to make sure we're all on the same page! =]

See you soon!

Daniel Sieff - Script

Hey guys! Sorry I've been a bit of a ghost lately, I just needed to finalise my idea for the 2-minute film project. Now, to begin writing the script for our film, seeing as though it isn't my idea, I will need access to a copy of the treatment so that I get the gist of the storyline and will know what kind of things the characters would say in key events as the plot thickens.

Luke Pietnik - Still no Name

I drafted up a project statement earler (fret not, everyone). I'm sure it'll be OK, I spent a good bit of time on it. I've also been trying to think of a name. I thought maybe we could call it 'The Messenger', but it's already been used, and I don't think it sounds that great anyway. As Cath said, we could use the name of the time travelling courier service, but I'm not sure.

It's definitely going to take some mulling, that. We could always use a working title for the moment. 'The Time Messenger' maybe? Hmm...

Cath Tomkinson - Tomorrow

Hey all.

I've had a look at that list of relevant work - thanks for compiling that Luke. I think even though it is important to look at how other people have tackled a similar subject area we shouldn't get too mixed up in who did what with this topic as it is so important to try and be original with it.

We need to sort out the group statement thing for tomorrow. I can write up a draft if you guys want and I can show you it tonight at the screening or we can write it up after the screening at Starbucks or something? It is only 500 words so it shouldn't take too long.

I've been trying to think of a name for the piece - it is almost as difficult as coming up with a new damn idea! I was thinking we could either come up with a name for the messaging service (which we will have to do at some point anyway) and we could call the piece that or something? Not sure, it is making my brain hurt.

Alas. I have to get ready to come back to Sheffield.
See you all tonight

Luke Pietnik - Viewing List

Using wikipedia and a couple of other reference sites, I formulated a kind of viewing list. These films and television programmes are potentially useful to look at:

Films:

Back to the Future
The Butterfly Effect
Click
Donnie Darko
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
Groundhog Day
I’ll Never Forget You
Love Story 2050
Millennium
Out of Time
Slipstream
Terminator
Timecop
Planet of the Apes

Television:

Doctor Who
Crime Traveller
Futurama
Goodnight Sweetheart
Life on Mars
Ashes to Ashes
Quantum Leap
Sliders
Sapphire and Steel
Red Dwarf
Heroes
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Between us, we should be able to research these texts, influencing how we handle the film.

Luke Pietnik - Film Research

So here's the trailer for 'The Time Traveller's Wife':



Although our film does involve a relationship which plays on the concept of time travel, to go as far as this film does would be rather difficult in 10 minutes. Our film has a lot more humour, and sticks to a basically linear relative time-span, seen through the eyes of our female protagonist. Gareth, while able to travel to different periods in time, does not meet Jenny at different points in her life, young and old. The feelings of sadness and isolation in our film are more to do with the fact that Gareth returns to the future, not against his will, but because that's where he belongs. Or does he?

Another film which plays with the concept of time is 'The Time Machine' made in 2002 and based on the science fiction novel by HG Wells:



The book has been adapted for film several times, but the latest version is the most thought-provoking and intelligent. There is a relationship between the main character and a female from the future, and there is obviously a rift between the two. This relationship is underplayed, however, and serves mainly as a motivation for the bravery of the hero.

Our film focuses mainly on a relationship, the time travel concept acting as a hook to grab the audience. Gareth might as well have been a man who steps off a plane or ferry with a message from a long-lost aunt. But bringing big concepts like the traversing of time adds scope and intrugue.

These films are useful to look at because wether they got it right or wrong, we can always take something useful from them.

Luke Pietnik - Pitch and Putt

Well, thank you Cath, and to a lesser extent Max, for those insightful updates. As Mr. Voyse mentioned, the pitch was today, and our idea seemed to go down rather well. We were told it's a very well-rounded story, but that it needs to be cast well, because it is character driven. I'm confident that if we see enough actors, we'll get some good performances and chemistry.

Another new development is that we have a new recruit in Scott Marshall. Scott requested that he be put in our group, which is rather encouraging really. We thought that to somewhat take the load off Cath and Dan, Scott could, as well as generally helping us out, adopt both the Director and Producer roles. He was up for it, and said he'd be doing some research work, to be posted on this blog.

That's really all for now. We still don't have a title for the film, and the script is yet to be started. Still, that's something to look forward to...

Max Voyse - Update

We have just pitched our idea to the class, people seemed to like it. It has been a hard week, especially Tuesday when we were pretty much shouting at each other!

I believe this to be the hardest process in any project but I'm glad that we have an idea and now it should be fun writing and storyboarding the piece. I think that we should be looking for actors now. One thing that we took from today is that our piece is peformance heavy and we will have to be careful with casting. Both me and Scott know actors that could be in the piece.

It should be fun.

Cath Tomkinson - Just an Update

So we have FINALLY decided on an idea, and to be honest, it is the best one we had (thank you Luke!).

Just for some background on the other idea it could have been, here is a basic storyline for 'Nyctophobia'.

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Nyctophobia is based on a fear of the dark. The main character is a psychiatrist doing a study on people affected by phobias. Her main case study has an incredible fear of the dark - he sleeps with multiple lightbulbs next to his bed just incase the room light goes out during the night, he sleeps with as many lights on as he can so that he doesn't have to 'face the shadows' (see what I did there...) during the night. The psychiatrist is living in a half way house with this character to study his behaviour and monitor him from day to day.

The introduction begins at night time, when the psychiatrist is getting ready to go to sleep. It is a montage of generic nighttime activity - brushing teeth, washing face etc. As she goes to sleep she reaches over and turns off her lamp on the bedside table. The screen goes black and 'Nyctophobia' comes up on the screen, then fades out and 'n. an abnormal fear of night or darkness.' replaces it.

The main narrative begins during the day. We see the psychiatrist and patient interacting together, most importantly the psychiatrist has to be detatched from all situations, always studying the behaviour of the patient rather than fully interacting with whatever he is doing. We see them in several situations, outside (possibly in the botanical gardens), shopping etc. whilst emphasising his fear of the darkness.

As the sun begins to fade we can see the patient becoming more and more agitated. the psychiatrist wants to test him to see how long he can last outside whilst it is getting dark, however he becomes too much to control and they have to go inside to the intense brightness of the half way house. We then follow the psychiatrist into her study where she begins making notes and observations from the day. We hear a telephone call where she begins to complain how difficult the project is and how she wants to finish the case study as soon as possible so she can go back to normality. The phone call could be held with a neighbor who will be introduced later on.

The next scene shows the patient playing on a video game/watching a movie (possibly) when suddenly, the TV cuts out, and then the lights suddenly go down. The screen is blank, perhaps except for some highlights from a street light outside? We hear profanities from the patient as he starts to have a panic attack. He mentions getting outside as it is lighter out there, we hear fumbling and crashing as he forces his way outside. The psychiatrist realises where he has gone moments later and follows him.

When outside the patient is wandering in the road, lit by streetlamps. He is panicking. All of a sudden there is bright light upon him as a car approaches. He slams his hands on the bonnet and you hear the car horn. The driver gets out and goes to check he is ok - she puts her hand on his shoulder and he reacts, he swings round and unintentionally hits her. She falls to the ground as the psychiatrist is running towards them. The driver is the psychiatrist's friend who she was talking to earlier.

The screen fades out to black. We hear a voice over from the psychiatrist explaining how the patient was readmitted to hospital for tests due to the panic attack. Her friend is fine, and she has finally got the case study finished. This voiceover could be over a repeat of the introduction, however at the end, as she goes to switch the light off she hesitates, and instead leaves it on. The shot could then fade to white(?) and the credits roll.

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That turned out to be more detailed that I thought it would!
Anyway, I think we have the better idea in the future message service - it has more character dynamics and is quirky.

I think it would be helpful to look at similar stories. The time traveler's wife (Review here --> http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/time_travelers_wife/review/) isn't exactly similar in most ways, but it has the romance aspect of a science-fiction piece that isn't often explored to the full.

Anyway, I'm going to shut up for now. See you all in the morning!!

Luke Pietnik - Huzzah!

This is just a brief post to confirm that we will indeed be doing the romantic, sci-fi comedy film that I thought up yesterday. I pitched it to Cath and Max earlier, and they really liked it. Besides anything else, it fits perfectly the brief.

All it's lacking is a title, and then we can begin writing the first draft of our script. Today we discussed at length the various practical elements of the plot. We'll need a couple of very small props, but not much else.

That's a very great weight off all our minds I think, Max's especially.

Brilliant!

Luke Pietnik - The First Hurdle

Hi, Lukee here.

Well, this week has been creative hell for all of us. Having devised 5 or 6 very detailed ideas, then having dropped them by Tuesday, I began to think that all of my creative energy had been exhausted.

We started off with some very vague notions. My first suggestion was that of a comedy chase sequence, a parody of Hollywood action movies. I also devised a couple of other ideas regarding loss of identity and an act of self sacrifice in a post-apocalyptic future.

Danny picked up on an interesting quote from one of the Psalms, which seemed to underpin nicely the ‘Facing the Shadow’ idea. Max and Cath began developing an idea that involved a man being treated for his phobia of the dark.

I began to question my comedy action thriller. I clung onto it for a while, trying to get around the practical problems it would have presented. It would have involved two characters, a hero and a villain, having a high-speed chase down-hill on scooters. The first problem I could see was that it would have been difficult to shoot, various angles and constant sound effects required. It would also have been hard to create a 5-10 minute film on the basis of this idea. Max voiced the concern on a number of occasions that comedy is difficult to write. While I did agree, I don’t think it’s any harder than writing a drama.

I decided to go back to the drawing board anyway. I was inspired partly by a Doctor Who serial from the 1970s, in which the Doctor enters a false reality, a computation matrix, and finds himself in a surreal environment in which logic does not apply:


I decided to put a human character in a bland, baron wilderness, and subject him to harsh trials and challenges. Working backwards from this, I decided to preset this world as a possible afterlife or limbo, and have the protagonist die or appear to die before he enters this environment. The film would finish with a darkness or blanket of greyscale engulfing the landscape, and the protagonist turning to face the oncoming force, as per the brief.

Once again, this idea fell down in terms of practicality. There were scenes involving strange beasts and elemental forces beyond our control. We also decided that finding a baron, featureless location close-by was going to be a problem. I then dropped this idea in favour of a completely new one that came to me on the bus, on the day that I write this entry.

My final (hopefully) film concept is that of a romantic science fiction comedy. A girl called Jenny, in her 20s, is astounded when a man appears out of thin air right before her eyes, claiming to be from the future. The truth is that Gareth is a rather reluctant employee of a gimmicky time-travel messenger service. The idea is that you pay to have messages sent back in time to friends and relatives. Jenny is bemused and a little sceptical at first, especially as it seems that this message is from herself, a much older version of herself, from the future. But these messages seem to be alluding to a relationship she is yet to have. All becomes clear when one day on a jaunt into Jenny’s past, Gareth’s hand-held time manipulator malfunctions, and he has to spend his time waiting for the link to be re-established, in the company of this young woman.

Cath and I are meeting tomorrow to try and finalise the idea that we are to pitch in Friday’s session. I believe she has polished up the original ‘fear of the dark’ concept, so it’s either that, or mine, I guess. One thing is clear though: we must finally decide tomorrow.

Gulp.

Welcome

Welcome to the Juggernaut Productions blog. Our creative team consists of:

Daniel Sieff - Script Writer
Cath Tomkinson - Picture Editor
Matthew Voyse - Camera Operator
Luke Pietnik - Sound Recordist/Mixer
Scott Marshall - Producer/Director

This blog will be assessed as part of our second year Film and Media Production course. We aim to create a 5-10 minute audio/visual project.

Wish us luck!