Chapter 3: Concepts

A few weeks ago I came across this photo:

It seems that occasionally when so thoroughly engrossed in a project or an idea you stumble onto an image that somehow mares with the way you see your work in your head.

The photo is by Henan province I came across it after reading an article online on the photographer's newest work which won the 2009 W. Eugene Smith Grant. I had several notes jotted down of similar moments, but in seeing this image I was struck immediately with a sense of the strange and densely powerful, mostly in the shape of the mounds, the light gray fog and deep green grass and the distance between I am the the man in the frame and the faces in the photos. Here was something like a passage in the image for our film - possibly even a foreboding marker - while still calling out from the photos to the very real people these two once were. Initially our main characters would come across the remnants of such an act later in the same day as the earth still bore heat and a foulish smell lingered. There's something of a mystery in this unexplained act and discovery that is so tangible that I hesitated removing it from the script last night. It, in a form I just mentioned, will appear and continue to appear throughout the film. I can't see practically - let alone tonally - jettisoning this particular act and discovery. But for now it's importance has shifted.

In our picture James and Jenny watch from afar as a disheveled man sets what we presume to be his family members onto the pyre. Since our characters don't have a moment like this nor do we pick up their story when such a thing could have happened we must then have them observe. Through others we can illuminate other actions and ideas outside of our characters experience and in a way connect them to the larger dissonance of world experiences.

It is very important to stay with our main characters, that is to say we as viewers never leave their story. This film is their experience, their point of view with the particular circumstances befalling them and the series of events that surround them and to shift with another point of view would break the spell that is being cast: as viewers transcending our experiences and falling along the path of these two. It is through their observations that we grasp any larger sense of the world which expands their range of experiences - coloring their opinions of others, of themselves, heightening the fears and doubts in their abilities, pulling these two travelers apart and bringing them together.

As of now the days are getting bleak and the worst is yet to come. So it helps to set up these markers with increasing tendency as we move forward...

Chapter 2: First Draft

We're finally out in the open, so to speak, but questions remain. We have the squabbles and the lines and circumstances leading us from this place to that. The obstacles James and Jenny's encounter are beginning to shuffle between the chapters. The real organization issue though, I am finding now, is character based. I want to know what they're thinking. I want to hear their observations of the world, and know more about them in the sense one gets by oral storytelling - the stories one tells over and over to people they first meet - "the time when...."

Then there are artifacts - the photos and keepsakes - I'd like to see those. What you take and what you jettison over time. What importance was once laid upon an object and what must have changed when the object is discarded. In this we open the door a little wider to the things that make one person shape their view of another. This would hold true for Jenny to James, in reverse, and to us as viewers - hopefully participants.

And the simple actions to clean, and groom and keep oneself healthy. The act of shaving of seeing your bald face or of washing your hair. I have an image of a cool blue dawn in which Jenny cuts James hair back with a razor in a clearing in the woods. Something deep and truthful resides in this image. Somewhere there is a place for this.

Chapter 2: Concepts

Over the past two years that this story has taken shape - and even longer in some crude, primordial form - there are images incredible and powerful and simple and they must fall into their own places. Recently, when I had to make some order of this journey and begin to shape the development of these characters through each Chapter I fell upon a technique I seem to use in a pinch and used so on previous screenplays - which equals to scribbling down all unshakable scenes, obstacles, or exchanges on the nearest scrap of paper, then scribbling down all characters and assigning each a letter. Further on down the page I would line up these key scenes or exchanges, obstacles, images, etc. in order to a character's letter in an attempt to develop character, shuffling along the way what brought important ideas or development or mysticism to the surface, and discarding what wouldn't. Finally, I would renumber the scenes as needed.

It looks somewhat like this:

* Note: these moments are independent of this particular film
[but I'd love to see them as structure for a future short]

In this final shuffling people get dropped in and out of scenes, other scenes get combined, a key exchange gets bumped to another scene to allow a series of events to emphasize external (or internal conflicts) that force our characters to make decisions and so forth. I am speaking in generalities here - to not reveal too much of the storyline. But know that images that come from deep recesses in the mind are often shifted over between practical story points, some would use the word "plot" here - and these important images and exchanges I cant shake them. They are key in mood and that is among the most important elements of the film. They can be squeezed out of existence due to circumstance and they can take on new meanings when moved.

As you can see the point in which two people are "staring, unsure, alone" could highlight all sorts of different relationship dynamics if say it was third in order or even first and even repeated again in accordance with other characters.

If anything, I can sense these important unexplained mystical images coming together - fulfilling new meaning - when I just scatter them on the page then arrange them. And it helps to know when things are getting too organized and I need to chop it back up a bit.

Chapter 1: First Draft

It's done! But not long ago it was July 23rd, 2009. The rough draft was completed hours before picking up the rental car and heading down to North Carolina to have face time with our principal actors and do some location scouting. After going through a read through the principal actors, I noticed some rough language, clearly of my rush to finish the thing and get the essence of what I wanted to say. There were several places that needed a little more thought and personality to come through in the exchanges between characters. I was also able to see how they both spoke in a way that my memory wasn't able to capture. I can really see these two as the characters and I think it will subsequently inform the writing of their dialog.

This trip played a role in the shaping the first draft, which was completed last night. There are now clearer exchanges between the characters of James and Jenny in a few key moments, and the aggression between the punks and metal heads in the basement shelter. But I also see a few areas that need development: moments, exchanges. And there are also scenes that need to get axed for the sake of pace. So there will be a second draft. This thing has blossomed to 18 pages and I think that's 5 more than I really was willing to go, or thought the audience would be willing to let us go. But nearly everything feels important in setting up the problem at hand and the characters as they are before they go through, for sake of cheap reference, passages.

I hope you'll be interested in reading this as we go along in making what I assume will be an overwhelming, exciting, extremely low-budget, hi-concept film.

Thanks,

John

A Broad Outline

This film is about a two strangers and their journey that twists through desperation, hope, loss and survival in the aftermath of mass societal breakdown.

For fifty-five days a small group of punks and metal heads locked in a bomb shelter have been surviving on mass supplies, and little else, because they know at some point their neighbors who have been tearing at their door will eventually break in, taking their food and their lives. After escaping and wandering through the city scavenging and fighting looters, they decide to head to the mountains where there is land to farm and perhaps shelter to build far from the descending urban chaos. And so begins their journey. Along the way they must overcome man, nature, and disease and one another as their will to survive and their spirit to endure is tested. Their struggle and dedication to love and forgiveness in the face of total plight keeps them together untill the very end.

The film follows the journey in episodes, each more or less centered on obstacles as the film spans a ten month period starting two months after power shuts down.