A Treatment Of Sorts...

Yes. I have gotten as far as to write a treatment. Is it a good treatment? That's for you to decide.

Here you go for download, it's the 5th draft so far. I've done a lot of changes to cut down HARD on my locations. I went from something like 4 or 5 locations to 2. I also really cut down on my characters and number of scenes that I needed to have all of them in. Like I think I had 4 characters in 4 or 5 scenes, but now it's something like 2.

Basically, I'm simplifying things. It needs to be done sooner or later or else I'm just going to end up crying on the floor.

Ok, I've talked enough, here's the treatment.

Draft 6(Right click and save)

(This is updated from draft 5, to draft 6.)

Enjoy. Feedback if you like.

Adding Those Layers To The Bully....

One thing I feel like I'm going to struggle with a lot in this film is making memorable characters. It's so incredibly easy to fall back into the normal cliché high school stereotypes, as I would like to have my characters at least resemble that, but at the same time be something that is unique to my film.

I was watching a DVD today when they had a close up of a tape recorder, then it hit me. Everyone knows how kids always crowd around and start yelling "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" at the slightest hint of an altercation. Wouldn't that just be the bullys favorite sound? Well, my bully has got that one covered, and he doesn't need a whole group of people.

He has it recorded on his tape player, or mp3 player, or what have you. When he's about to beat someone up, he just turns it on and lets the world hear what's about to go down. Awesome? Oh yeah. Funny? I hope so.

Things happened.

I don't know if I've said it before, but the good news is that along with my school I'll be able to screen this at an actual theatre in San Francisco. That means the big screen! Exciting? Oh yeah. But that just raises the stakes even more, now it has to be like...really good. I don't know how I feel about that one.

It looks like I'm bringing on my friend Heather Maclean as Art Director for this piece as well. I've had her running camera/lighting on a few of my shoots, but I feel like she'll just like....destroy as Art Director. Lots of fun little props to build/acquire and some fun costumes as well.

Camera tests are coming up this next tuesday. Still searching for that ever allusive look...not quite sure what I want quite yet.

As I said before, I'm going to show everyone every little step of the way, so I just got finished up with a rough outline and thought I would share it.

*********SPOILERS AHEAD! DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU'D LIKE TO BE SUPRISED WHEN YOU ACTUALLY SEE IT.********

So I went and spoke with one of my teachers, then drew up an outline of the screenplay.

http://www.rdvproductions.com/forums/ti83/Outline_001.pdf

Then we talked some more, and I changed things.

http://www.rdvproductions.com/forums/ti83/Outline_002.pdf


What was originally supposed to happen, was the president was supposed to be the culprit all along, but the reason for the president to steal the brain power was because he didn't trust everyone else. I felt like this didn't fit the description of a president of a club, and it would go much better if he was a lower level member. In the second draft of the outline the real culprit becomes the VP and the VP becomes the president. I've also made the president a boy and the VP a girl, just because I'd like to use kristin as my main character.

That's another thing that has changed, the main character whom I'm focusing on is actually the president, who has much more of a character arc throughout the story.

All great films have a love interest as well, right? I don't feel like I've adequately done it in this second draft of the outline, but I plan on having the VP secretly have a crush on the president. This gives her another motive for stealing the brainpower, so he can really see her true intellect. In the end either the same thing will happen, or I may just show pictures of each person and say what happened to each of them. I always love when they do that in movies, but I'm not sure if it will be as great of an ending. It will also take away my chance to put some interesting voice over in the film.

I think that's about all that is going on right now. I'm going in tomorrow to talk about my outline again, things will change. I'm sure of it.

****************************OK YOU CAN START READING NOW, THE SPOILERS ARE OVER.****************************

I'm going to try and get this out a little bit more, hopefully more people will see it and start following along the amazing production diary of Tales of A Mathlete.

Please tell your friends, your friends friends, maybe even their friends! Because wouldn't you just love to be there since the beginning. I know I would.

I'll be posting up whatever happens in the next few days. Take care.