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This week I started writing the script for my film. I have the summary written out, so I simply need to re-write it with more detail. Since the film is mostly silent, I feel that having a storyboard format would be more useful. I'll work on getting one together, too.

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This week was the beginning of fleshing out an idea. I had been batting around ideas since last break, and I thought I'd want to do a action/hero's journey type of film, but I also liked the quietness of films we saw this year such as Gods and Monsters and The Lives of Others. Last month, while in NYC, I also had taken a few videos of walking in the city, which I thought I could use to contrast with the suburbs. At some point (probably because we were reading through the The Art Life), I also thought about a TED talk where the concept of Genius as being creatures was discussed, and I liked that idea, too. 

Since we had to base our films off The Illusionist, the concept of an action-based film didn't seem compatible to the quiet nature of that film, so I opted for the other idea about the Genius creatures. The film group agreed that we'd try to keep our films brightly colorful and mostly silent in order to keep to the style of The Illusionist and this fit well with my idea I had, so I played around with the concept of a mostly silent film about the creative process, using Genius creatures. At the end of the week I have a few designs for the Genius, the main character, and a basic storyline. Next week I'll have to fill in the details, my goal being to have a finished script+ storyboard.

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The Illusionist:

I first saw commercials for  The Illusionist when it was in theaters, but I hadn't had a chance to see it until now.
The film was beautiful, and I liked the quietness of it. But...I felt like I couldn't quite connect to the story. Part of it was that the leading girl looked older than I expected her to, and that made it hard to gauge her relationship with the Illusionist at first. (It also may have been because I had little sleep the night before. I'll have to re-watch it.)

Things to steal:
-Color palettes of the various cities
-The scene where the Illusionist was crowded on a boat with all of the sheep
-A shot of the leading girl and her love interest exiting the shop (the sidewalk was slanted)

-A shot of the leading girl first meeting the Illusionist. The Illusionist could barely be seen through the open doorway

-The shot of the leading girl and her love interest in the rain (they only had a coat while everyone else had umbrellas)

-The lonely book's shadow almost flying

-The scene where the Illusionist "interacts" with his real-life counterpart Jacque Tati

*The lack of dialogue in the movie/mixing in of languages so it's more universal