ShortCircuited

I have a confession. I am a cinephile. I love movies. I love watching them. I love talking about them. I love everything there is that has anything to do with them. Living the life of a cinephile, I started off by watching large budget Hollywood movies, moved onto classics, and then developed a specific taste for certain genres and subject matters, and all of a sudden, I have an opinion about what I watch. Eventually, I would like to make something of my own, because after all, in the words of a wise French man, more or less, the greatest form of criticism is to make a film yourself.

I don’t expect too much, probably something around 15 minutes (okay, that’s a lot for someone with no prior experience), and hopefully made before I finish university. Budget wise, well, there’s really not much to work with here. I’ll have to rely on friends who work for free, some on-location shooting, and all the good stuff associated with film realism. In the end, maybe I can find a student/indie film festival to submit the feature. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The screenplay comes first.

I’m not a great writer, and I don’t pretend to be. Since I’m just writing for myself and for my enjoyment, it does make things easier since I have very loose deadlines. I only have about four pages so far. I know how it begins, and how it’ll end, but still in the process of fleshing out the bulk in a way that is both logical and meaningful.

The story is a surrealistic and introspective take on the subconsciousness of a boy towards the girl of his infatuation. The boy sits in a state of confusion, unsure about himself and his life. When the girl shows up, he falls for her immediately, but as time passes, he begins to push away from her. He would convince himself that they simply do not belong together, that she does not care for him, and that any attempt at romance is futile. The growing despair is soon consumed by a general feeling of emptiness and dissociation. As he retreats further into a angst-driven stupor, he again catches a glimpse of her face. The carpet is yanked from beneath his feat, and his world turned upside down. All of his woes and worries suddenly became insignificant. The clouds split open with a beam of sunlight, and a choir of angels sang her name. He falls in love all over again.

The biggest problem faced with amateur film making are the technical issues. Editing isn’t so much of a problem in this day and age because of the pure awesomeness of digital video. My concerns mostly lie with the cinematography and sound recordings. As for the cinematography, we’ll use natural lighting supplemented by household lamps and tinfoil reflectors when necessary, and we’ll shoot in black and white, so we won’t have to worry about color temperature. (There are some thematic reasons for this as well, because even electric sheep dream in black and white) It would be absolutely great if we can find a camera with a manually adjustable control for exposure. In the sound department, we’d need to find some decent external microphones since the ones that come with camcorders are only good at picking up white noise.

And oh, the project was originally titled Hand Grenades and Gasoline, but have since been changed to For as Much as I Love Autumn, as a reference to the most beautiful song in the world - Short Stories with Tragic Endings by the band From Autumn to Ashes.