“He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms.”

Our group’s objective of this studio is to make a short film. We are required build everything from scratch basically based on this prompt.  This reflective report will show how our group formed the early stage of the film. The report also addresses my individual process as well as raises problems that need resolution.

I got a romantic feeling when we received the prompt. This sounds like a quote in the classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’. In fact, this prompt was taken from ‘Badlands’ (1973) directed by Terrence Malick. According to Mehring (1990),” If your screenplay does not emerge from your inner need to know; to express; to share; and to integrate, it will lack vitality and significance”,  I came up with the idea of a woman artist who is experiencing her final moment after fighting with a deadly disease for a long period of time. ‘Death’ in a form of a man is always with her. However, the concept was too broad and complex. Then we shrink the idea to a smaller scale: a little girl and ‘Death’ in a shape of a little boy. We tried to explore the theme “friendship and death” which is feeding on the innocence and carefree nature of a child as well as illustrate the contrast between her and Death as a severe matter.  A lot of discussion has been through and we decided that our work will focus on exploring a friendship of a child and her imaginary friend.

Stella, an 8 year-old girl, takes us on an emotional journey as she faces a social issue at her early age. Instead of making friend and playing with other children, she forms a closed friendship with Sam, an invisible boy. The positive concept of imaginary friend is not a common theme in many mediums.  The notion of society’s abuse and corruption on children are explored by William Blake. “Drop dead Fred” is a great example of a character using her imaginary friendship as a coping mechanism although the protagonist is an adult.

Stella’s imaginary friendship is not similar to a role-playing game as children normally play. She actually believes that Sam is a real figure who always there to play with her. Caplan and Caplan’s (1974) describes “playing” as an opportunity for children to create a world where they are in control. At this stage, it is appear that our Stella is facing a social issue. As a result, she creates Sam as a solace and a way to distract herself the reality. Sam will be used as a metaphor for her own emotional progress. Sam is also an obstacle to her real life. Importantly, how we will portrait Sam is still need further discussion. According to Harter and Chao (1972), a typical girl’s imaginary friend is usually vulnerable and incompetent. The matter is that weather we should portrait Sam as a typical one or not.

In addition to Stella and Sam, we also have Stella’s mother and a neighbour girl who is as old as our protagonist. Without the presence of a man in the house will convey that Stella’s mother is a single mom. This is possible to give audiences a hint that Stella forms an imaginary form because of lacking fatherhood. The problem here is that we have not figured out what situation will make her worries about her daughter’s imaginary friendships. In their text, Tracy and Maria (2014) says that typical parents have neutral to positive feelings about their children’s invisible friend and might see them as a sign of intelligence.

In terms of cinematography, we have already had in mind a direction of how we shoot the film. As can be seen from other group’s dark and heavy theme, we want our work to have a warmer and brighter visual. There is not much commotion with a theme like ours, so our film will rely heavily on good aesthetics. Lynn Ramsey and Daren Aronofsky did give us a big influence regarding to movements, space and compositions. We will take advantage of a various filming techniques to draw attention of the audience to our main character Stella as she will be in focus. This will include close ups and point of view shots to reiterate her emotions as well as unique perspective of a child.

Another vital element to any film which is often overlooked is sound design. As David Lynch states that at least 50% of a film is sound. Ned (2011) also mentions in his article that sound in film is the element which constantly persuades the audience that they are actually witnessing a particular scene. For instance, in “Apocalypse now” (1979) by Walter Murch, a lively jungle and helicopter appear in a soldier’s mind like he is actually there. Sound can add a great deal to a scene and is an essential part of a film. It injects a whole brand new dynamic to a scene and a higher level at which audience can interact with. The reaction to the same moving images can be greatly changed depending on the sound element and can convey massage we want. I totally agree with Randy Thom in his article as he said that: “Great sound design is not something that you apply cosmetically to an existing piece of work”. Regarding to techniques, I am working on how to create a 3D sound environment to bring the audience to where our story happens. We will not use ADR for the dialogue due to our low budget and the mood swinging nature of children. We will mainly record dialogues at the location to capture the unique emotions of the child actors. A variety of sound effects such as household activities will be used to give the film a realistic sense. We also consider using music with dramatic theme for our work.

Last but not least is the location for the film. I realise that location does impact greatly on films. Shooting and recording quality will rely heavily on the location. The best option for now is Alex friend’s house with country home style in Essendon. Our main problem so far has been logistics because our group does not have our means of transportation which means we might have to travel a long distance with bulky equipment.

In short, at this stage, there are many puzzles we have to solve. At least we have ready had a vision what our product will look like.

Reference cited:

• Mehring, M 1990, ‘Theme’ in Screenplay : a blend of film form and content, Focal Press, Boston, pp. 221-230.
• Gleason, Tracy R., and Maria Kalpidou. “Imaginary Companions and Young Children’s Coping and Competence.” Social Development 23, no. 4 (2014): pp.820-39.
• Patall, Erika A., Sylvester, Breana J., & Han, Cheon-woo. (2013). The role of competence in the effects of choice on motivation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50,pp. 27-44.
• Ned D,  “The Spirit of Music” in Art. (2003); In Modern Painters.  Vol.: 16 No.: 2 June p. 68 – 71
• Caplan, Frank, & Caplan, Theresa. (1974). The power of play. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor Press.