The tone of my film <CALL> was set when I started studying ‘The Art of Microbudget’ course, it was where I started to get in touch with writing screenplays, scripts, and the film sector, basically starting from 0. The most difficult thing for me was that I’m not confident. I didn’t know how to conceive the content, or how to attract the audience, and I didn’t believe that I could write a good script. When I started to learn to write scripts, my script was often denied by myself, my thinking was always blocked, and I didn’t know where to start. But every time no matter how bad or outrageous my script is, my Tutor Tim will always encourage me, whether it is plain or not, I just need to write. Write about my life, work, family, experiences, feelings, and everything about me.
The reason why I wrote “CALL” is that Tim will give us different themes for us to brainstorm and write scripts to practice in class. As for me, writing a script is a process of bringing myself into the scene, I would imagine that I am the protagonist of the script and lose myself. Therefore, I would wonder if we were also actors in the script. Are we in the real world in the real world? The more scripts I write, the more I feel ignorant, and occasionally I wonder whether everything we are experiencing now is also written by others. Is what happened to us what “they” wanted to happen to us? I refer to the movie <Inception>–keep going deep into dreams within dreams to know existence. I have always been fascinated by the nature of dreams, that is, humans can create a world while dreaming, and at the same time perceive that it is a dream, but they are not aware that they are both creating and perceiving. The wandering of conscious thinking in chaos is a common technique used by many suspense movies because the confusion of subconsciousness and reality will cause the audience to have confusion in time and space logic, thus achieving the director’s so-called “brain burning” purpose. So, I boldly took the script as the blueprint and built a self-created “traversing reality” system, which is equivalent to creating a new universe, allowing the characters in the script to wake up and come to the real world to kill and replace the screenwriter who created and manipulated himself.
The creation of microbudget movies requires the wisdom and ability to “dance in shackles”. As a visual plastic art, film’s aesthetic structure is realized through the blending relationship of two dimensions: spatial modeling expression and time narrative expression. Large-scale production films rely on advanced technology platforms to produce breathtaking special effects spectacles and rely on a strong art team to create beautiful and prescribed situations, which is difficult for microbudget films to achieve. If I were going to continue working on this short film script, I would want to use more professional lighting and shooting locations, space, and color to form the visual language of the film. Characters, plots, and story backgrounds all need space and color to express visual elements, and among visual elements, light, and shadow effects are the most intuitive way of expression. The combination of light and shadow is also the most attractive one in the visual language of movies. In terms of story content, suspense movies often use suspense settings to arouse the audience’s curiosity and desire to explore. A successful suspense movie not only needs to rely on novel and unique drama structure, complex plot setting, ability to control details, and superb suspense presets, but also needs to deal with and process indoor and outdoor scene space art.
In the end, I would like to say that microbudget films can leverage the big market. The artistry and storytelling of microbudget films are their biggest advantages. In the future development process, from the core of the film’s story to the presentation of the form, the artistry will be the foothold. From the content level, a good story is the premise. Unlike big movies that can compete in stunts and scenes, microbudget movies must be made into “smart” movies, with creativity, subject matter, story, life, emotion, and sincerity. Under the condition of adhering to the theme and connotation of the film, it insists on being consumer-centered, starting from the audience’s point of view, telling stories that are closest to life in a way that the public likes to hear, opening audience channels, and meeting audience needs.
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