Luke Pietnik - Blog Archive

21st February 2009:

So yesterday was our first group project session, and we have decided that Verity shall act as project manager, Amy the camera operator, Max the sound recordist, Will the picture editor, and I myself will be sound editor. I’m fairly happy with this arrangement. Verity seems to be able to organise the group well enough, and was relatively decisive initially. Amy acknowledged that she would like to use the camera to expand her knowledge about its operation. We all agreed that the best way for her to become more confident with the technology was for her to immerse herself in the role. Max wasn’t set on taking any particular role, but we agreed that it would be better all round if he were to do the sound recording. I shall work in conjunction with him to hopefully bring professionalism to the overall sound design. Will was keen to edit the visuals, he and Max both having confidence in his skills in this particular area of production. I am confident that I am proficient enough to develop the ideas of the group and implement them when constructing the soundtrack.

I’m probably going to opt for a more surreal or abstract concept and I can imagine that Will is going to go for something rather more macabre. Those are first impressions, and I can’t think what the others might come up with. With no definition, the ‘journey’ brief is a rather general, unlimited subject area that I’m sure we can exploit to create a more interesting, lateral concept. Still, Optimism prevails.

23rd February 2009:

Verity has arranged a meeting for the 26th of February. I’m convinced that she is able to act ably as project manager. Max and Will may be late, but we realised this when it was too late to rearrange, because at least two of us had altered our schedules to make way for it. I’m sure they will be there for a majority of the meeting so that we can get a few things clear and discuss initial ideas. I have conceived of an idea involving a series of locked rooms, and a journey through them, puzzles testing the protagonist. I also thought about having someone being killed in a car crash and trying to get possession of a halo, eventually journeying to the afterlife. The other ideas are, at this point, very general, but I’ll discuss them with the group and see what their reactions are.

27th February 2009:

Having had our first meeting to discuss our ideas, I’m feeling optimistic about the project. We seem to work well as a group, and I’m confident that the shooting and post-production should come together really well. We have between us some very innovative and interesting ideas. I’m sure that we will be able to focus in on the proposals as time passes to make them all watertight. I’m thinking about developing a more fantastic, other-worldly story to disillusion and perplex the audience without alienating them. I’m thinking in terms of locked rooms and vertical journeys, downwards, perhaps suggesting an emotional descent. I’m in two minds about Will’s idea, which has some technical drawbacks and practicality problems. His proposal features the son of a magician who is put off the idea of magic at the loss of his father. He then has this spirit rekindled by a magic show that he sees on TV. He is then inspired to take up magic. Besides the fact that it wavers slightly from the initial pitch (which is fine), it features at least two characters, father and son, who both have to be able to perform a reasonable amount of conjuring tricks themselves. This is obviously a problem.

Max’s idea was interesting. The concept of voice-overs and cryptic phone messages being used to convey his loneliness was a nice one. It was a little depressing, being confined to a room for most of the time, and I thought that the heartbreak and emotional journey subject matter was rather an overused concept. That said, the idea runs with the journey brief and does something interesting with it, so we’ll see how that goes. The girls’ ideas are still only at a very general level, Verity expressing interest in doing a day-in-the-life type progressive journey. Of my ideas, the two that got the best reception within the group were those that I spent the most time conceiving. The journey through a series of identical rooms, with puzzles to test the protagonist was popular indeed. The other favourite was that of the idea involving a man who is killed in the prime of his life in a car crash, and has to find his way out of limbo, which I am becoming fonder of as time passes. So we’ve got another meeting on Monday to organise ourselves before the big pitching session on the Thursday, and I’m interested to see what treatments everyone comes up with.

2nd March 2009:

Well today’s meeting at the hubs went well. Everyone managed to come up with a rather appealing treatment. Will stuck to his original idea, as did Max. We discussed the practicalities of both of them. We suggested that Max’s idea could include a shocking ending, with him answering the phone and talking to his sweetheart, who it turns out, is a man. This would create a journey of self discovery. Max wasn’t very enthused by this idea, wanting to keep the ending ambiguous. Will’s idea is flawed because of its lack of practicality, but we agreed that we could probably just pull it off, the magic being a product of camera trickery more than anything. Verity conceived of an idea in which a number of disparate individuals, who had never met, would converge during a single catastrophic event. She dubbed it “Collide”, and I was very ken to explore the possibilities of this idea. Amy’s treatment was workable, and I was pleased that she’d taken a good bit of time to mull over the possibilities of what she could put forward. This was the first we saw of her idea, but it was relatively effective.

My proposal is as follows:

Driving home from work one evening, Stewart Cole has to take a detour from his usual route, and swerves to avoid a careless animal. His car impacts against a tree, killing him instantly. He is suddenly confronted by the image of his lifeless body strewn across his own dashboard. To Stewart’s mind, he was a selfless individual. He did a lot for charity, did everything he could to reduce his carbon footprint, and always had a strong sense of ethics. So why the hell did he get run down, why was he the bloody unlucky one!? Just this once, Stewart desperately needs answers.

To guide him through the afterlife, and deliver him beyond this mortal realm, another ghost joins him, Mike. Mike is a strange character, being rather unenthused and sarcastic about the whole endeavour. Together, Stew and Mike decide to find out if there is a reason for this unfortunate event. They begin to Talk, and visit Stew’s home. So, why did Stewart Cole draw the short straw, why was his life taken so early? Well, after a brief discussion, they come to the only logical conclusion. Who knows? Leaving these worries behind him, Stew passes on, into an unknown void of whiteness. Even in the afterlife, the universe is an utterly incomprehensible mystery.

6th March 2009:

Yesterday was the pitching session. We started out by reviewing everybody’s treatments. Max had completely revamped his intended idea, now presenting a post-apocalyptic thriller, almost akin to 28 days later. There were budgetary issues, but it was acceptable as a concept. I’d tightened up my idea, the character originally called ‘Mike’ now being nameless. Verity and Amy’s ideas were now taking shape, ‘Collide’ now including a character who can predict the future, taking inspiration from the Final Destination franchise. Will’s was looking a lot more conceivable now, too. We tried to break down our ideas in terms of shots and performances, weighing up the pros and cons of each. In the end, we settled on my supernatural comedy ‘Who Knows?’, and Verity’s ‘Collide’ idea. We wanted to do something a little more out there and perhaps disillusion the audience a little.

Having narrowed it down, we then formulated a pitch that max and I would present to the panel. We thought that with two people pitching it would be more succinct and get to the point quicker. I was worried about my voice (which is playing up at the moment), so we agreed that I would provide the initial synopses and max would fill in the details. I could then chip in with info as and when.

When the time came for the actual pitch, I was rather nervous, and tried to talk confidently through the nerves, but I got rather flustered whilst trying to explain ‘collide’ which led to confusion. Chris and Malcolm were rather disillusioned by the premice. Despite this, they saw ‘Who Knows?’ as flawed, and decided that we would produce ‘Collide’. They felt that logistically, the supernatural comedy was ambitious, not to diminish the ambitious nature of ‘Collide’, or course. However, that is apparently much more achievable, and boy, am I looking forward to seeing what we come up with!

10th March 2009:

Max sadly couldn’t make it to the meeting today. It should be said however that this was not down to bad organisational skills or a lack of time management, but his illness. He’s reportedly going deaf in one ear (bless him), so we hope he’ll get better soon, well in time for the next meeting. Anyway, the first thing we cleared up, pretty much immediately, was the script. Amy and Verity suggested that Will write it, but we had agreed (Me and Will) that we should co-write it, and that if Max was better, he could have some input. We were concerned that if we left the scripting too late because of Max’s illness, we’d have wasted too much time on that stage of the pre-production. We have therefore arranged to meet on Tuesday 17th March to write the script. We thought also that a good time-saver and initial idea generator was having the storyboard drawn up as the script is being written. We can then split the group into two co-producing factions so that we aren’t all huddled round a computer trying to develop a script all at once.

We also focused the ideas revolving around the narrative itself for later. We are now to have two protagonists, rather than three. This will help the film feel less crowded and flow better. Max has said that he has contacted some actors that he knows to play the characters in the film. If we don’t have ample cast for the production, or need a stand in on the day, I am sure that the members of our group, including myself, can act sufficiently in the roles. There was nothing much to discuss at the meeting, bar the filling in our sandwiches, but the issues of scripting and Max’s illness did need clearing up. (We love you, Max.)