That year, my time was pretty much consumed by the production of the science fiction short "Damage" and I never did much with my idea. Over the course of the year I toyed with the original story, adding and subtracting moments, reshaping the language and the characters, but still content to keep it on the backburner.
In 2007 I went through a severely traumatic relationship, one of those quick and nasty ones where you both spiral into a vortex of emotional masochism and sadism. Post break-up, I found myself constantly wishing the whole thing had never happened, or that the girl had never existed, or that I'd said this instead of that. Looking back on the disaster that was my relationship, I fantasized about alternate paths of action and found myself considering what parallel reality I would live in if 'd only done that one thing that would have made things more bearable.
After a while I got over my experience, (in as best as we all do), but the idea of re-thinking past experiences was something that stayed with me.
Late in 2008, a full year after my failed relationship and well entrenched within a successful one, I came back to the original story, wanting to create a little script that was simple (what a naive man I was), punchy and memorable. At the time, I was reading a lot of media philosophy, particularly McLuhan, Baudrillard and Jameson, was hungrily devouring the multimedia-saturated science fiction of J.G. Ballard and getting obsessed with Maya Deren. These elements, combined with the original story , soon formed themselves into a new story. One which took the original concept and framed it, contextualized it within a broader framing narrative. I devised a method by which the action would mostly take place in a single room, yet simultaneously be unbound by geography or chronology. My idea was to have a sterile "viewing" space, through which we would come to these wonderfully organic and alive natural moments between a boy and a girl in love. We'd watch as the relationship developed, flowered and finally rotted, all from the perspective of this single room.
Out of this, the first draft of "Alice" was written in December 2008. More of a treatment than a script, it was an extremely stripped down piece, with 5 pages and pretty much no dialogue. The character Nick was pretty much a cypher and Alice was effectively a cliched "perfect woman", worshiped by the footage. As you can see, I don't think much of it now.
In early 2009 I became determined that I would apply for FTI's OOMPF in September and, after a lot of deliberation, chose my script/treatment of "Alice". It seemed to me to be something which could be achieved for $5000.00 and potentially offered something not only emotionally raw, but visually stunning. It needed a lot of work though.
What followed was an intensive four month period of going off and on the script. At times hating it, at times being very pleased with it. Finally, I hit upon the idea of infusing the ideas I'd developed following my experiences with a failed relationship, creating what is basically the formal narrative for "Alice(remix)". I wanted to interrogate the notions I'd had of 'rewriting my past', pretty much attacking my own ideas and demonstrating how these sorts of thoughts can lead to unhealthy and even frightening conclusions. I tried to make the whole thing less conceptual and more anchored in the interactions of the two leads, humanising the thing and taking away from just being a cold thinkpiece. It was at this point I thought to incorporate John Cassavetes' "hand-held improvisation" technique (as seen in film such as "Shadows" and "Faces"). I thought this would not only provide a solid base of sympathetic interactions between Nick and Alice, but would also provide a clearer delineation between the reality of the footage and reality of the room.
With what I felt was a decent idea, I began gathering all evil to me. I mean... I started hunting for people who'd be interested in helping bring my ideas to the screen...
No comments:
Post a Comment