charecter breakdown

john. hardly an average teenage boy. when he isnt daydreaming or drinking highly volatile cocktails he is fighting crime, of course this could all simply be in his imagination. he is not very well grounded at all, constantly going into flashbacks or else simply talking in his head. i played with the idea of him being autistic or else having some other mental difference but felt that to outwardly state anything would be to critisize the audiences intelegence.

mother. the standard housewife. she is only seen making breakfast and only seen thinking about finishing her task. her charecters simplicity is meant to contrast with johns absurdity

brother. much like the afformentioned mother charecter this charecters simplicity is meant to contrast with john. he is implied to be a good studier, thinking about homework during breakfast and barely noticing john or his stunned expression.

red haired freind and short freind. these two are meant both as literal charecters and as a lesser extent the proverbial angel and devil on johns shouolders. one eggs him on do strange things like drink the strange liquid in front of him while the other is more hesitant towards it.

dr.insano PHD. this charecter is meant in many ways to be the same as john, not paying attention to the world around her and simply going about her way. she is motivated much like the old cartoon villians for the sake of evil. her motivation is not greed or pride or even hatred, but simply a lust to do that which is wrong.

props list, costume, makeup

while i was trying to go for a very nattural feel to the piece (no makeup, nattural lighting, sound effects ect) and i have already mentioned the props list i still have something to say for costume. while the charecter has several costumes throughout the piece they are usually similar. in three scenes he is simply wearing the same thing (in one case minus a jacket and in all three wearing different T shirts). in his confrontation scene he is wearing the garb of a ninja which i did to add absurdity to what was already a very unrealistic scene. i added this scene to contrast with the harsher realism of the rest of the piece

dr insano's costume of a green labcoat and rubber gloves both paints her as an absurdist charecter and an anti hero. this is the only scene in which john is not wearing green and she the only scene in which another charecter is. this is to link their charecters as different from the mainstream, isolated. the rubber gloves were meant for the sake of comedy as were the goggles but i still was trying to breach the subject of this insane villian being far more relatable to john than any of his freinds and family.

locations

after searching several locations i was able to find a good house in which to shoot. before writing i was trying to decide whether or not to make the charecter of john a homeless man or a teenager. i went with my decision of teenager for two key reasons. firstly i felt that as a teenager i was better able to do the charecter justice in writing. second much of the filming was done during christmas and many of the scenes involving him being homeless involve iether lying on the grass (or mud at the time) or what were then extremely damp park benches.

research

i did research into my genre but i was unable to find another film that was both psychological and absurdist. therefore i watched both genres individually. the best examples i found was "a beautiful mind" for psychological thriller and "monty pythons the life of bryan" for absurdism. their is a homage to the monty python style of dialogue in the confrontation between doctor insano and our protagonist "you silly evil prick"

script

here is the final version of my script. as you can see their was much that was lost on the editing floor but i feel that while the message may be somewhat bastardized it is still an enjoyable film overall

equipment and props

the equipment i used was as follows
pdx170
boom mike
2 tripods
hd camera
mac

the props list is somewhat longer
soda bottle
mustard
frozen pizza
other assorted bottles
green hat
green jeans
sword
milk
sticky note


no items from ither list proved particularly difficult to procure fortunately

short films in todays market

while short films have gotten much less attention that they once did they still have a certain sway in the industry. besides being used as calling cards or sampls they also have something of a niche market. in both europe and north america there are chanels devoted solely to short films and their viewing. the north american short film channel (creatively named i think you'll agree) is one of them.