another change o.O

Ok so I’ve been thinking about different places where I could film the store section of my opening, and I came across a roadblock. How am I supposed to film a store, which is a public space where other people would be (ew)? And would I have to get permission to even film in the store? The answer to that question:

So that’s a no go. Target also does not allow filming in store, so I started to think about how I could fix this massive problem. I got to brainstorming and I realized that I would have to completely cut the store scene from my opening. The question is how would I introduce the action figure without Iris buying it from a store? and what else can I include instead of this scene? Soooo, I came up with the idea that instead of her having to go to the store to buy a new sharpie, instead she goes to her closet (get it cause she’s stuck in the closet hah) where she finds a box of school supplies. Next to this box is a box that is labeled “Brother’s shit”. So, here I would introduce the idea that Iris had a brother, whose name has still not been decided, and something mysterious happened to him (or he just went to college. idk I wanna keep it mysterious, let me live). She gets intrigued by this box and grabs it, opening it and finding all of her brother’s old comic’s and action figures. Before she can explore the remainders of the box, she gets a text from her mom telling her she’s almost home, and she rushes to shove the box under her bed, hiding the evidence. Iris would then continue to work on her project, the whole reason why she was looking in the closet to begin with, but is extremely distracted by the contents of the box. Overwhelmed with curiosity, she grabs the box from under her bed, opens it and grabs an action figure. The end (well not really, but that’s where I’d end my opening). 

This scene will actually work a lot better than my original idea. Now that I’m not filming in a store, that gets rid of the hassle of asking if I could film there and then actually going there and spending the day filming. Plus, I wouldn’t have been able to control the lighting of the shots, which would just not look good under the fluorescent lighting of Walmart. Additionally, I cut out the scene of the flashback to the memory of young Iris, which I think is MUCH better because first of all I don’t really know that many little kids, plus convincing their parents if I could take them to a random Walmart to film would not have ended well. Overall, I think this change was extremely necessary and works a lot better than a change of setting. 

Ok, so now that I have an idea, I started to redo my story board, script and shot list.

STORY BOARD

Ok, now that the storyboard is completed, I got straight to work on my script. While writing my script I came across the perfect name for the brother: Patrick. Ok it sounds dumb but hear me out. I based his name off of Patroclus, an ancient greek warrior. Patroclus was the only one who could calm Achilles (another warrior, the greatest) when he was mad, but his death during the Trojan War greatly affected Achilles. This, however, is not why I wanted to include an allusion to his name. Instead I did it because Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. Yup, it’s true!! So I figured by alluding to the name Patroclus I could further add to the overall theme of my film, but in a very unnoticeable detail that would only be caught on by lovers of Greek mythology. It’s so subtle and I love it.

SCRIPT

Ok, script is all done. Oh and one thing I want to mention about my script was how I represented the mother. I wrote her text message in the exact way my mother sends texts. With a period a space away from the text, which I feel like is very important to include (it’s really not but I think it’s funny).

Next up is the shot list. This is literally just a written out version of my storyboard, but I still want to have it because it will be really helpful to keep track of all the shots and during the editing process, which I went more into depth in my blog post that was only about shot list creation. 

SHOT LIST

WOW ok that was a lot of changing up to do, but now I feel much more confident in my film opening. But, now that I’ve changed more than half of my opening, filming is gonna have to be pushed back a little bit. I’m gonna try my best to maybe try filming this weekend with the beginning portion, but no promises. We’ll see what happens. 

REFERENCES

Discentes. (2023, September 17). The very best men in greek mythology. https://web.sas.upenn.edu/discentes/2023/07/30/the-very-best-men-in-greek-mythology/ 

Can I film inside a walmart store? (n.d.). https://corporate.walmart.com/askwalmart/can-i-film-inside-a-walmart-store#:~:text=Out%20of%20respect%20for%20our,right%20to%20enforce%20that%20policy.