CAPSTONE TREATMENT

The Delivery

A UPS man by the name of Kyle stops from house to house dropping off packages to unnaturally happy neighbors.  Delightful, carefree music plays in the background and the neighbors endlessly praise Kyle and treat him like a hero.  As he stops from house to house, a pair of eyes follows him from some cracked blinds in a window sill just across the street.

Kyle unsuspectingly approaches the house where the eyes belong and pulls with a small package.  He rings the doorbell, the door flies open, and he’s yanked inside.  Everything goes dark.

Kyle wakes up in a blurry haze and he realizes there’s a ball and chain around his ankle.  Before him stands Reggie, a fat and awkward man with blurry glasses.  Reggie tells him that he’s kidnapped Kyle and that he is going to be his new best friend, and that they’re going to go through new best friend exercises.

The first exercise is talking about girls.  At first, Kyle refuses to even talk to Reggie, but Reggie has wired an electric shocker to Kyle’s toes, so he can zap him whenever he wants.  After a couple of zaps, Kyle relents.  He talks about his girlfriend Victoria, and Reggie talks about his infatuation for Sarah Michelle Geller, and shares the photoshopped photos and collages he’s made.  Throughout the conversation, Kyle tries to be as unpleasant as possible, but that just makes Reggie pity him as another person that just needs a friend.

The next day, after a terrible night’s sleep on a bed of newspapers, Reggie renames Kyle to Gus because he likes that name more.  After feeding Kyle/Gus a meager breakfast of an undercooked Hot Pocket, Reggie forces Kyle to play Super Smash Bros with him.  Kyle gets excited because he could probably beat Reggie so hard that he won’t want to be friends anymore.  Kyle beats him, but then make a team match where it’s three-on-one against Kyle.  When Reggie wins, he does an obnoxious victory dance that he’s been dying to do.

During this, we see the neighbors across the street discussing amongst themselves why the UPS truck has stayed parked in the same spot overnight.  They’re a too-perfect couple whose home is immaculate, and they dress like their straight from the 50’s.  The husband smiles brightly and talks chipperly to his wife, but turns and screams at his dog for sitting on the sofa.  They’re totally oblivious that there might be a problem across the street.

We see Kyle and Reggie making macaroni art.  Reggie has decided that they would do portraits of each other.  While they make the art, Reggie talks about the practice of meditating to expanding your mind to greater truths--that’s how he discovered that cats can speak to aliens and that the Illuminati is responsible for the plague that destroyed the dinosaurs.  Reggie finally shows his art to Kyle, and it looks like it was made by a first grader.  Kyle shows his macaroni art to Reggie, and it’s the image of a donkey.

That night, Kyle can’t sleep.  In a whim of desperation, he takes Reggie’s advice and meditates for a means to escape.  After an intense zooming shot on his face overlaid with overwhelming, chattering sound effects, his eyes snap open in clarity.

The next morning, Kyle announces to Reggie that he is leaving that day.  Through meditation, Kyle has discovered that he’s the protagonist in a really crappy senior capstone film project, and that the ball and chain around his ankle is just a prop.  He yanks it off his leg and sprints to freedom, Reggie on his heels.

Kyle runs up the stairs and bursts out the door while Reggie’s mom makes a sandwich in the kitchen not far away, and Kyle hops in his UPS truck, but it won’t start.  Reggie has caught up to him.  Kyle jumps down from his truck, ready for a fight, but then Reggie pulls out a nail-spiked baseball bat, saying that if he won’t be his best friend, no one will be.  Kyle takes off running, again with Reggie on his heels.

Not far away, two police officers named Phil and Dave stand outside their patrol car watching a UPS guy and a nerd running down the street screaming.  They lazily ask each other over donuts if they should do something about the situation.  After a little hesitation, they shrug and decide they probably should.

We see Reggie being forced into the police car, and Kyle thanks them for saving his life.  Phil and Dave pull up their britches and humbly tell him it’s all in a day’s work.  They ask what Kyle is going to do now that he’s a free man.  He tells them jokingly that he’s going to Disneyland, and they start to laugh… for too long.  Other people passing by start to join in the laugh fest, including many of the neighbors from the area.  Kyle eventually feels awkward as the laughs unnecessarily escalates, and just walks away.

As we watch him, we fade to black.  Roll credits.

Darrin Fletcher, Storyboard Artist/Director

What stuck out most to me of what Darrin Fletcher said in class yesterday is that there are a thousand different ways that you can become a director.  Of all the directors he's worked with in the film industry, each one has had a different rise to their directorial debut.  He talked about the tenacity each person has to have in order to eventually make it in the movie industry, and that it's important to form your own style after looking at the work of so many others.  Fun fact: he's also worked on the classic Transformers and Spiderman and His Amazing Friends cartoons!!
Work hard.  Be the hardest worker that you can.  That's what stuck out to me most.  He also said that if you're working on more than your first picture for free, than you're doing things wrong.  Here are some other things that I thought were really profound.
-Accept responsibility for your job.  Do your best.
-The business is 99% who you know.
-Every single project you work on is different.  Don't allow yourself to sink into a routine.  Treat each project differently.
-GREAT DIRECTORS ARE GREAT LISTENERS, and they're humble!

On top of all this, he showed us a rubric for a typical storyboard layout, and he said that a typical storyboard for a full-length feature will circle an entire room nearly from ceiling to floor.  The rubric he showed us fit on a typical sheet of paper.  On the right side, you have the widescreen borders of each shot, and to the left of each border, a description of the camera movement, lines from the script, and what's generally going on in the shot.  It was a pretty useful layout, and I can see myself using that same method on pictures I'll make in the future.

Wrapping Things Up

For the past week or so, we've been spending our class time working separately on all of our responsibilities within the production.  As of right now, my bio on Phil is complete.  I've also typed up the first draft of the synopsis, and I've sent it to Phil to get his opinion.  In class today, he told me that he would like the Pofrey Peak opening to be a little more exciting on paper so it can prime the reader for the rest of the story.  He also told me he'd like the elements of current-day Picabo talking to her younger self and the idea of implying a dual feature/documentary style.  I've been working on that pretty hard since then, but it's kind of difficult squeezing the whole synopsis into just one page...

I'll also need to type up the bio of Marshall Moore as part of the production book.  I actally couldn't find any information on him online, so as I was looking for information on him, I remembered that he gave all of us his business card during our Park City trip!  So I shot him an email, asking for a bio, and he responded in a matter of hours.  He sent me a bio and his phone number, so I got to call him up and ask him how things were going.  He was extremely cordial and polite.  I thanked him for allowing us to view the Park City studio, and he told me that he hopes I'll be working there someday!  Man, that would be so awesome...

My writing portions of the production book are due in two days, and it looks like the deadline won't be much of a problem.

Tabletop shooting, the Star, and the Final Stretch

So here's what's gone down in the past week or so.

On the 26th of March, we were supposed to have a "special guest" come speak to us, but that ended up falling through, so we ended up doing some tabletop shooting.  We took some of the trinkets we got from Dee Street's place and placed them on a lazy Susan, then twirled them slowly and got some footage of it.  Luke Jensen is a pro at it, so he set up some lights, busted out a dolly track and the Sony F55 and got some footage that we can use in the documentary.  I learned that with tabletop shooting, you want a little bit of shadow that can fall on and off the object as it rotates, so you adjust lighting as such.  Kind of interesting.

On Tuesday, Picabo came to visit!!  The one and only!  She spent about fifteen or twenty minutes telling us stories from her career, funny things that happened on the slopes, and then we spent the rest of the class filming her, mostly.  Ben, Luke, Dave and Judea had set up an interview setup in Studio C with the right lighting and an A cam and B cam.  Picabo sat down in a chair and she talked about riding down Pofrey Peak as a child with her friends.  It was a pretty cool story to listen to.  After that, she took the time to get pictures with the class and sign autographs and stuff.  She's a really neat lady--full of energy and really personable.  So I consider it a pleasure to have met her.

Yesterday, Phil let us know it was all go time to finalize our jobs on pre-production.  I'm on the writing team with Maddie Kelm and Keshara Bjorkman, and we apparently have more stuff we need to write for the production book than just the treatment.  We've got bios on the above-the-line crew that we need to write up, along with a disclaimer, a page outlining the benefits to investors, and a wrap-up page explaining why this is going to be the best sports documentary/feature ever.  And it's all due for us in two weeks (April 16th)!  That's for the writing team anyway.  The people working on the production book still need to compile everything together.
Here's how we've divvied up the responsibilities.  I'll write the treatment/synopsis and get bios on Marshall Moore and Phil Tuckett.  Keshara is going to get bios on the DP Ben Braten, the screenwriter Brian Strasmann, and the staff and crew, which is basically our entire class.  Maddie is going to write on the benefits to investors, the wrap-up page, and the disclaimer page.  So that'll be due in two weeks!

The Screenwriter, the Mini-Doc, and the Production Book

Last Thursday, I had the chance to meet with Brian Strasmann along with Maddie Kelm and Phil Tuckett.  Our meeting objective was to bounce ideas off each other relating to the Picabo Street screenplay, and Brian had some good thoughts.  Honestly, he had written a screenplay in the past about a ski racer that's eerily similar to Picabo's story.  We talked about the opening scene being an epic bike race down the hill where Picabo used to work during the summer as a kid.  She and her friends would throw their bikes in her dad's truck and race down the mountain where they hauled rocks for construction.  It would be an exciting way to begin the movie.

Also, during the weekend, I managed to complete my mini-documentary/vlog about our Park City trip a couple of weeks ago.  The finished product ended up being longer than expected, but a nice way to practice a little more with filming and editing.







Today, we discussed production books.  Phil gave us an example of a film that almost happened called Team 51.  The production book was pretty solid, with bios of all the crew working above the line, actors they were interested in, locations they had picked out, a budget summary, and examples of other independent films that did well in the box office.  I'm planning on keeping the production book as an example for future projects.

ESPN Picabo Documentary

We watched an ESPN documentary about Picabo Street in class today.  It was a fairly rudimentary documentary.  While we watched I got some cool ideas for the feature aspect of our own production.

First off, I think it would be great to emphasize how Picabo got into partying and got kicked off the US Ski Team.  I think some intense workout scenes in Hawaii would be fantastic too, as kind of her turning point.
I'd also like to make it clear how people were often annoyed by her because of her cockiness.
Her major injury in 1998 would be another plot point where she loses her "tiger."  She's not fearless anymore.
I think the winding down theme of the film should be "There is success in doing your best." That way our feature-documentary has some sense of a resolution at the end.

Brian Strasmann: Screenwriting Presentation

Yesterday, we were privileged with having Brian Strasmann come into class and lecture us on the process of writing a treatment and screenplay.  He's worked in Hollywood for a number of years and worked on films such as Free Willy, so he's been in the filmmaking game for a while.

He explained to us a four-page structure for getting down the story for a winning screenplay.  First off, he recommended that we know our beginning, middle and ending.  That's important.  His four page structure went a little something like this:

1/2 page on the opening scene, condensed and specific.
1/2 page of a general narrative synopsis of the first act.
1/2 page of a dramatic recreation of a plot point, condensed and specific.
1 page narrative synopsis summarizing the second act, fairly general, naming four obstacles for the main character to overcome.
1/2 page of a dramatic recreation of a plot point at the end of the second act, specific and condensed.
1/2 page narrative synopsis of third act.
1/2 page dramatic recreation of the ending scene, specific and condensed.

He said this model works for anything from a short film to a full-blown feature length.  Of course, ours is going to have to be modified a little bit because it's a dual feature-documentary thing, but I'm going to meet with Brian and Phil tomorrow along with some other writers to discuss how to exactly implement this for our project.

VHS Tapes of Research

So, over spring break, Phil assigned each of us in class to browse through 8-10 VHS tapes that involve Picabo Street.  All of them were tapes we acquired at Dee Street's house.  The objective was to go through each tape and find footage that we might be able to use in the documentary.

I found some pretty good stuff.  I had some tapes from the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, so there were lots of things like interviews and ski runs.  I made sure to record the approximate times of when they showed up in the tapes.

But then I had stuff like the 1998 Miss America Pageant!  Like... what the heck?  Maybe Dee just mixed up some of her personal tapes with some of the stuff from Picabo's career.  It was kind of funny, but I can't say that I found tap dance numbers and 1990's haircuts super fascinating.

But the deed is done.  We'll probably have to acquire rights from the Olympics organization to show some of the footage I found in our documentary, and hopefully that's not too big of a hastle.

Sound

Yesterday, our class trekked out to the Holland building to record some ambient sound for Art and Libby's Amazing Adventure.  The sound was recorded by none other than Ben Braten.  The sound consisted of us getting up from our chairs and chattering and zipping up our backpacks and stuff.

A lot of the things that Ben taught were things I had been taught in my motion picture production class last semester.  It was things like being careful of ambient sound and room noise and stuff like that when you're recording.  He kind of explained the different shotgun mics we have and briefly went over lav mics and what to be wary of when you set one up.  I worked sound on our final project in that class so I feel fairly confident when it comes to handling that.

Good shtuff!

Park City Research Trip

I kind of loved this trip that we spent at Park City over the past few days.

We packed fourteen filmies into two minivans and trekked up to Midway to check in at our hotel on Thursday.  We reached it at about 8:00pm--the Zermatt, a four-star shindig.  We got dinner that night and spent the rest of the evening chilling at the hotel.

Friday was our busiest day.  We got up at about 8:30am to take a tour of the major movie studios being built outside Park City.  It was an absolute fortress.  And we had to wear safety vests and hard hats because it was still under construction.  But we got to meet some incredible people so that was a fun experience.

After that, we spent most of the day at Dee Street's place, collecting various goods for the documentary.  It's amazing how much trust she placed in us.  She let us handle things like Picabo's ski uniforms, her medals, and even an Olympic torch.  Being on the writing team, I got to sit and chat with her a couple of times and she just told me stories from Picabo's childhood.  I wrote all of them down in my book so I could use them for the treatment.

We spent the rest of the evening seeing Park City, which I had never done before, and I loved it.  The lights, the shops, the people... it was so compact and crowded and exciting.  Most of us spent our time trying to find a place to eat that wasn't already super packed, but we managed.  Then it was back to the Zermatt so we could be up by 8:30 the next morning.

Saturday morning we went back to Dee's place so we could finalize our research.  That only took a couple of hours, then we came home!  Phil said that it was one of the most productive research trips he's had in his whole career of film.  So I guess we got some good work done!  And it doesn't hurt that we all had a blast in the process.

La Macha, Phil's Capstone Advice

Today we had the opportunity to watch a bit of "Lost in La Macha," which focuses on the failed production of "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote."  This is a film which was directed by the A-list director Terry Gilliam.
I think the reason we watched this film was to illustrate what could go wrong in the pre-production of a movie.  From my speculation... everything that could have went wrong went wrong in the production of this film.  They had actors bail on them, they didn't effectively scout locations, and even some of the props were falling apart before production even began.
On the first day of shooting, they were out shooting a desert scene and the actors had never rehearsed.  On top of that, they were right next to a military testing base with planes flying over frequently.  So their entire day was basically ruined because of poor planning.

During class, Phil also pulled me in to talk about my capstone.  He recommended that I put together a treatment for my short film, so that'll be what I work on this semester.  But I wouldn't just like to stop there, I want to see if I can get the first draft of a script written up.  So that's something I'll be working on.
My idea revolves around a nerdy no-friend dweller that orders a package via UPS so the UPS guy will drop it off at his house... then the nerdy dweller kidnaps him and forces him to hang out and be friends.  I think It has some potential. :)

Larry Groupe Lecture

I get kind of excited whenever we have someone really reputable come speak at DSU, particularly when that person has been nominated for a major award, like a Primetime Emmy.
Larry Groupe came and spoke to our pre-production class, and it was really cool listening to him talk about the process of film scoring.  He primarily works on features, but he's done a lot of work on short films and documentaries as well.  He conducts and mixes the music himself, along with the visual cues from an edit of a film, then hands it over to the director.  Sometimes the director while ask for some things to be added or taken away here and there, and after those are all taken care of, the music will be put into the movie along with the dialogue and sound effects to be mixed.
What stuck out to me the most was that Larry was focused on the emotion of the song.  That's what it's all about.  The music for a scene should set the foundation of the purest emotions of what the subject feels, or what the director wants the audience to feel.  He illustrated it by showing some clips on projects he's worked on, including the ridiculous comedy, "The Cable Guy."
Larry looks to composers such as Bernard Herrmann for really capturing the essence of emotion when it comes to film scoring.  He mentioned a scene in "Psycho" where the entire scene is a 4-minute shot of a woman driving in the rain.  Totally boring.  But through the right score, Herrmann illustrated the mood and the character's thought process.  Through music!
Kind of incredible, don't you think?

The Book, the Producer, and the Associate Dean

Finally got my copy of Picabo Street's book today!  I've looked over her biography a little bit online, but it's nice to have something that will give me a more comprehensive look into her life.  Phil said that she might be able to hook us up with a budget of nearly $500k to $1 million!!  That's absolutely insane!  It's kind of making me feel the pressure of what kind of production this is going to be... we're not fooling around here.

Also, we had Sandra Schulman of Columbia University come and lecture us last Thursday on some of the red tape aspect of the film industry.  She's helped a lot with independent films throughout her lengthy career as a producer, and she even helped found the Independent Feature Project!  As of right now, she's founding a company called IndieCollect, which catalogs all independent films made in America (I think).
She also asked an important question while she lectured us. "Why are you going into film?"  Is it to make money?  If that's the reason, then you should probably stop now.  Are you an entertainer?  Is it a way to express yourself?  I think I'm doing it because movies is something I've always loved and I positively love being involved in making them!
At the end of her lecture, she got kind of emotional... I hardly ever see guest speakers, or professors for that matter, tear up at the end of a lecture.  She kind of wished us luck in our ventures and told us if we have a dream or a passion, don't let it go!  Don't let it go!  It was really something special.


Today, we had Doug Wellman come and speak to us.  It was kind of funny, because I was talking with Tyler and Colby before class about how I wanted to meet the guy, and then he just showed up to class!!
He's a former associate dean of USC School of Cinematic Arts, which is the best film school in the country.  He took our entire class period lecturing about the role of a producer, project insurance, and copyright.  Insurance?  Insurance??  It's a good thing he came by and explained those things, because insurance never would have crossed my mind when it comes to making a film.  That's why I go to college for these things, I guess!  But he was very engaging and articulate, and it sounds like he may be joining the family of film teachers by next semester!  That'll be so awesome!!