The Hands Beneath Your Feet – Mid Term Documentation

My mid-term documentation for ‘The Hands Beneath Your Feet’.

Here are exported pages of my mid term documentation pdf. (File is too huge to upload as a whole pdf document)

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Video Sketch Assignment – Experimental Technique

The assignment is to experiment with one experimental technique used in the film ‘Man with a Movie Camera’. I chose the soviet montage editing technique with this short video sketch assignment. The attempt is to cut a series of unrelated images together to recreate a meaning of its own.


Footages used are my own from my recent trip to laos/bkk shot on separate days, separate locations. Meaning recreated is basically about a man who, through his attempt to find relief from his knowledge of his wife’s adulterous nightlife behaviour, got into a road accident.

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Photo Assignment – Week 1-3

A series of 10 photographs to illustrate the idea of an experimental film.

This series of photos is taken from my Jan trip to Laos which I felt encapsulated the experimental idea. The trip was an experimental one from planning stage – with no idea what to expect at such cheap prices, like paying $15 for 10 consecutive ziplines, but it turned out great. From looking at kids appreciating their experimental playground, to taking a selfie on a bicycle on my way back from retrieving my camera battery charger, to crashing a local banquet for free beer, to swimming on an 11 degrees day, to our virgin hot air balloon experience with no safety instructions given and no safety precautions besides clinging on to our dear basket and cameras and lives, this short trip was simply yo-laos and an experimental film itself if i could record it all down.

I chose my photos based on how it summarised the experience of the moment in one shot, hoping to get a colour scheme going on, and matching the first shot to the last.

My idea of experimental film is about putting together a visual experience, showing how it feels, through an indirect piece that is not your conventional narrative drama structure, script and shots.

Pitch

Waking Up

Fresh out from his 7-year jail term, a young 28 y.o. ex-convict Jabez now works as a chef and is determined to turn away from his mistakes and lead a new life. With a new found faith through a prison warden, he goes to church but is still conflicted with fully putting behind old ways. An ongoing conversation with two of his best gang buddies reveal his struggles to reconcile with them because of the difference in principles and goals they now have. Helping them would mean returning to old ways, yet he can’t bear to see his friends living in the dark. After rationalising, he realises that his only way of saving them is to bring them to the light. Reveal: the conversation ends up as a police bait in which the police sought his cooperation to bust his friends on their drug trafficking. Twist: he decides to serve the jail term with his friends so as not to betray his conscience of being a brother.

Inspired by Jabez’ story
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-convict-cooked-for-death-row-prisoners

I found it interesting – the idea of how someone having done all the wrong things knowing that they were wrong, finally come to terms of being ‘wrong’ – finally seeing the light – his potential

Themes:
existential crisis, meaning of life, friendship

Narrative style to experiment:
1) Introspective voice of the main character, (inspired by Chungking Express, Wong KW) audience has access to his thoughts – as though he is talking to the audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAXtjH3EmLs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ1VQzxwSFo

In the case of my story, he wonders about his prison experience, lessons, dreams, biblical references

2) Intersecting thoughts (with audience) and normal dialogue (in story)

Scene Analysis for Directing Actors Workshop

This is the final scene of the short.

Concept: The entire story is told mainly from our protagonist Amos’ POV, and this scene rebuilds to a rather intense moment for Amos where he makes a decision.

screenplay-by-kayue

In this scene, there will be 2 main characters:

Amos – 14 year old boy faced with a moral issue of joining his friends in shoplifting.

Man – a passer-by who noticed the boys (Amos’ friends) taking things in the shop.

Breakdown

1: Amos standing a distance away from the shop (at a bus stop) but decides to go over to take a look

2: Man parks his bicycle outside the shop. As he did, he notices the boys inside.

3: Amos notices the man, hesitates, but confronts him with a lie of borrowing a phone.

4: Man struggles to stop the boys from stealing but instead getting stopped by Amos

5: Phone drops, man is distracted, boys escapes, Amos apologises profusely.

6: Amos walks away as the man continues into the shop. Amos receives a text message from the leader friend saying ‘thanks’. Amos is unsure of how to react.

Short Film Initial Idea

Logline

An after-school event with his thrill-seeking friends got Amos to question a moral that even an adult, let alone the adolescent, would have otherwise taken for granted.

Theme

A subtle, hopeful critique on the modern perception of morality, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, through a basic/foundational example and through the eyes of a thinking adolescent.

Underlying: Morality is increasingly undermined. (In youth?)

Synopsis

At Secondary 1,  Amos followed his friends out of school after class. As 13-year-old teens and bored of routine, one of them suggested lunch, in a different way. Instead of eating at the school canteen as they always did, they changed out of their uniform and headed for the market near their school.

Amos followed, without knowing their plans, but suspicious as the refused to tell him. Amos watched as his friends slipped into a semi-crowded 7-eleven. They carried out smart diversion plan and a stroke of luck, they successfully stole a packet of chips and ice-cream.

Once they got out, grabbed Amos, ran to the nearby soccer court, cheered and ate. Amos was, however, still taken aback. He questioned their actions but his friends rebutted him with reasons not exactly ‘right’, but not ‘wrong’ either. (That they had little pocket money, and it was fun, they weren’t harming anyone anyway). They accused him for being a good mama’s boy, by-the-book, and not having his own thinking. They warned him not to tell anyone of the incident.

However, his friends responses got him thinking. He didn’t want to be associated with his friend’s ‘lousy/low’ opinions of him. Amos returns home. He asked his mum who was busy with chores, ’Ma, what’s wrong with stealing?’ Mum gave him some okay reasons that didn’t convince him. (Thinking in other’s POV, how would you feel if someone stole from you.) (Mum is there to portray how normally even adults don’t question deeper certain morals.) She ended by saying that it was ‘just wrong’. She warned him against hanging out with bad company.

Amos went to school the next day. After school, again, and his friends gathered. ‘Guy i still don’t think its a very right idea.’ His friends brushed him away by saying… stuff. Leads to a slightly heated argument in school. But with some pressure, Amos joined his friends on another trip to the market but refused to be part of the action.

While his friends went into the shop, Amos stood a distance away.

A passer-by, middle-aged man, spotted their act from outside, was about walk into the shop but a reluctant Amos noticed him, went ahead to divert his attention. His friends slipped away, leaving him relieved.

Yet, it left him uncomfortable. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t sure as well.

[Ending for now, figuring a more interesting way, and very possibly adding elements.]

Style

Hoping to adopt the styles of ‘Mommy (2014)’, ‘Victoria (2015)’ and ‘Rosa (2014)’ with handheld camera movement and taking a more dynamic, raw narrative approach.