Development of Lost in You
As the Director and Writer, I wanted to bring to light a story that many of us fall into, the thought of being afraid of being alone, or was it love? The process of love is difficult, but simple enough. We tend to be stuck in the thought; the process is simple but complicated enough. In short, the film’s initial inspiration can be seen as Inception meets 500 Days of Summer.
Pre-Production
In our pre-production stage, we broke down our requirements to execute this project.
My Direction Overview:
Student short films tend to get lost in the details of complexity, how can we develop a difficult emotion, but simple enough that it challenges our audiences’ assumptions?
In order, we developed the following:
Script
Shot List
Shooting Locations
Talent
Crew
Props
Production Schedule
Catering Plans
Post-Production Schedule
Script Development
Over two days, I wrote a rough outline of what became a 14-page script. I just wanted to keep it simple.
Initial Frame of Reference
Looking at Inception, I found it interesting how an idea in one’s thoughts can always be traced back to its origin. The thought of, “Don’t think about elephants.” What do you think of? Elephants. But you can trace the idea back to the original source.
500 Days of Summer brought an interesting perspective, people tend to want or need to make sense of the concept of love, but not the feeling of love. In reality, the reason is just know; love isn’t supposed to make sense. There’s love if there’s passion; in the form of love or fury. There are no more ands, ifs, or buts. This just is, it is what it is.
The Problem We’re Solving.
It’s difficult to bring change if you keep thinking about it. What’s the it? Nothing. How do you create a complex, but simple enough for the audience to understand the why, as to why this film was made? In developing the script I wanted to focus on how much our dreams are the inverse of our reality. What we think is usually not that simple; because it hasn’t happened yet. It's just an assumption. Now, how do we transpire this idea into a narrative?
I referenced this Volvo commercial quite a bit in my script development, sometimes the moments that never happen, matter the most.