Second draft

 Hey blog, 

Let's talk second draft. Today we met at a starbucks and wrote SOOO much. We have our perfect ending, and my next blog will expand on it. But here is our final structure. I will be working on the script this week!

Draft 2- 

FIRST SCENE: CALL WITH FRIENDS

-Begins with Diego playing video games- computer is essential, headset. 

-bantering- establishes the way he talks to people and who his friends are. 

- Receives a text from ex- 

Medium paragraph apologizing- hoping for the best. 

-He stares at it kinda sad. 

-”Yo are you there” 

“My fucking ex dude, she’s texting me.” 

“Little whore”

“Yo how do you feel now that you're not getting pussy.”

“Yo im gonna hop off-” 

SECOND SCENE: CALL WITH MOTHER

Call with his mom

-mom call him

-how are you-mom

-My girlfriend broke up with me

-Your dad stopped sending money

- dementia/ not there. Is that it, is that why you called me.

-hangs up, fucking bitch. 

THIRD SCENE: MONKEY SEQUENCE

-He opens pornhub 

-scrolls

-Cant get hard

-finds brochure/calendar of monkey

-stupid ass montage

FOURTH SCENE: THE TWEET

• Transition- j-cut, implied orgasm. 

• On discord w friends. 

• Friends pauses game.

• He stares at monkey

• Makes tweet. 

• Friends come back

• Playing, silence. 

• Out of nowhere “yo diego, wtf did you just tweet.” 

• Moment of awkwardness- they all start laughing. 

• Feeling of confidence “Like I get it, but like I don’t say it.”

• “Im just speaking fax”

• Nah its pretty funny, I hope it goes viral. 

• Monkeys are just bitches who don’t talk

• That’s so funny, you should post it on TikTok

• For real?

• Fuck yeah dude

FIFTH SCENE: INFLUENCER MOMENT! YAY!

• Cuts to him making a tiktok “ok guys hear me out… the other day i realized monkeys are fully humans that don’t talk so like why isn’t it acceptable that we fuck them?”

• TikTok gains traction, people commenting “LMFAO WTF” “nahh” “BRO HAS THAT ZOO RIZZ” “not the monkey pussy” “why he lowkey speaking faX tho” “not the monkussy” “yo digital footprint is a real thing”

• Makes another Tiktok, stitches a monkey “no really, what’s stopping us”

• Continues to gain followers, comments, mixed reviews but ppl encouraging it

• Fast cuts, making tik toks gaining traction

SIXTH SCENE: EX TEXTS HIM BACK

• Ex texts “hey i saw you were going viral, i just want to make sure you’re okay im here for u”

• Diego makes tiktok “let me tell you about the fucking whore i dated. This bitch broke my heart and as soon as i’m getting clout she texts me back. Fake ass whore.” tiktok gets views wtvr

SEVENTH SCENE: RUNNING INTO EACH OTHER

• Checking tiktok, sees notifs going down. Fuck. 

• Diego?

• Somewhere like grocery store, they run into each other, ex is super mature “look i saw what you were saying about me, i didnt realize you were that hurt. We only went on three dates.” he’s really aggressive, screaming and thinks hes winning this argument but really she is

• “Diego, if you geniunly believe the reason women don’t like you is because of your looks, there is something incredibly wrong with you. You are the most entitled person I know.” 

• “You’re just another whore”

• “Alright Diego. Have a good life.”

• He tries uttering something else but is choked with tears and like shame. 

FINALE

• In the car straight after the grocery store, filming himself “if this video gets one million likes I’ll kill my ex. I’ll fucking do it.” screen goes black and you just hear a bunch of likes/notifs sounds

First draft

 Hey blog, 

Let's draft:

We have a very weak first draft but here it is. We are meeting after school today to re-evalute it. 

“”PROGRESSION OF EVENTS

• Starts with the protagonist, Diego, playing video games with some friends on Discord, he gets incoming messages from his ex-girlfriend saying something like “hey I still have ur hoodie if you want it back”

• He rants about her to his friends - calling her a bitch and using a lot of misogynistic languages

• His friends laugh and you can see how he feels like he fits in with them more when he treats women degradingly

• His friends say something about him going back to celibacy or smth and he laughs but it gets him thinking…

• At some point his mom calls him for personal gain, she says something along the lines of “have you talked to your dad, he hasn’t picked up his calls. Can you put in a good word for me” he’s clearly over it

• The next scene is him (still in his room) but now its nighttime

• He starts thinking about his ex (maybe opens the texts but doesn’t respond)

• Opens PornHub or smth (I'm worried about this bc Cambridge and shit but like we just show the logo or smth nothing graphic just implying) but he feels too guilty to jerk off so he starts looking around his desk and finds an old pamphlet from a zoo he visited

• Starts looking at this picture of a female monkey and starts thinking about his ex - flashbacks to close-ups of her hands matched to the monkey’s hands, her eyes to the monkey’s eyes, her collarbone to the monkey’s boobs and then suddenly it becomes too real so he stops

• Next day - hes playing video games w his friends on discord again

• Between banter, his friends ask him how hes handling the breakup and hes like “bad dude I started fantasizing about a monkey”

• His friends find this hilarious and they build it up to the point where Diego’s, finding comfort in their validation and making them laugh, starts declaring that he wants to fuck a monkey

• His friends are like wheezing laughing like they find this shit hilarious

• It eventually gets to the point where he posts a TikTok saying that his goal is to fuck a monkey and he needs as many people as possible to help him do it

• After his friends laughter dies down, you can see in his eyes that he feels regretful, but only a little

Chris Chan

 

Hey blog
After you read this, you will feel a little weird. If you are over the age of 23, then you probably have never heard of Chritine Weston Chandler, formerly known as Christian Weston Chandler.
Chris Chan is an autistic man that began posting on the internet in the late 90s. 
He would post his character he created "Sonichu", but I will like to focus on his romantic endeavours. 
Having struggled to create relationships in his life, Chris always promoted himself as a single man looking for an available girl. 
Trolls very quickly found him, and now he has become one of the biggest tragedies of the internet. 
The story of Chris Chan is a basis for our character, a man who became so entranced with the internet, that it became the biggest and only part of his life. 
In late 2007, he became internet-famous when images of him at a tabletop gaming store leaked out to the "Something Awful" message boards. Upon discovery, Chris was mocked for his odd fashion sense and odd appearance and images of Chris at the store soon spread to places like 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica and in the process, many trolls became exposed to his webcomic for the first time, propelling Chris to stardom. Initial fascination was spurred on by his childlike artwork, his signature homemade Sonichu medallion that he wore in public, and his history of loitering in public places while literally holding up a sign asking women to talk to him. His reaction to the mockery led to a cycle of him revealing more disturbing fcts about himsef and trolls going to greater lenghths to uncover info.  Thus, Chris's life began to spiral out of control with the advent of organized trolling, armchair psychological analysis from bewildered onlookers, and some truly bizarre antics from Chandler that continue to this day.

https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Christian_Weston_Chandler

Let me tell you about Jack Sussman

 Hey blog,

 Let's talk about Jack,

When Martina was filming another media project, she was paired with Jack Sussman. 

Now, I knew him from before, and I had asked him to be in a project of mine, yet I was very hesitant on having theater actors in my films. Jack does musical theater. 

I thought his potrayal of my character would be too dramatized, and he would not know how to adapt to the closeness of camera acting, the nuances in acting. 

However, I was convinced after watching him act in Martina's project that he was perfect for the role. 

Jack is conventionally attractive, as one would say, which I was not planning on having Diego be. However, after thought, I realized it was perfect. Once again, we are juxtaposing everything in this film. A lot of incels I see online, are not ugly, they are just extremely misogynistic, socially awkward, and especially delusional. 

The truth is, once you leave adolescence, looks have a much smaller impact on one's ability to find love. Sure, a one night stand is one thing, but a relationship goes much beyond that, it extends to a point where looks have almost no play. 

So to have a conventionally attractive actor, play an extremely awkward incel is perfect. Someone so unkept and so disconnected from others and himself, that he thinks his problems stem from his looks.

My concerns

 Hey blog, 

Let's talk issues, 

I have yet to write the script for the film, yet I will be meeting on Tuesday with my group after school to solidify a structure and write it through the week. 

Still, I have concerns about the film. 

TIME

This is a slow movie, with character development. I am scared that out 10 minute limit, which is already a huge stretch, will not be fit to portray everything we want to show. 

This brings us to PACE

I have made shorts before, and around 99% of the time, these were fast paced, and the editing style included a lot of montages and jumpcuts, which facilitates our time limits. 

However, I am really passionate about making the pace of this film slow. I think it needs to be slow to truly depict the depressing undertones of the film. I am scared that the long scenes I have planned, will have to be cut, which will compromise the film's contents and pacing. 

Additionally, I am not used to editing slow paced films. I feel like whenever I make something more simple, the film becomes very evidently amateur. White noise is heard. Audio isn't clear. Cuts are weird. It is not my natural pace. It is not the pace I insitncitvely edit in. So this will be a challenge.

To prepare, I am changing my viewings a bit from very campy, fast movies, to more slow paced ones. 

I have been watching more old films, which allow me to see how filmmakers would present information in wide shots, rather than tights, which im more used to, and how these shots come together. 

Additionally, I am thinking highly of chaning the structure of the film. Rather than the story being fully chronological, I think snippets that come together to form a character will make more sense with the time alloted, and will feel more like a short film, rather than an extremely compressed version of a feauture. 

I am very excited for this, I think it could change how I make shorts. 

I watched the short "The Big Shave," one of Martin's Scorsese's first shorts. It is 5 minutes, has no dialogue, takes place all in a bathroom, and has one character. Yet it manages to express a lot in very minimal terms. I think that's my goal with this film, express ideas in simple and minimalistic ways. 

(Minimalism, yuck.)

Genre Conventions.

 Hey blog, 

Let's talk genre, 

For our film, we will be making a dark comedy. This is a genre I have attempted before, yet the result ended up being too abstract and not necessarily an accurate representation of the genre. 

So I am trying it again. Let's do it. 

DARK COMEDY

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-black-comedy-definition/

Dark comedies are comedies that joke on extremely dark, and heavy topics. It makes fun of ordinarily taboo subjects. The goal is to amuse by presenting something shocking and unexpected. Sometimes dark comedy is used for shock value, it can also provoke serious thought and make people discuss topics they wouldn't have otherwise. 

These topics include- 

-Murder, violence, death, corruption, sex, poverty, disease, and racial or sexual stereotypes. 

However, this list extends to whatever the imagination and obscurity can think. At the end of the day, the point is to talk about topics that most films don't. 

Although some of these comedies like to just play on the absurdity of life, others want to provoke deep thought. 

A great example are the films of Quentin Tarantino. Extreme violence is always present in his films, yet the gore is hilarious because of the characters almost bothersome attitude towards it, like when Robert de Niro's character in Jackie Brown nonchalantly shoots Melanie, simply because she was being bothersome. 

Characters- 

https://sites.google.com/education.nsw.gov.au/black-comedy/home/the-lieutenant-of-inishmore/techniques-conventions-and-characters

The characters will be flawed. What's the point otherwise? They lack moral values or have them twisted, and they look at life in terms of adolescent absolutes, with innocence and stupidity.

Characters in these films are commonly charicatures of a stereotype,

Tropes-

-Comic strip violence

-Dialogue that is musical in its delivery

-Dramatic exageration

-farce

-Casualness in violence

-Slapstick

So how will we be adapting these tropes and changing them?

To begin with, the comedy aspect of this film comes from the absurdity of the situation. You will not necessarily laugh, but you might grin at the stupidity of the character and the ridiculousness of the situation.

We do not want to make this mega campy(shocker I know). We want to keep a more realistic, and less formalist style. Very bleak, and not theatrical at all, which is a trope of dark comedy.

This will provide for a more intense juxtaposition. Something as absurd as a teen going famous online for wanting to F@ck a monkey, while everything else is boring and depressing, is funny in itself.

Additionally, it would create an audience connection that other big campy dark comedies, like Nowhere by Greg Araki, lack. Although the film makes excellent points, and takes you through a trip, the characters are hard to relate to since they are so stylized.

Instead, take the film The Banshees of Inishiren. At first sight, you assume this film is serious. Yet, you quickly learn the premise of the movie is absurd and childish, and it creates a beautiful contrast.

The girl

 Hey blog, 

LET'S TALK ABOUT ME!!!

No but seriously. There is a female supporting role in this film- the ex. A character which we will keep nameless, to represent Diego's lack of understanding of women. 

We want the film to begin with a harsh breakup scene. In a public space, Diego and the ex have an intense conversation, that is quiet and reserved. In it, she expresses that although they have only been in two dates, she understands enough about him to know that she hates him. 

It is imperative that in this scene, she wins. I want her to make a point that the reason she is breaking up with him is NOT because of looks, but because of his entitlement and lack of empathy. This is important, because Diego uses his looks as an excuse for how bad he is with women, when in reality he is fairly attractive.

 It is important that the ex wins, because this jumpstarts Diego's disdain for women in general. Although she gives him clear reasons for the breakup, or I guess we can call it "stop seeing each other," Diego feels like she was cruel, and unreasonable. It also sets up greatly who this character is, it immediately tells the audience how this man behaves around women, and how he sees himself. 

I will be playing this character. Not to toot my own horn, but I have acted before, and I love thick dialogue. Additionally, I will be writing the script, so I will understand best how the cadence of the conversation should go. 

I was greatly inspired by the breakup scene in The Social Network. The characters are in a fairly similar situation, and Mark Zuckerberg's ex (see I don't even remember her name) makes very bold statements. 

I also like the look of the scene. It is in a crowded space. When I was recalling the scene, I remembered them being in a much fancier place, which is what I am basing the scene on. Again, I'm playing greatly with juxtaposition. The contrast of having these two young adults in a nice restaurant, while one of them is incredibly childish. 

I also want to represent this with the food they are eating. While the ex is eating a proper adult meal, Diego has chicken nuggets, the classic dish all children order at fancy restaurants. 

Overall, Diego feels like he won against his ex, but in the truth, nobody won. The ex's ego is not inflated in the way where she sees it as losing or winning, and at some points shows geniune concern for Diego. 

My big concern with this scene is that it will take up half of the film. That's why I had the idea of spreading the scenes throghout the film ,and instead of making the scene at the beginning, it will connect with all of the aspects of Diego's downfall, and will be help move along the story, and develop Diego's character. 

I think I will write both versions, and see in editing what fits best.