THE FINALISED STORY

All that messing around with the story, both in my notebook and in board form, allowed me to finally hit onto the final idea. I don't really remember how I came up with it other than I did so after my morning trip to the gym. I was walking home at about 9am and listening to something on my iPod, I can't remember the tune at all but it was twinkly much like a music box and much like I'd always intended for the song in my film to sound. I remember coming up with it then and thinking I had to tell Calum about it. So I rushed home for breakfast and into college but I'd already let my excitement get the better of me and I had texted Calum the idea before I had left my flat. When I got to college I was desperate to know what he thought. He loved it. And I did too.

From there it was just a case of keeping certain elements in mind as I boarded the story out. Things such as having some shots from Lute's POV, remember the scale of the planets, DO NOT CROSS THE 180! Which on a planet as small as this one poses difficulties. I didn't want the shots to get samey but I didn't give myself a lot to play with.

SB CRASH

Show board 002

SHOW BOARD 003

SHOW BOARD 004

These boards are in order and mostly split into scenes. But when I thought about it most of the events are continual and so are the shots. So I have two short starting sequences and one really long one.

The first scene, in which Lute crashes his spaceship and lands on the planet, is where I begin to establish a lot of the recurring themes of the film. We see a lot of the crash from very close to Lute, if not from his perspective. I have an establishing shot and yes, it is close in than most establishing shots would be, but I felt like I needed this whole sequence to be mid, close and super close ups. I wanted this sequence to be action-packed and pretty confusing, to be honest. The closer up the image the less of the big picture the audience can see. It's not important to know why he crashed and starting in the middle of the action means I may create a big explosive first scene to offset the rest of the film. These close ups also allow me to place specific emphasis on the moment the audience realises Lute is going to loose his music box. The first time the camera pulls back and shows you the whole of the action we see that Lute is falling through the sky miles apart from his music box. Then we imediately cut back to a POV shot of him frantically scrabbling for it to no avail.

The next scene is incredibly short. It is more like the establishing scene. Lute simply awakes and realises he is in a pretty bad spot right now. But it's in this scene that I tell the audience that music was how Lute copes. The first thing he does once he is awake is search for his music box. When he can't find it he begins to hum the tune it played with his eyes closed in an effort to calm himself. This is where I will establish that sound is only audible from inside his space helmet. We will hear his his heartbeat when we are inside his helmet and seeing from his POV and nothing much when we are outside his helmet.

From here we see time passing, in a nice faux timelapsed wide shot of the setting. Which leads into the final lengthy scene. In this scene we'll see Lute's breaking point and lead into the resolution of the film. We know by the timelapse that poor Lute has been here for a long time and we'll also be able to tell by the way he holds himslelf now that he's beyond hope now. He walks over the planets surface and sits and stares off into the stars beyond, then turns his attention to the sands at his feet. He carves deep lines in them like always. Turning his head to the sky and back again he ruins his doodle with his palms and slowly rises to drag himself away again. Defeated he meagerly kids at a rock, staring down at it as if his head wont lift any further. However he sees something in the formation of the rocks. And falls to the ground next to them to investigate. He hums out the tune once more in his helmet. Another POV shot. But is unlucky and it doens't kickstart his memory and remind him of his tune. Halfway to the ground now Lute gives in completely and slowly lowers the rest of himself to meet the ground. The angle is level with him as we are doing this with him. He rolls over to once again look into the space around him but is blinded by the intense light of the star above. This time we see from the POV of the space telling the audience this is important. All the times we've seen from the stars have been becasue of this one star. Lute raises a hand as an additional sun guard but as the light shines through his glove, it marks his helmet sheild in 5 distinct lines. Seen first from Lute's POV, then from space. Lute tests his theory before procceding to smear clay from the planets surface across him visor, mimicing the lines. We are back to tight shots, once again to delay the audiences understanding of Lute's intention. A look into the stars hints us at their involvement before we see the outcome from both inside and outside of Lute's visor. Lute happily hums his newly remembered tune as the camera track pan's out, passing the "star" that turns out to be the main mechanism of Lute's music box.

I think I covered most of the key shot reasoning in that paragraph. The main one's being the long shots of space to emphasise Lute's issolation and want for something other than the planet. The POV, for identification with Lute and sound experience.

I think in the end the story has come together very well and at the moment I am pretty proud of it. It remains to be seen if I will continue to believe it works when I come to animatic this board in the coming weeks, But for now I am really pleased with the story. It's taken a long time!