project treatment

Final Project Proposal

Synopsis: For my final piece I want to do essentially a fictional narrative study on peoples lives stagnation. It will center on a couple who lives off campus. The piece will be littered with images of them living with an emphasis on mundane routine. The couple will be juxtaposed with images of fruit, living out their exact situation. The fruit will be used as a heavy handed metaphor to comment on the lives of the couple. (I’m even considering having the fruits turn into vegetables to be even more over the top with it) I haven’t been able to exactly determine the overarching narrative because it entirely depends on what the actors I have in mind are willing to do. There will be little, if any dialogue. The important part of it will be creating an overall mood to the piece. I want the couple to create a stifling atmosphere whereas the fruit to display some kind of furious passion that is trying to escape from the couples life.

Basically I know a lot of people who seem to be in this kind of stagnant situation and I’d like to address that head on through this video. And fruit.

Aesthetic: As the emphasis of the project will be on the mood the style of the piece will play a big part. I plan on trying to give the piece a slow pace even though it will be covering a long span of time. To do this I want to use a combination of muted colors, still or slow frames and smooth editing. I expect I will need to tweak in post production a lot of my footage to give it a unified feel. The fruit would then be hyper-saturated and visually stimulating to emphasize its purpose in the film. It would be put to motion through stop motion animation, which I think would fit in with the fruit aesthetic still.

Sound: I want the sound to be mainly a slow violin piece in a minor chord (that I am going to try to con my friend into helping me with) and small bursts of dialogue. The music will be slow and have a strong melody set to the rhythm of the rest of the piece to keep with its mood. I may actually increase the pace of this and increase the pace of the film slightly just to keep it interesting as 5 minutes of slow paced video could get dull. Or I could have two versions of the same theme that would alter depending on if it was centering on fruit or the couple.

Characters : The two members of the couple and their child, who will be alluded to visually rather than actually shown (I’m not sure where i’d be able to get a child for my shoot). They would both get fruit counterparts. It would be great.

Time line/

By April 14 –con people I know into being involved, the two actors and one camera person

By april 22 – have all shooting done

- Then edit until my eyes pop out.