Proposal

Synopsis: Moving through real space and real-time is the only constant character: An Awareness, a set of curious eyes played by the camera. Only capable of existing while in the residence of a human body, the Awareness jumps from body to body, entering and exiting experiences involuntarily. A consciousness with no free will, the Awareness does not see, hear and feel what it wants to. It is wordlessly summoned and must endure whatever the next body directs its attention at. The single pleasure in the chaotic life of the Awarness takes place during the fleeting moment when, upon entering a new body, it may see through a new set of eyes the body it previously inhabited. In this moment, the Awarness fantacizes of itself and dwells in the illusion of self-consciousness.

Style/Aesthetics: The video will consist solely of point-of-view shots. I hope to avoid the hand-held camera look, so I’m considering a couple different ways of mimicking the smooth movement of our own vision. The first alternative that I’ll experiment with is a head-mounted camera. With the attachment of an external monitor I’ll be able to watch what’s being recorded, but that is basically the extent of my control over the camera. This method will also require that sound is recorded independently of the images, which will undoubtably inform the aesthetics of the final product.
Lighting and sound will not be heavily stylised, but both will be manipulated to more closely represent human-perception, not camera-perception.
The editing style will be very straightforward. Because every image is someone’s P.O.V., I can only cut at the moment where a new P.O.V. is taken on. This doesn’t mean that a scene won’t be observed from various angles, but a new angle must be justified as the result of us entering a new set of eyes.

Characters/Elements: I have not decided how many different people I want to use as actors. This will most likely be determined during filming as the improvised dialogue may give way to what will follow. I do however have a number of scenes in mind which will provide an overall structure.
I plan to shoot both interior and exterior locations, using natural as opposed to fabricated, environments.

Timeline/Production Schedule:
April 13: P.O.V. technique to be chosen and experimented with.
April 16-24: Shooting, collecting audio, editing
April 24-28: Editing.

The system that this project is based on came to me recently, and when such ideas arrive they are sorted either into the “unrealistic; save for the future” pile or the “half-exciting, but doable” pile. In this case, I have something that feels doable, exciting and unrealistic at the same time. I plan to challenge my assumptions concerning what’s unrealistic by doing my best to actually make the video that I see in my head. This will not require a large budget or even a rigid schedule, so the only thing stopping me is laziness.