TREATMENT

TREATMENT for The Magic Chalk
(an adaptation of a short story by Kobo Abe)

Synopsis: Argon is a starving artist who finds a piece of magic chalk. When a picture is drawn with this chalk, it becomes real--but only if there is no sunlight. Argon decides to board himself up in his room and live in a world of his creation. It starts off as a world in which he can have anything he wants--as a way to escape starvation and his difficult life. But he draws a window in the wall, and it does not become real. He realizes that without a world behind it, it is not a real world. So he contemplates how he wants to create a new world. After four weeks of contemplation he gives up in a fit of frustration and draws a door, thinking that he will leave it up to fate and the chalk to create the world behind it. But when he opens the door there is nothing really there--just a barren world, a barren sky, and a horizon line. He closes the door depressed. Then he finds a newspaper from before he closed off his room. He sees a picture of a woman and gets the idea to start over from Adam and Eve, and so he draws Eve--who also happens to be the woman from the newspaper (Ms. Nippon). She believes she is Ms. Nippon and thinks Argon is crazy. She tries to get out, but when she discovers that Argon has magic chalk, she becomes interested in using it to advance her career. She tells Argon that she deserves half of the chalk because she is equal to him. He reluctantly gives her half of it, and she draws a gun and shoots him. Then she smashes open the door to the real world, and everything turns back into drawings on the wall. This includes Argon, who has eaten so much chalk-food that his molecules have become too infused with this magic. It ends with him "saying" " It isn't chalk that will remake the world."

Style/aesthetics: This video will be a fictional narrative. I want the focus of the video to be on Argon and his two worlds. I want the real world to be a dirty, gritty, bright world, and the magic world to be slightly fantastical. I want to do this by having both worlds well lit, bit the real world a bit more yellow and brown, and the magic world bright with slightly more saturated colors than might normally exist. I want to explore different editing styles to show the passage of the four weeks--fast shots of tableaus that communicate how Argon is passing the week without him saying anything, or even moving very much. I also want to pass the four weeks in a very short amount of time. I want the tone of the movie to parallel Argon's emotions.

Elements:
Chalk drawings into real objects: Cross-dissolve: To materialize the objects Argon draws, I plan to simply cross-dissolve a shot of the picture into a shot of the real object keeping the camera in the same place.
Place: My room (emptied of everything). Possibly a short montage of Argon looking for food and begging.
Characters: Argon: a starving artist. Intellectual, dreamer, idealist. He is the main storyteller and should convey through both speech and movements the dilemmas he puts himself through trying to create a new world. Eve: A materialistic, caddy girl, but with just enough intellect to comprehend a situation and put herself in an advantageous position.
The door to the fake world: Bright light shines in through the door, then into the camera. Haven't determined how to make the blank world.
Lights: I plan on doing them myself, experimenting with the light kit and whatever else I have.
Sound: I have not yet picked a soundtrack, but I would like there to be music underscoring most of the scenes. I also want to have a few sound effects--for the objects appearing (I think a scraping sound), and the blank world (loud wind and possibly a ringing sound that sounds kind of like a one-note echo).


Production Schedule:
April 6: Sent actors script.
Now-April 17: Prep work with Actors and gathering any props I will need. Storyboard difficult scenes more precisely than script.
April 17-April 25: Shooting
April 22-28: Editing