List making!

Things I Need

A list of things I need to shoot!

1. 

   Blue Valentine, deleted scene (2010, dir. Derek Cianfrance)

   Location: As I’ve mentioned before the film will initially take place at a pool. For this I’ll be using the pool in my community out of convenience. In my imagination the pool would be one that’s smaller and more square shaped, but it’s ok because the size of the pool I’m using now might be able to better express the space between the characters that I want to convey. I’ll also be using my room as the setting for the protagonist’s scenes at home. The final scene will take place at a park in a nearby community (The Ridges) after she’s met the person from her imaginings. I really like the spread out look of the park combined with the fact that it has a roundabout. I’d like to show her sat on it spinning in one of the last frames to imply a sort of cycle, similarly shot to the image above from a deleted scene of Blue Valentine.

2. Actresses: A couple of posts ago I mentioned that my beautiful friend, Isabelle, volunteered to act as the protagonist in my project. Since then I’ve also found two other actresses, a lovely young lady named Jessica and my wonderful pal, Michaela, to play the friend character [Jessica] and the stranger [Michaela]. Jessica and Isabelle are already friends in real life which will help when shooting, even if I want there to be a disconnect between the actual characters, because the actors will be comfortable around each other. Moreover, although I originally envisioned a male to play the person from the protagonist’s dreams I was unable to find a male actor which is honestly fine because Michaela is also really into film and has expressed an interest in acting before so I’m excited to work with her, nonetheless!

3. Equipment: For filming I will be using my Sony a6000. Editing wise, I typically utilize iMovie. Lately, however, I’ve been having some real issues with it regarding lagging and general performance. Sometimes in the middle of editing all of the audio will fail or images will severely decrease in quality and even after exporting never return to their original quality. In addition, several times I’ve exported and it’s changed the coloring of images without my doing so. I would really like to use an editing program such as Adobe Premiere Pro but I would need to update my computer first so that they’d have compatability.

4. Wardrobe: In the opening scene I imagined Isabelle to already be wearing her cover-up to show that she hasn’t been swimming with Jessica. For this I would like to use something like a pale yellow top or a long T-shirt over her bathing suit. In general I would like to have her typically clothed with more layers than the people around her to indicate her guarded nature. This excludes the dream sequences, though, as she would be revealing more of who she is there. On Wednesday Isabelle showed me some of her clothes that she believed fit the character but I still have to specifically plan what to use for the ending scene and dream sequence!

5. General Set Design: I’ve already started toying around a bit with my room to make it more along the lines of the living space I imagine for the character. Especially because this character is more reserved, her room is where she spends the majority of her time. Thus, it is necessary that I take the proper time to plan and build her world. I’ve already talked about using mainly primary colors which I would like to follow through with but I would also like to decorate her room with cues towards her longing for connection, like paper dolls holding hands and paintings she’s done.

That’s really all I can think of right now!

Talk soon,

Cassie.