“Facade”

Created by Eun Mi Kim and Kodi Rikko Dennison
Originally Written on: 20 March 2005

Synopsis
‘Façade’ is an art house and thriller genre short film dealing with the subject of overcoming/conquering your fears in order to face and resolve a problem, in simpler terms, ‘facing your reality’

Through the main character Daisy’s tinted glasses, she perceives reality like an everlasting computer game where she can denied the realism. In her eyes, she views herself as a cartoon character, surrounding environment and its figures appear as a collection of charming and happy (weird) pixilated graphics. A realm she is more then content to dwell and she will fight for herself to be in. the computer game symbolize Daisy’s own dream world and Jen as her good side of herself who is strong enough to wake her up from the misery.

During a moment at home with Dez, her most cherished Sim (her name for the characters who populate her world) Daisy witnesses Dez’s partial conversion (a process where the pixels and Sims dissolve to reveal there real counterparts, threatening the foundations of her prefabricated reality). Regretfully she solves the problem in her usual computer game manner, but unbeknownst to her the solution is only temporary, as it signals the rebirth of an apparently solved problem from her past, Jen the Dream Destroyer.

As the night proceeds and Daisy begins her nightly chores (Job), she encounters a conversion with every place she visits, the Money-Bot (ATM), the Inn (Kebab Store), the Inn/Ext Train Station and the Church of Purification (Laundromat). Though with each conversion she solves in her usual computer game manner, she can never solve the problem that creates these conversions in the first place, Jen the Dream Destroyer.

As she returns home with her laundry, from what should have been a routine night, Jen appears to Daisy through a portal in her bedroom. Daisy confronts Jen with the intent to destroy and restore harmony back to her Simworld. But when Jen reveals the truth, Daisy refuses to believe that all her solutions to the conversion problem were in fact Daisy murdering innocent people.

Fuelled by guilt and rage, Daisy manages to grab a hold of Jen and forces her back into the portal from whence she came, though not before being struck down with Jens final blow, which consequently breaks a lens from Daisy’s ‘Simworld’ seeing shades. As she comes to, Daisy looks up at ‘Jens portal’ through her one of her broken glasses. With the lens that is intact she can see the portal and Jen lying in defeat, but through the frame where there is no lens, all she sees is a mirror reflection of her real self as a mid-forty woman.

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This is my individual project and I would be working on this til I finish my course. At the moment, Kodi and I are still working on the script…I will get back to our script process as soon as possible.

When you work as collaborative, it is expected to have some problems especially working with a big group.

Working in a group which I found Difficulties…
Demanding (Communication breakdown)
Not working hard / Responsibilities (Not everyone puts 100% on project / not enough passion…)
Not knowing a person very well and it’s hard to collaborate
Timing

Here are some more issues and solutions we have discussed in class with Racheal. I strongly feel it is hard to collaborate especially when you are in a big group.
I do think these will help in terms of what you should do and what you shouldn’t do when you have some trouble/issues with a group you are in. It is important to understand these Issues, Solutions and Process.

Issues
Differing Commitment & therefore….Relationship to work and Equality
Personal Clashes / Tolerance
Communication Style Clashes
Communication Breakdown ‘Listening’
Honestly about what they can or can’t do
Time Management
Different Methodology
Ability to Listen / take criticism / suggestions
Breakdown which end up with one or 2people doing majority of work
Trying to be consistance process / sugesstions / relationship
Inter Personal Skills
Active Listening
Appreciation Differences
Understanding each other roles

Solutions
Team outcomes can be more important than individual
Creating timeline which has room for negotiation
Social Interaction
Name the ‘issue’ to yourself / establish
Recognise that sometimes there is no resolution to some conflicts

Process
Spend time together
Establish each other goals / personalities / differences
Clear about the ‘project’
Take sometime break to chill out / cool off
Project is the Goal
Communication (Straight forward / honesty)
Knowing the fact that everyone has different Priority
Get clear about what you need hand in
Time management and let other know
Form a loose group - clear about the ‘Project’ (very specific/group goals/priortising our team’s)
Neutral ‘Team Leader’
Discussions in relation to ‘performance’
Work hard personally to ‘listen’
Acknowledge people’s lives (B’day’s etc)
Discuss aims before agreeing to work together
Long term collaboration
Don’t get Personal
Take responsibility for your own relationship
Get straight about how you feel

For my Individual Project,

Kodi Dennison and I have been brainstorming every other night and finally got the story structure. We have been changing the story around and it’s been really exciting. We should be working on the script and storyboard soon but for now we have the strong theme and the synopsis of the film ‘Façade’.

‘Façade’ is an arthouse and suspense thriller genre short film dealing with the subject of overcoming your fears in order to face and solve a problem. Façade gives you the idea that everyone has fear in different ways on top of how to deal with your own fear. The great about the idea is that ‘Façade’ has the strong theme as ‘face the reality’ which would show viewers clearly in different forms of world. They are the simulated world and the actual reality. The audience will wonder what is going through Daisy’s mind in 3D Graphic cartoon world and eventually see the fact that Daisy was fighting with herself to be in her simulated world (simworld).

Without a doubt, the film Façade is both violence and bloody yet it incorporates other factors such as strength, courage, and loves on the characters which draws the viewers in and entice them in to the character’s world. It revolves around a slightly reclusive, slightly eccentric mid-forty aged woman Daisy who is suffering with her self-depression and controlled by her immorality and battles within herself. It is very grim and fast forwards by showing the realism and simulated world, yet at the same time covers the full range of instructive themes and techniques in terms of understanding of despair and misery.

This film shows that everyone has two different minds, one for good and one for bad. Furthermore, it has the shocking end when daisy found out that she has been killing people by fighting for her simulated world which she never meant to kill. Furthermore, the viewers will experience how she is seeing her own world as well as how she is fighting for her depression.

Furthermore, to make this film the way I want, it need a lot of rehearsals in terms of making animations by fx shot test. Therefore, the potential difficulties would be finding good animators who can create the simulated world as a game world where Daisy goes into. But so far so GOOD!!!!

I would like to come back to this and write more about the script and storyboard process as soon as possible. It’s just exciting!

As a director with my 2nd monologues “A New York Actor”, I considered that a funny story needs more than just motivating character since the theme of the film is comedy. “The New York Actor” is about a failed New York actor telling about his acting life to the viewers by looking straight through the camera. I placed myself as a viewer who is watching this short film and I myself felt that I would not be interested with what the actor is saying or doing if the story or the character was boring. Therefore, my biggest concept was to encourage the main actor ‘Jake’ to express a lot of information and to express it right away to the viewers, so he could really engage the audience within the 4 minutes of given time. I had to create believable characters that viewers could relate to, and that they can think about. In order to do this, I had to know Jake better, as a person and not just an actor before creating the character. Rather than just talking about the film; how I want him to be and what he should do, I spent some time chatting with him. I questioned about his personal life to understand him better and get better ideas to create the perfect character for my actor and the film. I then decided to put away my storyboard for a while to give myself more room to think about the developing character.

When developing the character, the challenge of casting Jake led me to rethink and to revise the script. I have chosen Jake to be the actor in “A New York Actor” because he was very “true” to the character I had in mind for the script. But Jake was presenting more of a difficulty than I expected and I started to panic. Originally I was looking for someone with a little angrier, sneakier, and less innocent. But Jake was not getting any improvement with the character I created, and thus I soon realized that if I start the film with a young man who looks innocent, it would have a stronger effect when the film expresses him as a sightly immature and snobbish character. I proceeded with Jake, and made slight changes in the script to accommodate him. It turned out to be a great decision.

After modifying the character, I realised that there will always be the possibilities of a better way to direct if I am opened and ready to accept and change my plans the in future. As Brooks stated, “the director must have from the start what I have called a “formless hunch”, that is to say, a certain powerful yet shadowy intuition that indicates the basic shape, the source from which develop in his work is a sense of listening. A director works and listens. He helps the actors to work and listen.” (Brook, P. 1993, p.119). I realised that the challenge of casting a character has to try to make these assumptions “fit” a specific personality, a specific energy, a specific face. But no one actor is going to be a perfect “fit” to the character that I’ve created in my mind. Therefore, when I direct a film, I have to be willing to change my assumptions about a character. In the process, my script may find itself “changing” in some way.

For the storyboard process, my view of it is completely different to the views of Polanski. According to Polanski, “I hate having a storyboard and coming on the set and trying to fit people into the mechanics” (Montague, T., 2003). Planning the rehearsal shooting schedule for the film was a significant process and the storyboards made it a lot easier and a more accurate procedure. If I was not completely aware of the amount of places and different angles where I would be putting the cameras in any given scene, and how much time it takes to rehearsal the whole scenes, then I could not make an accurate schedule for the real shooting date. I feel that although the storyboard is very significant component, it needs conform to me if I have new ideas. I have to make sure that I’m aware of what exactly I am changing and know what exactly I am trying to achieve.

A short film very much depends on the one who directs it; the director is able to retain control over the direction of the vision for the film. In other words, from the beginning of making the short film, I as the director have to be able to see my vision through from beginning to end similar to a storyboard. I believe that the director’s job involves a series of choices that make significant changes in the way that the story is understood. These choices include casting of actors, finding and creating locations, creating characters and rehearsal. Every director has their own way of directing and different definitions of it.

According to the French director Roman Polanski (”Roman Polanski: biography”, 2004), he views that directing is an idea that one has of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It’s an idea that one has in oneself, like the idea a person own personality, which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That is what directing is (“The Film Director”). Further more, in his interview, he stated that his direction comes from his actors’ rehearsals. “I rehearse and I let them free in the beginning rather than the other way around.’ (Montague, T., 2003)

According to British director Peter Brook, he believes directing is to make suggestions, to have new ideas, often having to criticise a director’s own proposals and withdraw them after seeing them out into practise by the actors (Brook, P. “There are no secret”, p.109). Further more, he states that it’s important for the actor to be stimulated all the time so that in the end he finds his own way, rather than the director demonstrating the way he would like the part to be played and force the actors to assume and stick to this alien, imposed construction. (Brook, P. 1993, p.112)

Moreover, I believe director develops the following competencies in critical and creative thinking such as the ability to think actively, explore situations with questions, utilise reasons and evidence for explanations, view situations from different perspectives, discuss ideas in an organized way, and develop ideas that are unique. Further more, I realised from my experience as the director that I would never satisfied and should always to prepare to accept new ideas from myself.
Director is like being the driver in a car which has the whole control on where it goes and when to stop, but even the driver and the car is subject to the condition that the road presents. As my experience, my actor was the car and I was the driver. It’s all in my control as a director, to allow my actor to react and acknowledge his character naturally by expressing myself clearly on my wants and expectations. Lastly, my view of directing is such that it is unpredictable as there are no actual rules for directors. It is my view that directing is not a ruling job, it is an evolving language and a constant negotiation.