Short Film Outline
August 6, 2008
Here’s the rough outline I have so far. Any ideas/insight appreciated…
Scene 1
OPENING: Open with black screen for a few seconds, then you can hear the clicking noise of a slide projector shifting slides. You hear once, twice, then the image blinks on.
SHOT 1: camera starts in a darkened closet then the closet door is opened. After a few seconds of rustling a GIRL comes into view. She has climbed onto one of the lower shelves of the closet and is peering at a higher one (where the camera is).
She shifts a few objects, pulls them off the shelves. After a moment of rustling through the items it seems like she hasn’t found what she wants. She begins to put the items back, but hesitates as she peers thoughtfully into an old plastic shopping bag. She replaces all the items but the bag and shuts the door.
SHOT 2: A broken flashlight can be seen on the ground (top off, batteries falling out). Feet enter the frame and exit, followed by a lamp trailing a cord down the hallway.
SHOT 3: A moment later camera follows cord down the hallway and it can be seen snaking into a darkened bedroom.
SHOT 4: Wider shot of darkened and cluttered room with an elaborate blanket fort inside. Rustling is heard, then a soft click and the fort lights up.
SHOT 5: Close up of hand holding the tiny slides and fingers tracing the cardboard edges.
**Montage of holding slides up to the lamp light, and sorting them into piles**
I don’t know how to make it flow into this next part!!! Any ideas??
Scene 2
GIRL somehow obtains a slide projector. I am having second thoughts about having her pick it up at Good Will. Actually I just can’t clearly envision this scene so I’m going to bypass it for now. Maybe in the beginning she just finds the slides AND the projector??
Scene 3
SHOT 1: girl pulls from a storage closet a big box of cords. She lifts them up in a tangled knot.
SHOT 2: presumably later on she sits on the ground with the cords and is plugging them one by one into the wall to test them. She tries 3 or 4 that don’t work. Finally one does and the slide projector blinks on.
Scene 4: Many sheets and towels and other laundry are hanging on an outdoor clothesline to dry. The girl walks through them casually, then tiptoes to undo the clothespins on a white sheet and yanks it from the line, dashing away.
Nice. It’s feeling like a movie.
Idea: Maybe She connects all the extension cords she can find and when she goes on her excursion she drags the whole line out to turn on the projector.
Observation: She kind of gives me the feeling of an E.T. type character who’s on a mission to construct some little thing that is beyond others’ comprehension.
As for buying the projector from Good Will, I think it could work really well. It expands the universe of She and gives us a glimpse of “normal” people among whom She mingles only to serve her own abnormal plans. The contrast between She, calm and calculating, and the others (including, presumably, her mom) who are more frantic and less thoughtful is important. But that’s just in MY head…