Proposal

   The 5 minute film is based around the surreal events of a car crash between a middle aged man driving a common car and a young woman, around the age of 20, being hit by him. These events will not show the car crash in graphic detail but will explore the emotions stirred by such a crash as well as the after effects and consequences of it for both characters in tern.  The style will be inspired by Salvador Dali and the surrealist art movement and we will achieve this effect by experimenting with props, lighting and camera techniques. This link between the crash and the after effects will be blurred and subtle, so the viewer will not actually see the girl die; neither will you see the man put in prison.

    The man will be portrayed as a killer and be envisioned as trapped for ever by the crime he has committed/that the viewer has witnessed. We will use dark symbolisms and connotations of death and decay to portray this and will also contrast it highly with the female victim. We hope to achieve this by using high camera angles and long shots to make him look small and helpless but also extreme close ups to show how trapped he feels, ants and dying flowers to convey the slow decaying of his sanity (such as in Dali’s films) as well as using different arrangements in the scene to convey the feeling of claustrophobia and suffocation. We do not want him to be imagined as actually dead which is why we will use surrealist elements to help the viewer understand, such as always showing him blinking or emphasise the fact that his heart is beating and he is alive.  

   As for the young lady, she will not be seen in any harm but will instead be portrayed as if she was going to heaven as a result of the crash. In her shots, there will be angelic and holy connotations as if she had died and was being taken to heaven. There will therefore be pale, white props and plenty of light in each shot to enhance this idea and bring it to life. As for cinematography, we will use a low camera angle and many of the props in her scenes will either be religiously related, rosary beads, or pure and innocent, such as petals from flowers or doves. Slow camera movements may be used and soft focus to emphasis her dreamlike state.   

    Scenarios… flower out of hair onto man/flowers turn red

    The set will always stay the same and clips of the ‘crash’ will be replayed to keep it fresh in the viewers mind…? 

   Other scenes include two men dressed in long white suits to take away the man and add to the dreamlike and insanity theme that runs alongside his character. We will use extreme close ups of these men and will never show their faces so the focus is kept on the two main characters. The men will be seen towards the end of the film and take the man away to serve his sentence. The very end scene we will see a young boy about the age of 7, holding two balloons, one in each hand. One will be white and filled with helium to represent the woman’s journey to heaven and one will be black or red and filled with air to represent the man and his now limited journey on earth.

    The Target audience we are aiming our short film is fairly select as few film makers take the surrealist route in the fear that not many people may understand it. We have therefore decided to aim it as young adults who may be more open to creativity and who may also be able to relate to the younger character.