That cryptic little title is also the entire narrative for my recently-finished six-word-story (which can be viewed on my videos page). I was inspired by a philosophical question a depressed friend once posed to me: "What's the point of living if we die alone?" Unable to get my mind off it, I decided to write a six-shot movie based on someone who lives that worldivew. The morbid story follows someone in an overcoat who wanders to the end of the road, says goodbye, and collapses at the center of the road, only to be hit by a passing car. The first shot is a medium tracking shot that follows the lower half of the overcoat-wearer as they walk to an empty road and pull out a phone. This establishes the protagonist as an unknown person (whose face we'll never see) wandering toward a large road at dusk. The second shot is a canted extreme close-up on that phone, where the protagonist and a contact named Orion have sent back-and-forth messages of the word "good bye." This reveals the protagonist's inner workings, and helps establish their motive; the canted nature also helps foreshadow that something is very off. The third shot is a canted medium close-up which shows the waist of the protagonist as they walk across the screen, put the phone into their pocket, and walk farther down the road. This shot is again canted to continue to show conflict, while the movement helps transition the story from the opening exposition to the final action. The fourth is a canted (this time canted the other way) full shot that shows the shadow of someone in a long coat first falling to their knees, then falling down. This allows the viewer to see the full body movement of the protagonist without revealing their face, while the slanted shadows convey that this is a very disturbing action. The fifth scene is an establishing shot that shows a car driving rapidly toward the camera. The almost contract-dolly-like effect of the shot dramatizes the peril now befalling the protagonist. The final shot is an extreme high-angle close-up of the ground that shows a dark red fluid spilling across the scene. The bloody special effects end the story and the unfortunate fellow's life. The audio throughout is the sound from each clip overlaid with natural car sounds recorded on-site and a dark drone ambient sound from Final Cut Pro. Where the natural sound was obtrusive, I would mute it. I also added in a hollow thump sound effect from Final Cut Pro to represent the car's impact. For visuals, I used the editing software to reduce all the shots' exposures to make daytime footage seem like it was shot in low light. I also added in the six words throughout the story, with the first three words at shot 1, the next two words at shot 3, and the final word at shot 4. I had a devil of a time trying to film this entire thing because I didn't't know the limits of night-time filming at first. I initially shot the entire thing one hour after sunset, then had to reshoot everything at a later date because the footage was too grainy. Ultimately, I'm very happy with the final product, although there are a few things I would like to alter. Most notably, I would like to put the six word story on the phone and have it replace the "good bye" and the text. Also, I would like to reshoot the third shot to end exposure problems and make his actions more clear. All-over-all, though, I had an awesome time and learned a ton about filming.
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November 2018
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