trees are people too

What on earth are we doing here? I always laugh at people watching shows on their ipods/mobile phones/pdas on the tram. I thought the idea was to go bigger, ever larger. Who has the biggest plasma screen of all? But of course I am missing the point – there are plenty of opportunities when I would have loved an episode of House to distract me form the smelly person sitting next to me/on top of me on the train. i just have to understand the context.

For mobile content to be successful, it is going to need to be seriously constrained, and that could be kind of cool. There’ll be no Lord of the Rings epic battle scenes viewed on a 8×8 mobile screen, thank you very much. At the same time the technology and display is becoming more sophisticated, so presumably in the future these constraints might shift, but for the moment lets examine what we are working with.

First is time. It’s got to be short. Short and sweet, not just so you don’t ruin your eyes, but also to contend with external distraction and our shrinking attention spans. So, no epic love/war/biographical stories for this medium. We have to keep it to about 90-180 seconds. This means this story is going to have to hit relatively fast and hard, and clarity and succinctness is vital.

Next is the actual filming. What should the pictures contain in terms of content and action. We’ll need to use tight shots, and panning, zooming and fast edits are probably best avoided, unless we want to give our viewer a stiff headache/epileptic seizure. Bold, strong colours are recommended, but this could also mean contrast could be very effective, so I am not averse to implementing dark colours also to increase dramatic effect. I wonder what the consensus is on black and white mobile movies? If done carefully, I don’t doubt they could be effective. But this again will only be successful by carefully using contrast, and this means effective lighting. In second life we can not only implement light, but can also dictate the lighting of the actual environment, so I am looking forward to playing god. At least god of lighting. hmm.

At this stage we are still brainstorming. Within our team I have not been nominated as an ‘ideas’ person, and yet :gasp: I have come up with an idea, and so might propose it should we be struggling to come up with a concept. It’s very simple and basic, but it just.might.work.

The story centers around one character and goes something like this (you will have to forgive its simplicity and use your imagination).

Character is arriving home to her ‘street’. She lives in a laneway that is urban and industrial – the kind that houses back on to. The laneway is framed by bricks and concrete, back fences, bins and trash, perhaps a solitary tree overhangs a fence. It’s grey, ghetto and very ‘city’. The lane is thin and the stained, decrepit buildings rise high on either side, allowing for only a thin sliver of light to shine down. As our protaginist turns the corner into her street, she sighs at the depressing sight. It starts to rain, making the grey even greyer. Thunder strikes, and a cat yowls and runs across out from behind the bins, scampering off into the shadows.

She drags her feet as she approaches home, a depressing door in a brick wall, but then she sees something. Someone has left some buckets of paint and a paint brush in the laneway. she glances at them curiously, then looks around. They seem unowned. Cut to her face and we can see she is having an idea. she picks up the bucket of paint and slowly walks to the brick wall. She dips the paint brush and begins to paint. The colours leap out against the grey background, and althogh she starts slowly, as she paints she becomes more and more animated – she is becoming more and more happy as the paint hits the wall. Finally she is wildly throwing the paint at the wall with abandon, creating a massive mural of colours against the barren backdrop. She’s exhausted, but thrilled. We haven’t seen the painting yet, but as we pan back we can see it is an amazing landsape of colour, of splashes and swirls and drips and splats.

She stands back to admire her work and to catch her breath, before quietly returning the paint tins and the brush to their original location. She glances around – the laneway remains empty, although the cat has reappeared and is looking at her curiously. She heads into her house, and as she stands in the doorway she turns back to admire the colours, and as she does the sun breaks though the clouds and the lighting changes completely, become warm and inviting (think sunset). She smiles (close up on her smile) and fade out.

Lol, so cliched, so simplistic, but the use of colours could be effective, we only need one actor (well, two including the cat), the set should be easy to build but dramatic, and I think the piece would lend itself to music – first slow and then more uptempo before ending on slow again. Props we would need/could build: paint tins, paint brush, trash cans, various debris, the set of the laneway, the cat (perhaps a little ambitious) and perhaps items for the protagonist – ie hat, backpack etc. some we should be able to mod, but some we will have to build ourselves.

BUT, this is just an idea. I just wanted to get it out there so I could see if it worked, but I am not sure whether the others will approve. They most probably have better ideas than I and I am a little shy to put this forward, but we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Diplomacy and democracy ftw.