New camera equipment for shooting

There is a high probability that I will be using a Canon 7D DSLR camera for the shooting of my film. It has an astounding video quality and its easier to handle than the camcorder with the DoF adapter that I was previously going to use.

Full HD Video is captured at 1920 x 1080 resolution at 30p (29.97), 24p (23.976) or 25p frames per second, for up to 4GB per clip. Movies are saved as .MOV files. Other recording sizes include HD at 1280 x 720 (50p / 60p (59.94) fps) or SD/VGA at 640 x 480 (50p / 60p (59.94) fps).

The film will be recorded on 720p at 50 fps, this frame rate will allow me to do slow motion shots much smoother than at 25p.

The camera also has a great performance under low light conditions, whereas the DoF adapter on the camera makes you lose 1 stop of light.

Here is an example of what is the 7D's footage like:

Canon 7D Test from Matt E on Vimeo.

Tune 1 for short film

This is one of the tunes the music designer made for me. It may be used for the scenes in which the character is within his mind. It kind of transmits that lonely feeling. However, I'll be collecting more music in order to have more possibilities in post.

Character development 2 (Chris)

Following the last post, this are some of the main qualities of my secondary character (Chris):

- He hates someone who has something that he hasn't.
- Vengative person.
- Life itself owes him satisfaction. When something lacks for him, he feels anger.
- He is able to destroy himself in order to destroy the other.
- Cuts everyone's head to be taller.
- Competitive, also with love.
- Arrogant.
- Very persuasive person.
- Provocative person.

Character development 1 (Frederick)

I contacted a psichotherapist in order to get information about my character's personality and derivated behaviours. Based on the ancient sufi teaching of the enneagram, which is nowadays applied to psichology, this psichotherapist suggested me that my character belongs to the "social subtype" of the "type 3" personality.

This subtype characteristics incluye:

- He is a person that needs the world to recognize his value. When that value lacks in the childhood, it gets overdeveloped when older.
- Usually a brilliant image of himself to compensate for a poor childhood.
- Usually grown up in a situation in which he was under considered, so that it takes him to compensate that lack.
- A profound feeling of emptiness and low-self steem within himself.
- His natural desire for being important develops into a passion and lives for the prestige, the need to be recognized and his personal importance.

These are just some of the characteristics that I'll have to play with when developing the script, which have been by the way quite important in order to develop my ideas.
When you know your character, the things that happen to him just come by themselves.

Pictures of the location (flat)

This flat will hold the scenes for the inside of the mind of my character. The overall white color will make for the feeling of emptyness that I'm looking for. Besides, there is a nice view to Canary Wharf, which also relates to the situation of my character, who was a business man.

Development of ideas for the script 1

I developed the idea of the character being withdrawn from the Poker table and taken to the inside of his mind. The character will be taken to a flat's living room, I want the room to be completely empty. This character is going to be a business man that apparently is going through a bad time of his life (lost his job, because of this his girlfriend broke up with him, he ). In the first scene that he is taken to the living room of that flat, he will not be able to open the doors or escape from that room. He will be visibly desperate. The idea is that he will have to complete tasks that will allow him to open the doors. This tasks will relate to problems of the real life that he has to solve in order to be happy and back to his previous life. Remember that the flat will represent the inside of his mind.
As he completes the tasks that allow him to open the doors, his game at the poker table will change. I want to use the simple action-reaction structure.

I will have a psichotherapist consultant who will help me analise the mind of a person like my character, body lenguage, different kinds of nervous breakdowns and so on.

Interesting quotes regarding story telling within short films

"The freedom of the short film relative to the long film lies in the possibilities of using metaphor and other literary devices to tell the story. This is a luxury not available in the comercially driven, realism-oriented long film. Indeed, one of our major points about the short film is its linkages to other literary forms"(Introduction xv)

"Often the story will unfold around a choice that presents itself to the character who never returns to his or her former state. And closure is attained by virtue of making or avoiding that choice."(Introduction xv)

"The catalytic event that would begin the action of the film, which could be viewed as the beginning of act II, must come much more quickly than a quarter of the way into the film. Indeed in the short film, if we use the long-form act proportion or three act structure, one finds that both act I and act II are very short because to set up the story (Act I) must be fast."(Introduction xvi)

* Cooper, Pat; Dancyger, Ken. Writing the short film. 1st edition (Focal Press, USA, 1994)