One of our fellow students had the idea before Christmas to create and shoot a short film every month, and in a step towards widening my skills I have joined the project. Initially I decided to stay within my comfort zone and take the role of stills photographer so while I have a part to play in the production I can observe the other roles in action and start to pick up on some new skills. The first week of the new year began with a meeting to get a crew together for the January film and not surprisingly there was a lot of interest. Still, a crew was selected and it was decided that everyone should be involved in the pre-production meetings so we could bounce ideas around before jumping into our roles.
The initial idea came from a joke that was found on the internet:
'A man in Phoenix calls his son
in New York the day before Thanksgiving and says,"I hate to ruin
your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing;
forty-five years of misery is enough.
"Pop, what are you talking about?" the son screams. We can't stand
the sight of each other any longer," the father says. "We're sick of
each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister
in Chicago and tell her."
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. "Like heck
they're getting divorced," she shouts, "I'll take care of this,"
She calls Phoenix immediately, and screams at her father, "You
are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm
calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do
a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up.
The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. "Okay," he
says, "they're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own way."'
The idea was inspired by visiting lecturer Douglas Hart's short film
Long Distance Information
(although we didn't want it to be too similar). Firstly we decided that it should be set at Christmas and the idea developed into the following:
A middle aged man sitting at his kitchen table with a drink and a crossword receives a phone-call from a woman who the audience is to believe is his wife. She is angry and distressed and she tells him that she has had enough and wants a divorce. The man tries to reason with her with the conversation going back and forth between the two of them but to no avail. The woman slams down the phone and leaves. The man tries to let the information sink in at which point a woman enters through the back door and is revealed to be his wife, the woman on the phone being his sister.
We decided that in the opening scene there should be a radio playing in the background and I was asked to script and record a section of a radio broadcast. We also came across a tweet from Marcus Bentley (the voice behind Big Brother) offering his services to colleges and none profit organisations and so we sent him a message asking if he would record a short radio promo to go in the broadcast, which he very kindly did for us (I just need to edit this and build it in to the recording).
We also decided that we needed to source a phone-box for the external scenes.
We began to collaborate on a script before handing this over to one of the team to finalise that evening.
