Memory and Personal Experience

Short Film: Gas Man, by L Ramsey

Notes: Lots of extreme close ups, very intimate
Very tactile, claustrophobic. Feels right in the action; creates the impression of a memory.

Formative experience for Lynn, a young girl, who realises she has a half sister. Lynn becomes very angry with the other girl when she sits on her dad's knee. Lynn knows there's something wrong, something her father is hiding.

Objective Correlative:

A term introduced by T.S Eliot in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919). Eliot observes that there is something in Hamlet which Shakespeare cannot “drag into the light, contemplate, or manipulate into art” , at least not in the same way that he can with Othello's jealousy, or Coriolanus' pride. He goes on to deduce that “the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” (Selected Essays, [London: Faber and Faber, ...)

The dodgy Santa works as a metaphor for the unsavory situation.

Short Film Formatting Guidance

1. no camera directions
2. minimise character direction
3. page numbers at the top
4. keep it simple and clear
5. action lines - line changes signify new shots
6. present tense - very active, dialogue is short and to the point
- write as though playing on the screen
- no adverbs - no 'after a while', show it on the page as action
7. learn to describe in visual but succinct way
8. clear spatially

Use Celtx formatting software

Urban Myths

Lunch Date - short film by Adam Davidson
Youtube Link

Plot Summary imdb.com:

At a railway station cafe, on Christmas eve, a white woman walks away from her table to get silverware. When she returns, she sees a black man eating her lunch. She shares her dinner with the stranger, and he gets coffee for the two of them. Not until he leaves does she look across the room and see that her own meal was on another table. The story derives from a classic urban legend, usually referred to as "A Packet of Biscuits" and circulating since 1972. The same plot was used in the Dutch film "Boeuf Bourgignon" (1988), although neither filmmaker was aware of the other film.

Class Notes:
The protagonist must be a strong character, capable of engaging in conflict: In this case the protagonist fights for her salad.


Theme: Social divide between race and class in the USA
There's obvious contrast between the protagonist and the characters she encounters, she is quite hostile towards them and looks down on them.

The character who steals the salad buys the protagonist a cup of tea: this has dramatic effect, bringing hope to the otherwise hostile seeming environmnet and situation.

Robert Mckee's
Three Levels of Conflict:

1. Intra - between others - USA race relations
2. Inter - Internal - her distorted view of others
3. Extra - The Environment - her conflict with the black guys