Forsaken's Scripts & Storyboards: Stepping Into the World of Depleted
by
Jim de Paula Hanika
[Editor's Note: Forsaken is the first externally created film to be officially Canonized as part of the World of Depleted series and represents a massive stride forward in the world of colaborative filmmaking that this post-apocalypitic franchise is designed to explore. To see it and other World of Depleted content, go to the newly launched World of Depleted Contributor section. -JH]
Getting started with a new film project is always an exciting time. As much as we would all like to get out there with a camera and an idea, there are some important stages to go through before we get out into the street. Pre-production is all about preparation. It's about defining the rules and planning the shots. It's getting creative so that the shoot goes along at a reasonable, but sensible rate and making sure that you get everything you need to tell the story. Planning includes involving the people you will need to make the film. Actors need to know where they have to be at what time. Locations have to be arranged, along with any insurance if the location is a private one. Of course, taking a camera and a couple of actors out in to the street is all good and all, but what are you going to shoot and will you remember all of the shots you need? In regards to forethought, low budget filmmaking should be no different to multi-million budget epics. Planning is important, because you will finish up with a much better quality product, which people will appreciate more. It is also about learning the craft and getting better at what you do and the films you make.
Sometimes you will need to shoot a test of a particular shot or effect, if only to prove that an idea will work. This is an important stage on the project. YouTube is full of poorly staged and executed mini movies, and most of them are a couple of kids in a backyard having fun. These films are unlikely to end up on a film festival roster.
Many years ago, and I really do mean many, I was involved in a small group who made war movies in the woods with a couple of 8mm cameras and a belt full of plastic weapons. Our first movie was really poor, and probably not worth the cost of the film. We made it up on the spot, and what great fun it was. Our second film was a little more involved, and we would start to plan a few scenes, which would requirein-camera effects. (No After Effects in those days.) We didn't know it then, but this was our first experience with pre-production.
The Forsaken short came about from a number of visual effects tutorials we had made with effectsportal.co.uk and submitted for use on the Microfilmmaker Magazine website. This suited us well, because most of our projects included a great deal of ingenuity and little money. We were contacted by MFM's editor, Jeremy Hanke, in late January 2010 to ask if we would be interested in a new communal-based franchise they were developing, called the World of Depleted. A post-apocalyptic world in which a series of mysterious attacks trigger governmental overreaction and radical civil uprising. The chaos and mob mentality that make up this uprising leads to the destruction of health and technological networks, the breakdown of modern society and, in the resulting year, a global death toll of nearly 90%.
The unique element of this world, they would explain, was the focus on humans being the cause of the collapse, rather than providing an easy scapegoat, like nuclear war or zombification!
This was an exciting opportunity. We agreed to produce a short film of approximately ten to fifteen minutes that, over the coming year, could help to support their project, have some fun ourselves, as well as be up for consideration for inclusion as part of the official Canon of the World of Depleted. (One of the unusual communal elements in Depleted was that it empowered filmmakers to help expand the world and, for those elements deemed good enough to be Canonized, to share in profits associated with that work.)
The biggest initial obstacle for a film is a story. You can't get very far without a subject matter and, ultimately, a script, Our immediate need was for a good base storyline to develop. Our first approach was to come up with five very short outlines that could work, and which fitted the limited resources we had, both in terms of actors and locations available. Sometimes only a sentence or two, these outlines gave us something to discuss and to spark ideas.
An attack by a gang of looters results in a quest to find medical supplies.
A man makes his way back to his former home to find a picture of his family.
The life of a family as they avoid the perils of the surrounding city.
We decided that the story should follow a single person, allowing us to make the majority of the film with a very small crew of two or three, with key action sequences that could be filmed in a single weekend. We also needed to devise ways of showing a largely empty, damaged world, and we would do this with the help of digital effects software like After Effects and Photoshop, or by getting up extremely early in the morning. It took a week or so to settle on a particular arc, and the outline script was written on a single sheet of paper.
One page outline.
Writing the script
I then set about writing the draft script. Incidentally, the entire script was written and developed on an iPhone using a combination of Scripts Pro and Celtx script apps. It's incredible how much you can get done on a smartphone these days. I have a busy working life, but I get a lot of script work done on the train or in a warm coffee shop. Being able to do this work on my iPhone means I can do it at all sorts of odd moments throughout a day. Scripts Pro has a great set of features that allow you to write and format the many parts of a script in a very concise and simple interface. Celtx, along with the free account and Mac desktop software, is a little more involved and offers many other features for planning a film. Both allow you to export the scripts for printing, but Celtx has a very good backup ability to your free Celtx account. You can also download the script to the desktop software on a Mac.
The outline I had on the single sheet had laid out all of the key moments in a very simplistic way, and the draft script would join these moments together in a sort of post apocalyptic road movie. I had some very specific ideas for this journey that come out of the many conversations we had had together. Our main protagonist would be on a journey that would take him from a country safe house to a potentially dangerous city location. During this process, it was important to see that our man was damaged in some way. He has fled a raging city, lost his family, and had gone to ground, making a point of not meeting anyone. The opening scenes would introduce him and his situation, as well as some details of his past and torment. All of this would span a single 24 hour period.
Locations were a big concern, because a number of the scenes involved car chases, gun play, and the occasional stunt. I discussed these issues with the local Police, who put me in touch with the Police Film Unit (Yes, there is one). In the UK, and I suspect that it's not much different in many other countries, it is now illegal to go outside with a real or lifelike gun. In the UK we can buy electric or gas fired BB guns that are very realistic, but come in bright orange or blue. The very act of painting them black to be realistic looking, immediately renders them illegal. The idea of a squad of CO19 (SWAT, to our American readers) descending on our unit was worrying, to say the least.
An alternative was to hire the Police Film Unit to cordon off roads, have a presence during gun play scenes, and generally support the production. For a low or no budget film, this was clearly out of the question, and we developed the story with this in mind. A number of shots would be filmed against green screen and motion blur, background and additional affects would be added in post. We could do this with only a few shots, and the final gun battle would be shot on location. The finale had to be something more than a modest shootout, and we needed a private location that was not overlooked and suitably out of the way to film it. This would become our most difficult sequence to film, but it couldn't be allowed to drag the rest of the production down.
Script start.
A car chase involves breaking a number of rules of the road: Driving too fast, on the wrong side of the road, or in a generally dangerous way. Clearly, the Police would frown on this, but with a little preparation and clever editing, a very realistic sequence could be created. Given that this stage in the film would be out in the countryside, I drove out to find a reasonably long road that would not be too busy early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. I took a number of photos as I went, which would help to plan the scenes later on. Not only would we shoot these scenes early in the morning, it was important to make sure that we had the cars and actors in place to complete the shots, which we knew would take a good few hours to achieve. With a number of possible roads in mind, I could then refine the script to cater for the locations I had found. During this time, we included some shots or scenes that we designed for a particular reason and to insert a number of links that directly related to the Depleted lore.
Once the draft script was completed, we read it through and worked out how long the film would run to. The old formula for scripts is that one page equals one minute of screen time. This is not entirely accurate, because some staging notes can last a while longer than the three sentences on your script, but it is a good gauge, all the same. Certain scenes would play as scripted, but on a few occasions, additional effects or stagings would make these scenes longer or shorter. We had already agreed that even though we set out to make a 10-15 minute short, we would allow it to expand a little if the story required it.
Storyboard.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding is an important stage in pre-production. In fact, storyboarding is probably THE most important part of this initial creative stage. A script will indicate both staging and action. It describes the content of the scene, the characters in the scene, the dialogue, and the general atmosphere of the film. Storyboarding takes those elements and to them you add the audience's point of view. Storyboarding allows you to plan each shot and each sequence in some detail. This stage is vital to work out camera angles and how to accomplish certain effects shots. For instance, the above mentioned car chase would require a mix of medium and close up shots, but the action and suspense of the sequence would require us to design the shots and how they go together. The action of the chase would be combined with the action between the characters, and the wrong edit could slow a scene down and render the sequence uninteresting.
Storyboarding does not require you to be a fabulous artist, only that you can sketch a reasonable image that your team can understand for the framing and angles required. A head can be an oval. A car can be a box. If you can find someone with the talent, a well drawn storyboard can be a vital addition. I began to storyboard the shots and to work out how we were going to film each one, what the treatment should be, and if there were any effects required. At times, every filmmakers has to go off and create a few test shots to make sure that a specific effect or staging will work, but this can be really good fun and put some energy into the project.
Test shots.
Storyboarding allows the low budget filmmaker the opportunity to mold the scenes to the restrictions in place, and to let creativity and ingenuity bridge the gap. I rewrote a number of scenes from the discussions we had over the staging of a scene during the storyboarding stage. This largely involved adding additional shots for more closeups or long shots. Sometimes, we added a very specific dolly shot to make a point or to get an important feel to the scene. Every shot is storyboarded. It is also a good place to start that important props list, location list and actors in a scene.
We started filming the opening scenes in April 2010 and the film is scheduled to be officially released within the next few days.
In the next article, we'll discuss our first day's shoot, cameras, home-made dollies and the importance of a clapper.
