Spill (working title)

[to be continuously updated, piece in working, to be filmed in 2009]

Meditations on Old hollywood theme, Modern style b&w silent film. starring Belinda Bryant, Cary James, and Ariana.

vision: a film noir modern obsessively details oriented silent film about old hollywood. film might be shot in colour and converted to B&W with very careful tuning in final cut and other video software but certainly not overdone. B&W will have really rich tones and a focus on negative space and baroque styling. as much as possble characters might be cast along almost indescernable dark background elements or 50mm f1.2 bokeh. lighting will be dramatic and sharp but not too harsh (a high contrast styling will be applied but not at the loss of any grade, the whites and blacks will stand out immensely but chiaroscuro is important). all dialogue and sounds will be cut out, and whatever speech is written into the script will actually be said on set, but will be expressed with black screens with words, such as in old black and white silent film. actors will not be doing the overly dramatic body language and puppetlike behaviour, rather very natural and realist. the whole film will likely take course over the course of a few days or a week. scenes will be very short, almost snippits, and after certain peices of dialogue, when the screen comes back from the black text screens the scene will change completely, maybe just in that it would go from a wide room shot to a close in details shot, or maybe to a completely different time of day in a different setting. black screens will also indicate days of the week. most likely the film will take place over the course of a week starting on a monday and ending on a sunday. depending on the goal for the length of the film, each day will last from a few seconds to a few minutes, even as much as ten. there will be at least one day that will be extremely short, possibly only 5-10 seconds with no dialogue and maybe even no action (ex. wednesday scene ends, thursday screen shows, scene shows details of an empty apartment, hangars missing from the closet, the bedclothes sloppily put together, the phone off the hook, a dripping faucet, certain uncomfortable elements that show evidence of abandonment of the space in a hurry, end scene, friday screen shows, giza and kayla on the road in a car.)

a possible theme for this film is the two women make acquaintence with a young man, he is invited to their place fo a night of conversation, drugs, drinking, smoking ciggarettes and implied sex with the more dominant girl. an accident happens and he dies possibly an overdose, which happens after the dominant girl has sex with him, she does and comes out to spend some time with her roommate while he sleeps, she goes back into bed wiht him and he is already dead. something like that, the next day they fight over what to do with him the submissive charcter wants to call the cops, the dominant character demands they bury him, they have to take him out to the country side somewhere and bury him, they return to their apartment, they anxiously wait, they recieve a suspicious phone call and when they answer it noone says a thing (screen would read some hints at certain points, and at this point youd see a non quoted text making mention of 'soft breathing on the line, no words') the girls get spooked, abandon the apartment that night, the next day is just showing the abandonment and th next day they are still on the road, indicative of them being more than a full day away from where they lived. one of the girls had been more dominant in the arguement and planning to take the man to the countryside and sees the other as a vulnerabiity to her safety, that its possible she may rat her out. a cleverly done subtle scene happens to indicate she kills the other girl. would have to think this one out but it could possibly start that second to last day with the two of them in their hiding place, likely a motel, having the two of them sitting, the weaker one obviously has been weeping, and says something to subtley indicate that she feels extreme guilt, the dominant girl says something to indicate her apathy towards the situation, towards his death and their fleeing, after a few of the dialogue screens cut to a shot much later of her sleeping really well and the other. more moral girl sitting up restlessly in bed watching some sort of television show, some details shots from around the motel happen for a while kind of showing some negative space, the shot comes back to the television on snow as the moral girl slips into sleep. sunday screen text, cut to a scene of the dominant girl driving the car by herself smoking a ciggarette, a quick shot of blood stained white gloves, a bit more negative space driving, possibly a dialogue scene of her singing something, then cut to her at the bar in a diner eating like nothing happened and saying something to the waitress. the waitress spills milk from a glass, and apologizes to the dominant girl. (not sure if this would drop on her or just near her, but enough to make a disturbance to her and warrant an apology), the dominant girl says something to the extent of "mistakes happen" which would ironically refer back to the original accident with the acquaintence. she would say this rather apathetically, she would almost not react to the spilled milk, as if it didnt affect her. the idea here is that she doesnt cry over spilled milk, or even spilled blood, even over her best friends'. she has essentially the same reaction when they find the boy dead, when they bury him, when her friend is overcome with guilt, when shes in the car after murdering her, and when the milk is spilled. the last image is of the milk slowly spilling out and crawling across the bar table.









stylistic note: in The General (1927) it seems as if none of the dialogue is subtitled, so it might be interesting to play around with some dialogue sections not being subtitled at all, some of the non vital portions, the viewer would be lef to wonder what was said, though the vital portions of conversations, especially the big arguement the two girls have about what to do with the body would be expressed.



MONDAY (introductory scene, details survey, obvious show of friendship)

TUESDAY (meeting acquaintence boy, fun night of boose, smokes and conversations)

starting with apartment scene: cary is somewhat lounging on the couch, there is a table, and another single seat, hes sitting, smoking (and logistic note here, if none of them actually smoke, look into figuring out how to fabricate it, or at least smart editing so that they never actually puff them, but that they are lit). the smoke will be a nice aesthetic device along with black backgrounds, watching the swirling and random usage, take a lot of material of the smoke, play with it being blown into, and use them well edited as detail shots and somewhat of filler. belinda and ariana come into the room with some bread, some wine and glasses, ariana sits in the single seat and belinda sits rather close to cary and pours him a glass of wine. belinda is generally going to be a very seductive, sexy character in general. not overly so, but to the point where shes certainly got sex appeal. for a minute of time in the film they are talking, drinking, smoking, enjoying themselves, as the scenes cut back and forth, belinda and cary get a bit more affectionate, until she starts playing with his hair, and kisses his cheek. she whispers something to him, and cary smirks a bit, she goes off into the bedroom and he says something to ariana, and heads in there to meet her. ariana lights up another cigarette and slouches a bit. the scene cuts into the bedroom, where belinda is leading him to the bed, holding his hand, turns around, kisses him, tugs at his belt, sits down on the bedside and starts kissing him. the scene goes back into the livingroom, highligting some of the things ariana is doing in sheer boredom. soon the scene goes back to the bedroom, (if possible) belinda is topless, and cary is under the sheets, he has a plate with some cocaine on it, he takes a line, hands it to belinda and she puts it down, kneels over to do some lines, giggles at him, and then puts a shirt or a bra on and leaves the room, telling him she will be back in a few minutes. cary does some more lines, belinda goes out to talk with ariana, they talk a bit, sitting on the couch wiht one another, some time passes, and they have fallen asleep. belinda wakes up, tries not to disturb ariana, and goes back into the room. end.



WEDNESDAY (accidental death overnight, body found, fight, improper burial)

the scene opens with very bright white styling, the sheets are all white, white curtains with a high amount of light coming into the room. the objects and the characters clothing from the night before and whatever might remain ontheir bodies is mostly white and gray (this is important so tuesdays styling needs to depict this for continuity) it is almost over exposed. this is a large contrast to the completely dark scene endign tuesday night. the dominant character wakes, only wearing bottoms and puts her shirt on, rolls over back into bed, this portion is shot from above the bed, hopefully directly above it, and the male character hasnt moved, and is somewhat obscured by something, he is hunched over to the side of the bed, somewhat propped up with a pillow. a makeup artist is going to powder him so he is ghostly white, like a dead person might look, hes going to be directed to be very stiff. the dominant girl leands in towards him, touching his shoulder, rubbing him, nuzzling in to kiss him and wraps her arm around him. a few detail shots happen, and from above the bed you see her lean back a bit, as he is not very receptive to her snuggle attempt, and the pillow is pulled out from under him and he rolls lifelessly into the bed on his back, she finds it slightly odd, props herself up to look at him and realizes somethings wrong, she touches his face, feels for his pulse and runs out of the room, she doesnt scream or anything, she kind of just gets up, takes a look back at him and somewaht hurriedly leaves the room. the camera starts to zoom into him a bit, the scene stays with the overhead view of the bed, cuts in one time to portrait his lifeless face, and highlight the colour of his face in comparison to thie white sheets, and pillow (its possible to edit this to be lower contrast and saturaion to match the colours up a bit), then back to the overhead view and from the bottom of the screen the two characters come into the room hurried, then a dialogue part takes up the screen and the viewpoint changes to a more natural third person view from one side.

the submissive character discovers a bit of foam down the edge of his cheek and onto the bed, its inferred the boy had a seisure, and if the viewers paying attention they will note that he had been alone for a while in the bed. it seems as if the dominant character went to bed with him and slept with him after he died all night long. the submissive girl begins to panic (the dominant girl only really elevates her mood when arguing with the girl, but never really shows any signs of remorse, fright, shock or compassion to any situation,). they begin to argue, and this is the second larger peice of dialogue in the peice. only the vital parts of the conversation are put on screen. the arguement is inferred to be about what to do with him. the submissive girl makes a case for callign the authorities, and the dominant girl insists they bury him, burn him, something. as stated before, very few dialogue screens appear. the submissive girl says "911?" the dominant girl yells at her a bit, the submissive girl says "but what if..." is cut off with more dominant speaking, and she says "earth or fire?" or "shovels or gasoline?" in refernce to whether they should bury or burn the body. some detail shots ensue and when the scene comes back to the room view the bed is stripped, down to the mattress. and in the very next visual, its sundown, they are in the car driving out to the countryside.





THURSDAY (tense day, phone call, flee)

FRIDAY (abandoned house short scene)

SATURDAY (two driving scene, guilt overcoming moral girl, negative space late night scene in hotel)

SUNDAY (driving away after muder, final diner scene)