We finally were able to lock down our two actors Lynne Whitaker and Oliver Seagal who we will meet later in the week (21st and 22nd March).

After doing a test-shoot last week, we decided to work on the characters and the dialogues together with the actors. Our ideal approach would now be to see them both separately, develop the characters with them and then have them meet the week after, in order to improvise the elevator-scene. We are genuinely interested in how they would tackle this scene, without any given lines.

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More images of stuff being ‘stuck’.

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Lighting plan on the basis of having 3 walls.

Some images surrounding the word stuck

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One of the suggestions for shooting a believable elevator scene, minus the elevator, is to use a textured wall. Using a plain wall may result in a flat looking image and light reflecting off of it. Secondly, when we go into an elevator we are familiar with seeing texture, therefore it will be more recognisable to the audience.

Here are some example textures we should aim for. (Apologies for the low res)

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Due to production starting very soon, I discovered a way to shoot the elevator scene in quick time without having to build a set or awkwardly light and shoot in a real, cramped, elevator.
This method relies heavily on sound design to make it believable.
As described in the video, the trick is to also light from the top as this is how we are used to seeing elevators.
Secondly, shooting from a low angle will show our two characters feeling brave about the pitch.

After exploring the idea of Lost In Character, we found ourselves lost as we were unable to develop a clear enough message for the story we wanted to tell in the first place. We had a lot of variations in terms of ideas and how the story can unfold, however, none of them were coherent enough.

We realised we were stuck.

That’s when an idea of making a film about our current situation came about.

We came up with a story idea of a man named Josh who is suffering from writer’s block and then seeks help from a professional. He explains his situation of being stuck which then unveils to an experimental montage of various things being stuck.

Attached is the first draft of our script exploring this idea.

As part of our research, we watched 2 films:
1. Being There (1979)
2. Synecdoche New York (2008)

In Being There (1979), we observed how the passive protagonist, Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers), mimic people from the television. He is illiterate and only learns the way of life through watching television. This is something we could explore and impose into our method actors getting into character. We could document them mimicking other people like how Chance did in the film.

In Synecdoche New York (2008), theatre director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) executes a theatre production over several years which was based on his real life. He loses track of real life in this production and the lines between the play and reality blur. We thought this method he used was an interesting way that we could adopt into our process of getting the actors to be lost in character.

An initial breakdown in sound design for Lost in Character.