Under Control

Moving on from the depressing announcement that we will no longer be making Megan Kiantos' The Milkbar, it is with even greater anticipation and excitement that we announce that we will now be producing Eric Dittloff's Under Control!

This was a script that I noticed during our first script analyses. I really liked it for its simplicity in setting, character and resolution but also its complexity in plot. The story focuses on Grant, a middle-aged bachelor who comes home from work and goes about his daily nightly routine, greeting the empty fridge by reaching into its abyss and grabbing a bottle of wine. Together, the wine and he rekindle their lonely relationship upon his trusty couch until he falls asleep. Later on, he awakes suddenly to the sound of a woman's voice speaking to him directly from the television screen he left on before he fell asleep. The woman is Stacey, a 20 something year old, obviously distressed, and obviously in the wrong place. She awakesn Grant and informs him that he has to help her escape from her "boxy prison" in television world. Grant is convinced its just another marketing pull until Stacey informs him of the contents of his apartment. Grant then believes her and tries to help but not before the TV spot Stacey was using to engage with Grant is up. What Grant does next is the possibly the best ending to a short film I've heard in a long while (For those who want the spoiler, you can read my previous post here).

Already, we have been extremely pro-active in analysing the script and creating our shot list for how we want it to be interpreted. So far, we've already come up with nearly 80 shots, 20 more than what we had thought of for Megan's script which I think also shows we are definitely able to get more creative with this script due to the simplicity of location and characters. From here, its now my responsability to come up with the storyboard which will be detailing all of these what will end up being 100 shots. Its a daunting task but I really enjoy storyboarding (yes, I am weird like that) and I believe that the role of storyboard can only be taken up by one person and from what I gathered in my research, it is mainly the director who does that with some collaboration from the cinematographer. As it is though, our group have pretty much all agreed on 75% of the shots anyway so what's left up to me won't differ much from that.

The next step we're getting into is basically everything we were meant to have done weeks ago that everyone else has had a head start on - location agreements, castings, auditions, rehearsals etc, etc. As it stands, we are already way ahead I think in the rehearsals sector as we have been completing 3 hour camera rehearsals every Friday before tute which has definitely helped us get better in using the equipment and working with a team. We have also sent out our casting calls which means we should be having auditions soon hopefully and then all we have to do is confirm with RMITV that we can film in one of their studios and let my housemates know when we will be using the house to film. So excited! Everything is finally looking up and I can't wait to update you soon about our progress....