Meeting Draft 3

I decided to add a scene on my trailer which is not in the script, which is the girl in a black hoodie with a knife. The idea was given to me by Sophie Marriott who loves creepy things. The idea was really good for me so I just want to state that she gave me that idea. Thank you again!

Finally my trailer is here! Check it out.

My casting was very particular since I had the characters pictured in my head but couldn't get them exactly how I wanted the. For the girl I had Ruby Rogers for it. She looked a lot like my character, although her voice was not what I expected for my character. The male character was supposed to be Vittorio Falcucci at first but I ended up changing it because he didn't look that much like a psychiatrist and also his voice didn't match at all my character. I ended up using Mark Cooper as my shrink, which ended up good. As I was directing, I was doing camera as well since I didn't use a tripod at all for my shooting. Aimee Saunders helped me by holding the mic, which was a very exhausting job.

The Location for my trailer was a bit difficult to choose. At first I needed an office or some place that gave the look of an office. I had decided to do it in my room and moving the bed, the desk and i believe it would have ended being a good office, except for the fact that I didn't have a sofa. After changing my story because of Simon's feedback, I didn't need an office anymore or at least not the kind of office I was thinking about at first, so I decided to move in to another place. At first I was going to use the Boardroom at Maidstone Studios, but I had a problem the week of my shooting and it was that my actress, Ruby had to go home that Thursday so I couldn't film the day I planned. I had to select something quickly so I could film the day after so I decided to use my flat's kitchen at move the furniture a bit so it didn't look like a kitchen ad I believe I did a pretty good job. I wish the location would have been better, but I've learn that things can happen when we less expect them and we just need to act fast and with what we have.

Here is the New Intro for my films. Enjoy it and SUBSCRIBE!

I created this poster for my short "The Meeting".

For my editing I used both Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects. A bit of Garageband and Adobe Illustrator was used for minor things like voice recording and background designing. The task was a bit hard since I wasn't really convinced with my work, but I guess in the end it ended up being a decent one. I think that it could have been better and I did magic with the editing to make it look better than what it really was. Here are a couple of pictures of my editing.

Here is my music choice. I decided to use this song right away when I listened to it. There was this song and this song only. Hope you enjoy it. You can also download it from the link below in Soundcloud.

Basically the filming day didn't go that bad. The filming crew was only Aimee (as audio) and me as camera and directing since it was all a handheld camera production. I was very bossy, but it is just that I wanted in a special way and I wanted the actors, Ruby and Mark, to do it exactly like I needed to. We spent around 5 hours filming with a 20 min break in between. There was a problem with the audio since the cable was broken and I had to use a very small cable for a boom mic. I have been trying to correct it as much as I can on my computer but I can't do magic. It was a really good and productive day, although the filming could have been much better.

Here are a couple of pictures of part of the set for my movie. Although I decided not to green screen the last part, it worked quite well at the beginning.

So I decided to make a post regarding of how I came up with the names of my characters (even though it might be funny) and any inspiration in them. Regarding the psychiatrist, Calvin Lloyds, I decided to call him Calvin, because first it sounded to me as a psychiatrist name, but most important, lately that name has been part of my Uni life. There is one flatmate that never comes out of his room and his name is Calvin (although he discovered recently his name is actually Lei). We also spell Sei-Kai as CK, which stands in the world for Calvin Klein, so yeah, there is Calvin. Lloyds came out after the Lloyds bank. I think is a very classy last name and every time I went to the bank I looked at the name and I knew I had to use it for something et voila. Regarding the girl, she has two names, Alice Jansen and Veronica Jansen, both her and her other personality. Alice came from Alice in Wonderland, since she is a young girl lost in a crazy world, so she inspired me a bit on naming my character after her. The last name Jansen, comes after a TV Show I once watched called "Secret Life of the American Teenager" where the main character's last name is Jansen and she is a young girl as well. Now for Veronica's name came after a Violin group called The Veronicas. I was listening to it while I was doing my script so I looked at the name and decided to call her like that. Her character is a bit inspired in Jessica Sanders, the other personality of Nikki Sanders from the TV Show Heroes. She suffers from DID as well and I love Heroes, so yeah, that's some inspiration there.

Here is the trailer done by me and Aimee about the short called "Soft".

After getting Simon's feedback for my script, I decided to take his advice and change the story a bit to make it more believable. The story stopped from being a young girl going to her new psychiatrists session, to a young girl in a mental institute going to her rehab session with her new shrink. The reason of this, is because the girl has killed already many people and many people will not believe that she is still free and not in jail. Since she has D.I.D, she will be able to go to a mad house instead of jail. The story ended up good and had some major changes, specially location, but in the end I believe is good enough.

So I have been having a lot of issues on my set for my movie. I needed a white room, an office environment, everything needed to look perfect and I couldn't find any place. I decided to try using a concept called chroma key, commonly known as green screen. I have worked a bit with it, but nothing major. I do know how to use it and how to work with it in Adobe After Effects. I know it might be hard, but I am willing to make the effort to make it look how I want to. For people that are not sure of what it is and how it works, here is a little description and a video about it. Enjoy it.

CHROMA KEY
a digital technique by which a block of a particular colour (often blue or green) in a film or video image can be replaced by another colour or image, enabling, for example, a weather forecaster to appear against a background of a computer-generated weather map.

Last Friday the 8th I got the opportunity to travel to Amiens, France. I traveled by mini bus with 12 more people. Among them was Helen and Niki, both Television Production students, Chris Hunt, who gives me lectures every thursday and more people I didn't know. The trip was amazing. We got a bit late to the hotel because a height problem when parking, but apart from that the journey was a safe one. The hotel was really good, I couldn't remember how it felt to sleep in a double bed by yourself and free breakfast. Back to business, the play we filmed was actually good, even though I understood half of it (yeah it was in french), but it was good in general. A lot of pressure was put to me since I was using the XDCAM and Niki, the director, had to be on the other side of the room. I was all by myself, but she liked my work which is good. I was in charge of audio in all the interviews and I found it very good. I am really looking forward to the next trip next November 29th. Here a picture of us three working in the first interview.

Meeting Draft II.pdf

Finally, the first draft if my story. Hope you enjoy it!

The Meeting Draft I

A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie called Psycho, which my friend Sophie recommended to me (good choice) and since the moment I watched it, I started liking all the world of Norman Bates, the protagonist of the story.

**SPOILERS**

The story gave me the idea of doing a double personality character for my project, since I loved the madness on Norman Bates by having his mother as another personality, in this case a killer as well. Understanding the mind and how it plays, is a really interesting topic and Alfred Hitchcock made me like it even more. I believe the movie introduces a very interesting concept of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) by showing us how Norman Bate's mother personality killed the guests because of jealousy and he, as a good son, covered his mother's tracks. In the end it was only 1 body, but different persons. The movie is really good and even though it's an old movie in black and white, it more worth it than many recent movies. Here is a trailer for you to watch

The Rhododendron, a dangerous plant in all ways. In nature, it invades habitats, destroying colonies. In science, it contains a toxin called Grayanotoxin.

Intoxication in Humans
The voltage-gated sodium channels of the neurons are most likely a prominent target of grayanotoxins. In animal studies, Onat et al. found that injecting a small dose equivalent to 50 mg of honey intracerebroventricularly in anaesthetized albino rats caused marked bradycardia and respiratory depression. However, a much larger amount of extract, equivalent to 1 and 5 g/kg, was needed intraperitoneally to obtain the same results. This might indicate the important role of the central nervous system in grayanotoxin pathophysiology compared to the peripheral nervous system. Alternatively, intraperitoneal injection may result in increased elimination rates. 

I decided to use this plant in a liquid state, which will give the sensation of death to someone, but actually not killed them if given the right dose. For more information related to this toxin you can check the National Center of Biotechnology Information

http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/rhododen.htm

Last Tuesday I had a tutorial with my course leader Simon. I explained to him the ending on my film, which he found a bit vague. He said that it was a bit obvious and that it was an empty ending, no true resolution on the story. He gave me the idea of maybe killing Veronica psychologically, which I found as a very good ending. I went back to my flat and spend all weekend finding ways to kill someone psychologically, but everything that appeared was not really related to what I wanted. I saw a lot of how to destroy a person emotionally, but I wanted to kill someone, I needed to kill Veronica from Alice's mind. On saturday I saw Romeo and Juliet for the first time and the part where the priest gives Juliet a liquid to fake her death for 24 hours, gave me an idea of how to kill Veronica. My plan was complex, but effective. I wanted to make Veronica believe that the doctor killed her. The plan was to inject her with a liquid that makes her feel week, see blurry and faint and with some blood the doctor would add to her body, give her the sensation of dying and make her believe that she was really going to die. I struggled a lot looking for this liquid, I wanted to get as real as possible on this. Looking and looking, I remembered the movie Sherlock Holmes, the first one with Robert Downey Jr., in which he explains in the end how Lord Blackwood managed to fake his death. I did a lot of research into this and found out this plant called Rhododendron, from which I will talk about more in my next post.

Dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) is an effect of severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.

What Is Dissociative Identity Disorder?

Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociative identity disorder is thought to stem from trauma experienced by the person with the disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.

Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Real?

You may wonder if dissociative identity disorder is real. After all, understanding the development of multiple personalities is difficult, even for highly trained experts. But dissociative identity disorder does exist. It is the most severe and chronic manifestation of the dissociative disorders that cause multiple personalities.

Other types of dissociative disorders defined in the DSM-IV, the main psychiatry manual used to classify mental illnesses, include dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, and depersonalization disorder.

What Are the Symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder?

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct or split identities or personality states that continually have power over the person's behavior. With dissociative identity disorder, there's also an inability to recall key personal information that is too far-reaching to be explained as mere forgetfulness. With dissociative identity disorder, there are also highly distinct memory variations, which fluctuate with the person's split personality.

The "alters" or different identities have their own age, sex, or race. Each has his or her own postures, gestures, and distinct way of talking. Sometimes the alters are imaginary people; sometimes they are animals. As each personality reveals itself and controls the individuals' behavior and thoughts, it's called "switching." Switching can take seconds to minutes to days. When under hypnosis, the person's different "alters" or identities may be very responsive to the therapist's requests.

The Meeting

Characters:

Calvin Lloyds (male)

Psychiatrist, glasses, professional, bullied as a kid, afraid of darkness, tall, young

Summary

When he was a boy, many kids at his school bullied him because of his short height. He usually was kept in lockers and dark places for hours, which developed a trauma for darkness. After finishing school, he decided to change and got into a gym to get taller and stronger. He joined the Faculty of Medicine to be able to become a psychiatrist. He decided he wanted to help people because of what people used to do to him when he was a boy. He graduated with honors and obtained a Ph.D. in psychology. Now he works as an independent doctor in an office in the outskirts of London.

Alice Jansen (female, normal state) / Veronica (female, killer state)

Alice: small, thin, young, dark hair, has a tic in her head (moves it to the right), unemployed, lives out of her mother's money after she was murdered, very accurate in what she does, suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Veronica: very formal, accurate in what she does, smart, killer, very conscious of what she does, cold blood.

Summary

Some days during each week, Alice heard Gabriel, Alice's mother's boyfriend, sexually abusing from her. She slowly developed an anger towards him that took drove her to take action. Gabriel was a psychiatrist and met Veronica, Alice's mother, in a local bar one night. Veronica had her own business, a drug store, very successful, but she felt very alone and had the need of a man at home. One day Gabriel came home very drunk and he abused very strongly from Veronica. After weeks of this happening, Alice couldn't stand it and lost control of herself. She took a knife from the kitchen and rushed into her mother's room. Finding him shirtless and her mother dead of pain, she stabbed him without mercy. Alice enjoyed killing him, which drove her to develop this new personality, passionate for killing and she named herself Veronica in memory of her mother. After the police found the dead bodies, they let Alice free because she was underage and they stated it was in self-defense. This event created a bad image of male psychiatrist in Veronica's mind, which is the reason she kills them just like she did with Gabriel. She has visited already 7 psychiatrist and all of them have ended up dead. The police haven’t found her guilty because of lack of evidence.

Story/Plot

A young woman named Alice is unconsciously looking for her new victim, a new psychiatrist. She suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Veronica, the killer personality, kills her psychiatrists because of an event in the past. After finding Dr. Calvin Lloyds, she books an appointment with him and goes to her first session. She explains him what she has and that by any circumstance he must use the word 'crazy'. This is a trigger to let Veronica out and this could be dangerous for him. Dr. Lloyds interacts with Alice asking her about the event that drove her to that state and tries to understand how she lives knowing there is a killer in here. She on the other side wants him, as all the previous doctors, to get rid of Veronica once and for all. As the 1-hour session goes deeper and deeper, Alice notices that Veronica is trying to come out, but she is resisting constantly. Close to the end, Dr. Lloyds accidentally uses the word 'crazy' referring to how people used to call her. This event triggers something in her and Alice vanishes in her own mind as Veronica comes out freely, hungry of blood. As the doctor finds out that all of Alice's previous psychiatrist were killed and realizes that Veronica is out, he enters into a state of panic and gets frightened of whatever might happen to his life. Veronica takes out a knife from her purse and slowly walks toward him, telling him how much she enjoys killing people and why. He tries to use his phone, but it is of no use, suddenly he rushes to the door trying to escape, but the door is locked, something Alice did unconsciously when she first came in. Finding nowhere to go, Veronica approaches him and tries to stab him, but Alice resists for the first time and freezes her hand of moving. She regains control for a short time and struggling asks the doctor to kill her, which is the only way for her to end up with that nightmare. The doctor refuses since it is not into his way of being, but in a very fast discussion, the doctor acts on instinct and takes the knife and stabs her in the chest. This creates a lot of confusion in him, driving him to question what he did is his lonely and blood smelly office.

Goal

To get rid off Veronica's personality, because she has been causing a lot of trouble to Alice.

Problem

Alice developed DID and her new personality, Veronica, ended up being a killer, which is getting Alice into a lot of trouble because of all of the murders she has committed.

Change

Veronica doesn't manage to kill the psychiatrist like all the other times. Alice’s will kills her instead. The graduated in honors doctor, ends up killing a girl which causes a shock in his life. 

The Woman With Seven Personalities - Multiple Personality Disorder: Helen and Ruth were best friends at school. Helen, according to Ruth, was one of the prettiest and cleverest girls in the class. Whenever Ruth thinks of school she thinks of the fun times she shared with Helen. Soon after leaving school, however, they lost contact. Fourteen years later Helen and Ruth bumped into each other by chance on a train. As they sat together on the train, Helen told Ruth that she had Multiple Personality Disorder, claimed she had been satanically and sexually abused as a child and had tried to take her own life on a number of occasions. Since that meeting six years ago Ruth and Helen have begun to rekindle their old friendship. Helen wanted to make this documentary to raise awareness of Multiple Personality Disorder, now known as Dissociative Identitiy Disorder

This film follows Ruth on her journey of discovery into Helen's world. We accompany her as she gets to know her friend again, as she tries to find out what happened to Helen in the fourteen years they were apart and to understand what it means for Helen to live with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) which is now knows as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Part I
Part II

After some hours working with Ruby, we came up with an interesting way to tell a story that happened that same morning. It was a bit hard to put everything into paper and we struggled at first with the way of writing the story in a script, but after checking our class notes, we started to understand it more. The original script is 3 pages long and was already corrected by our professor Simon. I will upload it later this week, so people can see the mistakes that were made and the corrections I did to the one below. I hope you enjoy the first try of an actual, industry standard script.

Lost in the Woods Screenplay

Pitch Development Day: Idea Facts

Student Name: 

Chris Sarmiento

Genre: (circle)

Comedy

Thriller

Drama

Location:

Shrink’s Office

Characters:

1. Shrink: Veronica. Female, glasses, very formal, patient, good-looking, young, professional.

2. Patient: Ally (Female personality) Jason (Male personality). Woman, young, crazy, psycho, feels guilty, destroyed. Man, calm, serious, elegant, good cooker, good talking to people. 

Goal: To get rid of the male personality inside Ally’s body. Make her stable and bring her back to a normal life.

Problem: Ally lost her best friend and developed a personality of him inside his mind. She has gone mad and psycho since. 

Change: The shrink falls in love with Jason (the male personality). She manages to get both personalities to a neutral point and handles to love a man inside a woman’s body. 

The Idea: A woman named Ally loses her best friend in a car accident and she thinks it was her fault. The guilt drives her to miss him more and to create a personality of him inside her mind. She doesn’t act like him, she IS him. Both struggle to live together every day and she gets more and more psycho every time. She decides to go to a shrink to get rid of her male personality, but the shrink, although it’s a woman, accidentally falls in love with Jason (the male personality) and manages to live like that. 

Meeting

Characters

Plumber 

Name: Len 

Aggressive, unmotivated, divorced twice, bald, middle age.

Journalist

Name: Toby

Shy, young, living on his own, looking for his big break in journalism.

Story

A local newspaper journalist is chasing a plumber working in a company named Speedy Plumb. When the plumber is getting ready for his next job, he finds the journalist is waiting for him in a dark parking lot and confronts him without seeing his face. The journalist finds out the plumber is putting in dodgy boilers and putting lives at risk and decides to write an article to expose the culprit. 

The plumber spots the journalist and confronts him in a very aggressive way, taking control of the situation and demands to know what the journalist is doing. The journalist loses control and reveals all the work he has done. 

After the plumber finds out that he is being blamed, he rushes, shouting across the parking lot and when close, he discovers that the journalist is actually his cousin. The plumber becomes apologetic and begs his cousin not to publish the article. The journalist gets more confident and decides not to publish it, but to blackmail him, despite the fact that they are family. 

A massive wildness is released, when a nation fights against the right of cleaning after going to the bathroom.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/world/americas/venezuela-toilet-paper/index.html?hpt=wo_t4

Hey everyone. Here is my Summer Project ready to watch. I hope you enjoy it, because it took me some tough time to finish it because of a surgery I got in the middle of the production.

Enjoy it!

Hello everyone, my name is Chris (short for Christian, but lets keep it like that) Sarmiento and I am a Freshman at UCA studying BA (Hons) Broadcast Media. I hope you like my work, which I do with a lot of enthusiasm. I also have my small company called Waterflu Films. Just in case anyone sees that Waterflu name a lot, that is my main nickname and so far I don't remember how I came up with that name. You can like and see my posts at my Facebook page which you can find here Waterflu Films and my youtube channel to which you can subscribe and also watch my videos Youtube Channel. If you have any questions related to any video, you can email me to christiansarmiento@me.com.

Enjoy!