Tag: art - psycoti.ca/0/

Paralysis

The gist here is a film with a single unbroken shot of just someone's face who has just become paralyzed. A narrator goes over his final thoughts, while his face and eyes react somewhat.

I don't know how long it can go on. I'm thinking of bluring reality, and saying that everything neck down shut down, but the heart keeps beating for a while, and the lungs keep breathing. Actually, from my reading of Wikipedia, it seems like an injury at C4 would cause paralysis at the biceps, but breathing will not be impared. Then, without treatment inflamation can cause pressure to cut off the further up portions which would cause death after some time. I think it could work.

So, it starts off with him being upset that he's finally done it, since he had been doing something stupid a second before and had thought "I hope I don't break my neck"

Then it goes into calm, then sadness that this is it, then wonder at how long it'll take for someone to find me, then concern about being eaten by ants, then sadness about the sadness his family and friends will feel, then maybe some random thoughts, trying to focus himself into regaining control, then nothing, then getting light-headded, then realizing he's stopped breathing, then blacking out. Then dead.

Breadth Series

This one is kind of the opposite of Friendship Series, going for breadth instead of depth.

It's sort of like Groundhog Day, or certain episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

The idea is that we have a series of stories, all of which take place on the same day. Every story is taken from the perspective of a different character. Like an ever-branching tree, there are people that character A never encounters, but character B does, and thus they get their own story.

So, it's obviously most exciting if the there's some sort of localized cataclysm, and then the story recounts how each person reacts to the event.

When they just have a small part in another person's story, they may seem one way, but when we run through their whole day we come to understand them much better.

The idea is that, in a normal story, there are the main characters and then a bunch of side characters. In this story, though, I want every character to be a main character by the end.

Character Ideas

One guy who's cheating on his girlfriend, but is killed before he can tell her that he's leaving her.

She also gets a whole story, wherein she loves him unconditionally, and is crushed when he dies.

A character who encounters another who needs help, but refuses to give it and instead takes something and leaves

Turns out he was actually a nice guy, but his child needed the item and made the call.
He feels somewhat guilty about it, and doesn't know that the other person ended up making it
If I'm feeling really mean, the child is dead by the time he gets back and he's completely ruined by that and the guilt that he took the item for nothing

The child, being childish, should be pissed at his dad when he dies for not being back sooner.

A character who is trying to get to her mother's house to see if she's alright, but is convinced that the mother was at ground zero, and so she shouldn't waste her time and that the mother is already dead.

This is where it gets cruel. The mother is also a protagonist, and the whole story she is alone and trapped.
She rotates between hope that her daughter will help her, sadness that her daughter must be dead, gratitude that her daughter escaped, and coming to terms with the fact that she was abandonded, anger that her ungrateful daughter would abandon her despite all she did for her, etc.

A girl who has had a huge crush on a guy forever. She sacrifices herself to save him at some point.

The guy, in his story, doesn't really ever notice her. When she dies for him he is shocked, confused, and doesn't even know her name.

One guy who seems like a jackass in every else's story, and in his story is just a jackass.

Friendship Series

A fiction series, or maybe a novel.

Basically, I want it to be a single cohesive unit, like real life. No holes or retconning.

I want to do that, though, while still referencing the past quite a bit, rather than avoiding it.

The idea I want is that it starts off with a collection of friends having a reunion of sorts, and talk all about the adventures they'd had before. There are jokes that are made that are clearly inside jokes, but we don't know them. They talk about events we don't know. Etc.

So, then, the rest of the thing is a series of those stories. They all have a place in time, but the order they're presented in doesn't depend on that. It's neither all backwards, nor forwards. Just a collection of stories that all reference one another.

The hope, then, is that once I'm done I'll have basically covered every interesting point in their friendship and summed up everything. Every joke and reference will be explained.

Certain things will be intentionally misremembered, sometimes things might even be argued about how they really happened by the characters. Then, though, the reader will get the objective actual story.

Certain things, I'd like, for neither person to be right, nor wrong. Like, one person remember one set of things and the other person remembers another, but actually both happened.

Sometimes I'd like one person to recount the story but have it actually be some composition of two events.

At least one of the inside jokes, potentially one of the most pervasive ones, I want to be really simple.

Like, when it finally comes time to explain that one it's just like:

James sat down at the table and looked around. "Hey guys, what's up?" The assembled group struggled to maintain composure. Jill was the first to burst into laughter. "What? Ok, now I'm troubled. What is it?" James looked down; he'd just sat in David's ice-cream.

Or something. Told like the story, but clear that there's basically nothing to this one, yet it's become something that almost defines James. It comes up at least once everytime he's around in some sort of reference.

I'm thinking that we learn right in the first bit, the reunion, that James had died.

Then in basically every other story he's present and this comes up.

I'm thinking that something like the above, then, be the last chapter. That's all of it. Kind of an anti-climax, just a small nothing to fit that last piece together. In a way it sort of trivializes the whole thing, which I like.

Writing It

Because I want everything to be resolve before any part gets written, I'm going to have to build some crazy mind-map. I think I'd make a node for every event that happened in order, with a rough outline, then draw lines between them all being "This one references that one" etc.

I just have to make sure I have the whole thing in my head before I start so I don't screw something up.

Relationship Series

3 or 4 stories involving couples at different stages of their lives. Interspersed.

As it continues, you see that this guy is cheating on this girl, but in this couple he cheated on her for a while, but then got back together and are fine now, etc.

Then, finally, it starts getting really obvious that they share similarities, it's demonstrated how one couple literally becomes the next.

So, like, this couple might go through some crisis where they switch back and forth between the two sets of actors for the two couples before finally settling on the second one.

The next, like, get back together after being seperated some after cheating. After talking through that, they're the next couple.

The next couple is looking at a house, and when they decide to get it, they can be seen in mirrors and stuff as the next couple. When they finally move in they have a moment where one of them is the last, and one of them is the next. The next one says "Oh my god, we're home owners now" or something, and the other one hugs them, having now begun the next phase.

If I do children this would be the next phase.

Etc.

Still Frame

The gist of this one is simple, but making it live action would be technically hard.

The idea is that we have a still frame of some sort of action shot, and the camera moves around in this still world exploring the different elements and stuff. The idea is that we build up an idea of what's going on in the scene.

Then, the scene resumes and we see that we were misled by the snapshot.

Concrete Example

The scene is the living room of a house, and we're looking at a guy making some sort of face at his wife, who's falling over backwards. There's a child near the couch up and yelling and looking panicked.

The idea is that it looks like the husband hit the woman in front of the child.

When the scene resumes, though, it's clear that she tripped on her own, he was trying to grab her to stop her from falling, and the kid is concerned because she's falling. She hits the ground, and mostly laughs and then everyone laughs and helps her up.

Another

Two guys in an apartment seem to be fighting. The one has the other by the throat up against the wall, and there's a broken glass on the floor, and it's dark.

Spoiler: They're gay and making out. The one of them is only somewhat concerned about the glass, but is easy convinced otherwise.

Headspace

Continuation of my previous idea I called "Concept Shift" or something, but slightly more artsy.

I see it as an episodic thing, but it could also be a movie.

The concept is that there's a main character with no name. He wanders through things and we don't see him talk to anyone or do anything. All shots are him at home, or walking down the street, or riding the bus, etc.

The shots aren't empty, there are other people around, but he has very little interaction with them.

Then, though, sometimes (frequently) he'll look off camera and the camera will pan in that direction into another scene.

These scenes occur fully in his imagination, and can range from simple "Approaches the girl and has a conversation with them" to "there's a car accident nearby and the resulting situation" all the way up to "the world is post-apocalyptic and is roamed by zombies" or "he's on a spaceship encountering some situation".

Obviously it'd be good to keep farther fetched ones less frequent, both because they'd be more expensive, and less relatable. Fun, though, likely.

So, after some point in the fantasy it pans back in the direction it panned in on and he's still looking in that direction and then looks away. Some amount of time has passed, and it doesn't really matter how much. It varies, I mean.

Sometimes it might pan back and we've only been gone a second, maybe other times it would have been a whole half-hour.

Preferably, if it's not a ridiculous scene, it should be made in such a way as to have viewers not notice it's happened until it has.

So, yeah, the character doesn't avoid speech, or anything, we just never see him talk to anyone or have any kind of contact except in fantasy.

Maybe, again, he can keep going over some of the same ones over and over again. The same scene with slightly different dialog or outcomes can come up a few time. Maybe sometimes he can be erratic, and he'd do the same scene, like, three times in a row but building off it.

Other times, I feel, if it were episodic, he could have a recurring theme. Maybe there's a girl he sees on the bus a lot, and there's a building fantasy involving her approaching him or something. It comes up with quite a bit of frequency, but it's always slightly different, or goes differently. One can perhaps get quite a bit of a feeling for his mood based on how the scene goes. Sometimes she might be really receptive, and other times she pulls a knife out and guts him with it.

Then, perhaps, at the end she actually does approach him (when it's clear we're in the real world), he smiles, inhales, and then it cuts.

Slightly Different Take

This one is similar, but much easier to make. Even more artsish.

I feel it's different enough, though, that both could be made and they'd only be considered similar.

So, person hanging around home not doing anything. I'm thinking, in this one, we never see him outside the home.

Every once in a while, though, he stares off into nothing, and a narrator comes on with a narrated story of it. We just see him sitting there, maybe emoting or occasionally enacting somewhat.

From time to time it'll probably stutter or something, or go back over the same line 4 ways. Maybe sometimes he'll say something, and then be like "Woah, ok, no. That's not what I meant." And then he'll try to justify himself to himself.

Etc.

Concepts I'd like to include in this one

Looking to the mirror, trying to figure out if he's good looking, or just really familiar with his own face.

Also remarks about how it works better from certain angles, but defends back that that's true of everyone. Well, not everyone. Etc.

One of the common things that come up is fake conversations about how long it's been since he masterbated

At one point he'll be thinking of such a conversation, and it ends up in some ridiculous fantasy involving some girl doing something based on that. Either sexing with him, or masterbating herself, or something. (All narrated, obviously)
Then, he'll just get up and walk to the bathroom, time passes in time-lapse, then he walks out and the narrator starts the now familiar conversation start, but with "Well, I masterbated this morning, but before that was Wednesday" or whatever it'd been up until then.

Trying to meditate, having three levels of conversation going on.

The one in the foreground is saying, like "Breathe In, Breathe Out", then another one thinks about how well this is going, before realizing it's an issue and shutting up, to reveal another one singing a song about breathing or something

I would like some kind of full on masterbation scene, seperate from the previous one.

In this one the narrator kinda takes over and just tells an erotic story.
The only difference, though, is just that it keeps skipping around, changing direction, and resyncing with the main character's own progress.

That last one specifically involves getting to the fantasy's characters climaxing long before the real protagonist is done, then having the narrator go "Crap, ok." and switch to go back over an earlier part of the story

I'll feel it out at the time whether or not it'll be full-frontal nudity and sexual activity in the actual video, some sort of "waist up" strong implication, or the narrator narrating an empty frame looking at the door to the bathroom.
I think it'll come up with him on reddit browsing stuff. Then he clicks a link and an image of a sexual nature comes up and he and the Narrator both just go "Crap" and then he gets up and goes to the bathroom.

Character screwing with his appearance in some way, then concluding he doesn't care. Then he comes into frame saying he clearly does, trying something else, then getting fed up and leaving again.
Character is browsing reddit on his laptop, but we don't see the screen. He's just sitting behind the laptop, and not moving a lot. Occasionally he'll laugh very slightly, or complain about internet speed.
We watch character take a while to get his coat and shoes on and stuff, then he leaves. We watch nothing for a period of time, then he comes back in frustrated. He forgot something. So, he considers taking everything back off, but it took so long to get on he eventually crawls away from the door off screen, we hear sounds from there, then he crawls back into frame with the stuff and back out the door.
Character gets ready for bed and eventually turns off the light. We just see darkness, then he just starts laughing.
Discussion with False Female about Female Sexuality
Character is talking aloud to himself in some sort of voice, realizes it's similar to some other voice, and starts trying to dial in on that. Doesn't.

Then, third voice, even worse.
(In my head, it's Optimus Prime for the first one, then classic Megatron for the second)

Trying to do laundry, or get somewhere on time ordeal
Maybe at some point involving swimming on the floor.
I think towards the end the character meta-discusses making a film based on his life. Then, at the end he's setting up a camera first-person into what's obviously the first scene of this film. Then he says "Let's begin" and moves into position for the first scene. Then it ends.