Coursework Planning - Screenplay

I am planning to produce a screenplay for a short experimental film. I am interested in creating a script for a film that focuses on establishing and developing a single female character through surreal and hyperreal imagery and sound. Initially, I am inspired and drawn in by the narrative and cinematic style used in Deren's 'Meshes in the Afternoon' and Lynch's 'The Grandmother', I find this style of experimental art film to have the most potential for the exploration and development of a character, her psyche, and her interactions with both herself internally and the world around her. I am planning to either expand upon or create something similar to a script that I wrote in the first year called 'Faceshopping', as I am interested in deconstructing a female identity through surrealism and hyperrealism in a futuristic and nightmarish world. As I am imagining my script, I would like it to read similarly to a nightmare and have the same strange and disorientating feel as dreams do, as I believe that this non-chronological narrative style is very useful for creating a film about something abstract and expressionistic.

Outside of the list of short films I will need to refer to, I am inspired by the visual and conceptual style of Signe Pierce's 2013 short film 'American Reflexxx' which documented a social experiment that highlights society's resistance to change and freedom of identity and expression. This is something that I wish to channel through mise-en-scene, lighting, and aspects of narrative. Visually, I find inspiration from the work of performance artist Hayden Dunham, her art exhibitions and performances that often focus on the dissolution of identity and the convergence of technology with the natural world. I am planning to use physical material and texture as a metaphor for fluidity and change, although it may be difficult to convey this through text and so I will have to rely on strong and visceral descriptions. Juliana Huxtable's poem 'Train' expresses the emotion of feeling threatened and vulnerable when out alone in the world, and wanting to retreat within yourself. I have some ideas for translating aspects of this poem into scenes or locations for my screenplay. My biggest tangible inspiration for my script is Cecelia Condit's short film 'Possibly In Michigan', which has recently gained mainstream attention, the use of surreal horror from a woman's point of view as a metaphor and commentary on something bigger is something that I am certain I would like to include and have as the main focus of my script.

• The use of trains, metro and subways systems as 'petri-dishes' and microcosms of society
• Nighttime, darkness and artificial light to take away from and distinguish from reality, strange and disorientating
• Focus on bright colours, unreal and unnatural but in a good way
• Having my character be placed in several different scenes, like completely different nightmares which she is drifting in and out of.
• Perhaps having a strange and high-concept antagonist/object of fear, similar to the woman with the reflective mask seen in 'Meshes in the Afternoon' and 'American Reflexx'
• Interested in segmenting a narrative or using 'acts' to explore completely different aspects with distinct visual aesthetics and locations.
• (Sunlight Zone, Twilight Zone, Midnight Zone, The Abyss, The Trenches) different carriages of the subway system ??
• Traversing a strange landscape
• Interactions have to be meaningful, create anonymous and temporary characters for the protagonist to work through and experience

Mapping Ideas and Aesthetics for Acts

• The Sunlight Zone - more coherent, experiences, diving or beginning a descent into something, artificial light, high-key, white and blacks, simulated daylight in an artificial day/night cycle, ice layer as the 'glass ceiling'
• The Twilight Zone - curiosity, oranges and purples, projected light,
• The Midnight Zone - stillness, bizarre, complete encapsulation of time and space, medical green 
• The Abyss - uncertainty, fear, darkness, shadowy figures in the distance, reds
• The Trenches - reality completely dissolved, most abstract, strings of visuals and sounds, finding peace or resolution,  all colours and hues, morphing through the light spectrum, kaleidoscope effects

Title

• BATHYSPHERE
• "The Bathysphere was a unique spherical deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934" - Wikipedia
• I am inspired by the idea of diving bells and thalassophobia. I was originally going to call my screenplay Diving Bell or DIVING:BELL (deriving from 'bella', Italian for beautiful). But after researching unique deep-sea submersibles I was interested in the story of The Bathysphere and its unique design.
• The Bathysphere was unpowered and used to observe deep-sea life. The idea of being completely isolated/separated from the rest of the world and society whilst being lowered into a dark unknown was a feeling that I was excited to explore and encapsulate within and experimental film. Before beginning the planning for my short film, I had read Juliana Huxtable's poem 'Train' and was intrigued by the idea it proposed about retreating into oneself in a moment of fear and threat - but in a positive way.
• In the same way the passengers of The Bathysphere were locked in together on a journey, with no way of escaping mid-voyage, passengers of trains and public transport are locked in with strangers until the next stop. In this period they are separate from society and the vessel they are in becomes like a 'petri-dish' or a cut-out of society with a random sample.
• Whilst I was researching The Bathysphere, I read that the voyages were full of risks an dangers. The 'suspension cable' (which reminded me of an umbilical cord attaching a mother to a growing baby) could snap. This was described as 'certain death' if this ever were to happen as The Bathysphere would plummet into the abyss with no hope of being caught or retrieved. The idea of being suspended in the vast darkness of the ocean and the only connection and anchorage to the surface being a temperamental cable, was one that caused my thoughts to branch into a wider loose narrative when I began visualising my script.