Dreaming Good- Working Title
Synopsis
This is a [X] minute [GENRE] film exploring what it means to me to be an American.
Through this film, and its primary character Lannie, I will examine the images that have
been created to represent “American-ness.” The film is an assemblage of how Lannie has
built her national identity from these images and how she comes to terms with that.
Framed as diary entries, Lannie poses questions about her own identity to a character
based on James Baldwin.
Treatment
I want the film to present issues of the character’s episodic life in tableau. The film will
use an experimental narrative style. The experimental form of the film will help to
express this experience as an internal conflict within the character looking at her past for
some perspective on the present. I will utilize optical printing, and voiceover narration:
the film is told through the voiceover of the main character Lannie. I want to use some
optical effects to enhance the idea that my character is fragmented. The film will present
itself in a personal letter or diary form to my character’s mentor, asking questions of how
should she proceed now especially in a world where the American image is increasingly
blighted.
Narration
The letters will act as a one-sided conversation between an author and an aspiring writer
Lannie, the main character. The voices will be that of three different stages of her life
where she has been forced to deal with identity, culminating in a trip to Brazil that forces
the character comes to terms with her national identity. The voices: Lannie as an
adolescent, 10 years old deals with ethnicity and poverty; Lannie as a teenager, 15 years
old, finds a new perspective on her ethnicity as well as appreciating the significance of
education; and finally Lannie as a young adult, 23, sees her ethnicity within a larger
framework of national identity in a global context. The different voices serve as three
discrete stages where she can speak to the poignant years in which Lannie’s perspective
on identity widens. In addition to which I hope the discrete voices might fit within the
three-act structure; shaping the narrative arc as much as it shapes the evolution of the
character.
Style
WHAT IS THE FILM GOING TO LOOK LIKE? New German Cinema and the
work of Fassbinder interestes and influences my work. I would like to expel on how my
film draws elements from Fassbinder’s visual aesthetic and conceptual framing of his
films.
Sound
I want to explore a layered sound-scape to further the drama of building, or constructing a
national character. Creating a sound element that will give more information to the
experience of how the characters are experiencing their realities, i.e. a small child laughs
as if being tickled fades in. The laughter continuously loops. The laughter is interwoven
with metal chains scathing concrete and the shackle of the reins cling against one
another. Throughout the film I want the sound to start fragmented, in the middle begin to
become more collected and then fall apart in the end. This is the shape of the film, and
how the main character has processed coming to terms with identity.
Visuals
- I want to shoot segments of the film in tableau. Creating an almost static feeling,
theatrical aesthetic, where characters rarely move inside of the frame, the camera
usually motivates the movement of characters. I want to utilize this effect to aid
in the idea that this is a recreation of my character’s idea on how she has come to
be an American, what shapes her. Also I am eager to shoot beautiful pictures,
create interesting compositions so that every shot is picturesque.
- I will optically print some of the film to help enhance the notion of constructing
identity. As [FIRST NAME] Friedrich uses the alphabet to build or re-construct
her childhood in a linear process, from A to Z I want to uses photos in this
manner. Manipulating images, cropping, cutting with the optical printer,
juxtaposing images to create meaning of imbalance or weighing the domestic and
international meaning of identity.
Moreover, optical printing has served to allow the filmmaker to leave their visual
“fingerprint” in the film in a manner allowing the viewer to observe a more personal
approach to filmmaking.
RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY
Lannie is looking for clarity to what it means to be an American and questioning
that identity. She finds that X, a character based on James Baldwin, is the most capable
of addressing her questions. As a filmmaker attempting to address the nature of American
identity, I find it particularly interesting that Baldwin felt more at home in Paris than New
York. [BUT WHAT DOES THIS FACT HAVE TO DO WITH IDENTITY?] The
character X, based on Baldwin, is a sounding-board for my character Lannie.
I have consistently tried to frame my project as a piece that draws from my
experience as an American, however responses have centered on my ethnicity and ethnic
heritage and not my nationality. It is a valid response to assume race with my project, as
addressing national identity within a U.S. American context inherently triggers race in
our minds. For this reason I will try to understand and frame my project based on the
cultural theory of Afrocentrism. Using the work of, Molefi Kete Asante and his theory of
Afrocentrism. Quite referential to Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, complying a West
African form of storytelling,1. I will assert an understanding of national identity based on
the theoretical framework of Afrocentricity.
Primary Sources
Baldwin, James. Nobody knows my name; more notes of a native son. New York: Dial
Press, 1961.
Baldwin James. Vintage Baldwin. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.
Pratt, Louis H and Standley. Conversations with James Baldwin. Jackson. Mississippi:
University Press of, 1989.
Secondary Resources
1
* Although Dash’s work inherently attends to a West African form of story telling, my film will try to
assert a Afrocentric way of understanding a U.S. American nationality.
Boyd, Herb. Baldwin’s Harlem, A Biography of James Baldwin. Atria Books. 2008
Rusk, Lauren The life writing of otherness : Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson.
Möller, Karin. The theme of identity in the essays of James Baldwin : An interpretation.
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates : a life of James Baldwin.
Elsaesser, Thomas. Fassbinder's Germany History Identity Subject. Amsterdam:
Amsterdam UP, 1996.
Elsaesser, Thomas. New German Cinema a History. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989.
Knight, Julia. New German Cinema Images of a Generation. London: Wallflower P,
2004.
Silverman, Kaja. "The Gaze and the Look: Fassbinder and Lacan, a Reconsideration of
Gaze, Look and Image." Male Subjectivity At the Margins. New York:
Routledge, 1992. 125-154.
Watson, Wallace Steadman. Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private
and Public Art. Columbia: University of South Carolina P, 1996.
Thomsen, Christian Braad. "Five Interviews with Fassbinder." Fassbinder. Ed. Tony
Rayns. London: British Film Institute, 1979. 82-100.
Asante, Molefi K. Afrocentricity. Trenton, N.J: Africa World Press 1988.
Asante, Molefi Kete. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
Locations
- SFSU Soundstage: I am trying to write the screenplay in tableau, hence using a
very painterly or rather theatre aesthetic and framing for my ensemble characters.
I will try to recreate the interior of a Chicago El Train.
- I hope to use the Columbia College library in downtown Chicago for my public
library location. If this becomes difficult the SFSU student library will work fine
for this location
- Chicago, IL: I would like to shoot at my grandfathers house for the interior and
exterior scenes of the main character’s childhood home.
- Chicago Transit Authority: I will use the CTA train platforms for my exterior of
the trains. Chicago is not as rigid as San Francisco in attempting guerilla
shooting. Also I will use Columbia College students as crew for this project and
they have greater possibilities of not being harassed by CTA officials for
shooting.
TO BE DONE/OR Enhanced
DONE BABY
Proposal
* Influences (contextualized within
o Goals
cinematic/visual cultural traditions)
o Approach to Directing
-Narrative Structure (perhaps followed by a
o Why this film (e.g., social impact, list of films, and how your film is situated
aesthetic impact)
to XY and Z films)
Personal Experience
- Directors of Influence
-Filmography
* Synopsis
* Theoretical Framing (lay the
Treatment
foundation - what theoretical ideas are
underpinning your project?)
o Social/Historical/Political (how might
* Style/Form
your theoretical approach inform the
o Aesthetic (Mood/Look)
politics of your film?)
o Pacing
* Research
o Shooting and Editing
o Narrative description of your research
o Effects
o Bibliography
o Sound Design
* Screenplay
* Proposed Budget
* Production Schedule
* Personnel/Crew
* Shot List
* Story Board