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Short Film #1 - Found in Translation
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 | The weekend my first short is due to be filmed, I'm scheduled to be on a trip to Tokyo. So the first idea involves filming there -
I want to use my camera to find shots and scenes that can not be distinguished as being Japanese. Scenes and shots that look like they're from Los Angeles. This is my base operating framework. I could spend all my time in Tokyo filming the magnificent organized public transportation, or the quirky fashions, or the fantastic plastic goods and paper products. The tiny restaurants, the giant neon signs and televisions above the sidewalks. But all that serves to make Japan seem exotic, much like Coppola's "Lost In Translation." After living there for 18 months, I'm more interested in exploring moments of familiarity and commonality. I'd like to see if I can film cars in the streets, food in the supermarket, commuters heading to work, and make it look like AnyCity USA. It will be a challenge of framing! Fortunately, I don't have to edit in camera.
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| Thrust: Much of Japan resembles modern, urban America
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| SAV: Depict Japan as indistinguishable from modern urban America,
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| DAV: Play with the viewer's expectations
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| Brandon Walston's comments:
As I was also annoyed by some of Coppola’s depiction of Japan in "Lost in Translation," I’m definitely looking forward to this. My only real concern though is how you’re going to craft this into an actual narrative...If you haven’t seen it before, I think you should definitely watch Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil." In the film there are no characters in the traditional sense, just an unseen narrator commenting on the "visual post cards" her friend (Marker –who we also never see) sends as he travels around the world (most notably, Japan). A shrine to cats outside of Tokyo, an African marketplace, a town destroyed by a volcanic eruption in Iceland… Seemingly one visual non sequitur after another but in the end Marker not only manages to a find commonality amongst all these places but to tell a really moving and personal story about travel…I the think what you’re going for is the same thing Marker does in his film.
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| Story Conference with Mark Gray
Maybe do a few of the cutbacks.
Set people up with the soundtrack: Bruce Springsteen, Country Music, Bluegrass
Someone picks up the 7-up, and then you pan over to the giant squids
Consider a story - how to make an Encino narrative
Film a human's experience in the setting - Little American Things Give Her Peace - Going Out of Her Way to Be Exposed to the Cowboy Boot Store - People Who Go All Over the World And Have Their World With Them
Use telephoto, from a distance, isolates
Starting exotic, then showing increasingly mundane stuff
Movie: Koyanisquatsi
Story, or low-fast-slow, or little-little-little-big
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