Week 3: Story-boarding and News Headlines

     There was something I didn't realize when I made my last posting.  I mentioned that since we had already cast a main actress that we were starting to get ahead of schedule, but I totally forgot that we also planned on finding a shooting location next week.  Since we already have Lucille's down to film, we're actually super ahead of schedule.  The only thing we have left to do for Week 4 is find a handful extras, so we've pretty much cleared that week.  This also means that we have more time to refine the script and storyboard that we're starting this week.
     Following the theme of me creating a skeleton and Sil filling in the rest of the body, I have created an outline for our storyboard.  I'm not very good at drawing while Sil is, but I still wanted to contribute to planning out our shots for the opening.  So, I created a list of shot ideas that we could use in the scene.

1. Title card fades away, cut to wide shot of diner interior, showing off setting
2. Close up of bell ringing as door opens (I assume Lucille's has one of those never been there)
3. Mid shot of main character
4. POV shot panning left to right of the diner
5. Mid shot of MC walking towards a booth
6. Long shot of booth with MC approaching in left third
7. Mid shot of MC sitting in the booth
8. Close up of phone
9. Shot counter shot of MC video calling with her friend on the phone
10. Mid shot of MC putting away phone, smoothing out clothes as her date arrives

  I know that there aren't that many shots, but this is just an idea of what we want the scene as a whole to look like, and we'll probably add some more shots when it comes to the complete storyboard and the final version of the opening.

We plan on having a bunch of holograms floating over the tables in the diners, essentially functioning as newspapers. Sil wanted be to make a bunch of news headlines so that she could choose a few to use in the holograms, so I brainstormed, asked some friends for ideas, and went to the Onion for "inspiration." Here's what I came up with:

• Partly cloudy weather expected for tomorrow
• Heavy rain forecasted for Saturday
• Hurricane on track for East Coast, president unconcerned
• ‘No way to prevent this’ says only nation where this regularly happens
• Western Culture Ends
• Neurosurgeon feels lucky to have turned hobby into a career
• War erupts in Europe, Germany blamed again
• Mercury in retrograde
• Internet down on Mars
• Chinese government pinky-promises to stop spying
• Florida man arrested for assaulting fast-food mascot
• Patriots claim 123rd Super Bowl win
• Legendary Hollywood actor dies of apparent age overdose
• Disney acquires rights to the word “movie”

  Some of these are just normal headlines, but since I think retrofuturism is inherently sort of goofy and the news headlines aren't meant to be focused on, it would be funny to have some jokes in there as Easter eggs for anyone who decides to try reading them. Using sci-fi and a futuristic setting also gives us a lot of leeway in terms of whats possible, so some of the more ridiculous ones seem somewhat plausible. Sil seems to have especially like the ones about Disney, Western culture, and the neurosurgeon.

We're experimenting a little more with the holograms and discussing some of our plans for when we're filming at Lucille's. I plan on talking about this in my next post. See you then!