Concept palettes, character concept-
































New shot-by-shot edition with multiple possible endings.
On%20the%20Ride%20Home.rtf

Casas updates 8/7/08

I visited an art museum in Louisville recently that was the impetus for the reimagining of the beginning of "casas." Specifically, the exhibit "Text Rain" found here:
http://www.21cmuseum.org/museum/exhibits/text-rain.aspx
Of particular interest is the image in the upper left corner under "exhibition photos"

For the opening of "casas," I want to start in a room full of black falling squares (similar to how the letters of "Text Rain" fall). The first shot will be a tight shot on a section of the room so that all we see are these falling squares. A slow cross dissolve will end in a wider shot of the room (of similar composition of the image here including a humanoid figure (most likely live action composited--but don't fret, I want to keep the live action to a minimum).

The black squares will bounce off of the figure (like rain) as the camera slowly zooms out. The shot at the end of the zoom will show that the entire room is in a box that is part of a massive grid system. This grid system is located in abstract space (note that we shouldn't zoom far outside of the room, just far enough to show boxes on either side and possibly above and below). One side of the room is missing (laid down, flat), allowing us to look in.

Slowly, the missing "wall" of the "room" begins to fold up into place (think of this shot as the reverse of a similar shot in a previous reel--the shot where a side of a box fell open to reveal another scene).

As the wall moves into place, we see that the "room" is actually a box of some sort with a screen on it (the screen is on this new "wall" that has just moved into place). Also as this new wall moves into place, the parts of the room that are being covered become pixelated, including the figure inside (hopefully at this point the audience realizes that the "black squares" falling were in fact pixels).

The gist of all of this is that it is revealed that our initial scene was taking place inside a box similar to "cube world" (inside a box like the ones seen here: http://www.prezzybox.com/data/media/12508.jpg)

From here we transition into the long shot of the grid with the boxes flying at the screen, that in turn transitions into the "brain" shot, and so on.

In summary,

--start with nothing but raining pixels
--cross fade to show a figure in a room with the raining pixels
--slowly zoom out to show the room is part of a grid system floating in abstract space; the room we are looking in is missing a wall allowing us to see inside
--the missing wall slowly folds up, closing the room. however, a screen on this wall shows the same scene we were just looking out, only in pixelated form
--we cut to the wide shot of the grid as the boxes begin to fly toward the camera, which brings us up to date on the reel.

also note that the figure in front of the TVs in the last shot will be the same figure from the room at the beginning (in non-pixelated form)

2/3 Train Reel 8/07

Below is the August 7th reel, which is lacking the climax and ending. Said climax and ending are still being mulled over in order to have maximum effect. Also below is the shot-by-shot write up of this reel.

Big thanks to Lee and Kevin for the help thus far.

On%20the%20Ride%20Home.doc

Train807.mov

Casas Reel 8/01/08

Please see my comments after viewing the reel.