Initial Ideas: Story
Firstly, I wanted to develop the story of my film before focusing on cinematography or other film elements. I began to brainstorm and find inspiration of stories from other mediums such as books, other films and quotes. For books, I wanted to gather books with similar themes and ideas as well as loosely interpreting short stories and translating it into a screenplay for the film.
For films, I was heavily inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry as I really liked the theme of the film (philosophical sci-fi) and how it focused on relationships and memories. Similar to that film was Her by Spike Jonze, which followed more of a 'Romeo' narrative structure of boy meets girl, except in this case the girl was a computer. I also looked at films related or had a similar aesthetic such as The Truman Show and Mr. Nobody.
I found some quotations from literature and films and poems, which would help jumpstart my idea as a short quote would easily help to serve as a tagline or film title, meaning it would be more useful when writing a treatment for my film.
BOOKS
Perks of Being A Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - Jesse Andrews
Pieces of You - Tablo
FILMS
Cult / Indie
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - Michel Gondry
Her (2014) - Spike Jonze
The Truman Show (1998) - Peter Weir
Requiem for a Dream (2000) - Darren Aronofsky
Mr. Nobody (2009) - Jaco van Dormael
Documentary / Realist
HUMAN (2015) - Yann Arthus Bertrand
The Imposter (2012) - Bart Layton
Short
I'm Here (2010) - Spike Jonze
QUOTES
"What if? Do you really care right now?" ―Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
"I wish I stayed" ―Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
"A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories." ―Big Fish
"As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible." ―Mr. Nobody
"A lot can happen in a day" ―In Time
"Love is a flame and I am a moth"
"The past is just a story we tell ourselves" ―Her
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ―Mahatma Gandhi
CONCEPT/IDEAS
Life is repeating itself: One day
Melancholiness
Loneliness
POETRY
Since feeling is first - e.e. cummings since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry —the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis
//
Ode to Broken Things - Pablo Neruda
Things get broken at home like they were pushed by an invisible, deliberate smasher. It's not my hands or yours It wasn't the girls with their hard fingernails or the motion of the planet. It wasn't anything or anybody It wasn't the wind It wasn't the orange-colored noontime Or night over the earth It wasn't even the nose or the elbow Or the hips getting bigger or the ankle or the air. The plate broke, the lamp fell All the flower pots tumbled over one by one. That pot which overflowed with scarlet in the middle of October, it got tired from all the violets and another empty one rolled round and round and round all through winter until it was only the powder of a flowerpot, a broken memory, shining dust. And that clock whose sound was the voice of our lives, the secret thread of our weeks, which released one by one, so many hours for honey and silence for so many births and jobs, that clock also fell and its delicate blue guts vibrated among the broken glass its wide heart unsprung. Life goes on grinding up glass, wearing out clothes making fragments breaking down forms and what lasts through time is like an island on a ship in the sea, perishable surrounded by dangerous fragility by merciless waters and threats. Let's put all our treasures together -- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold -- into a sack and carry them to the sea and let our possessions sink into one alarming breaker that sounds like a river. May whatever breaks be reconstructed by the sea with the long labor of its tides. So many useless things which nobody broke but which got broken anyway
//
Esse - Czeslaw Miloszs
I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!
She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.