Film Treatment: Path to Graduation
**UPDATE: I think that Path to Graduation would also work really well as an anthology, with the overarching theme of the journey students take to graduation, each short within the anthology could focus on an individual student and the issues they face, this was my intention when I said it would be an “episodic look” into students lives***
Log Line: This short film would be an episodic look into the lives of five students from the central point of either one of the benches between Ball Circle and Lee Hall on Campus Walk or the Monroe Fountain. The Bench/Fountain would be the narrator of the film providing insight into the hidden aspects of the students’ lives, most of the filming would be shot from the perspective/level of the Bench/Fountain. The main themes in this short film would be intersectionality, interconnectedness, and diversity. By personifying an inanimate object and exploring the relationship between human and inanimate I hope we can examine our own humanity and what we choose to value. While I think this short is exigent at any time, with recent events in global and national trends towards hyper-group-identity and intense us-them mentalities I think a film that seeks to examine identity and diversity is especially needed. I want to give UMW a mirror to examine the packs we are running in and the way we are manufacturing our campus communities. By picking a neutral perspective (the bench/fountain is an inanimate object) I hope to be able to examine the diversity, similarities, identities and connectedness of five UMW student archetypes.
Through the bench/fountain the audience will see how the lives of the five students parallel and intersect at UMW. Despite the small campus it is very easy to go weeks without crossing paths with someone you know. This short film is not character or plot driven it is meant to be an abstract look at what and who connect us. The time span of the film is four years starting with Eagle Gathering and ending at graduation.
The aesthetic of the film
As I mentioned earlier I plan to have most of the scenes shot from bench height/perspective. Major plot elements will be shown in an episodic manner and mostly from a low angle to preserve the perspective of the bench/fountain. Shots from the central point will be used to show intervening time and connect the stories of each of the five students. The five students’ paths will also be traced with lines trailing behind them from the torso and each of the five students will have a unique color. The reason I would like to add this element is it gives us an opportunity to dabble in animation/cgi as well as film and it also will be an important visual element that will create a map of the students’ paths at UMW. These lines will symbolize threads it derives its meaning from two things, Asian folklore which says we are bound by an invisible red string of fate, that is unbreakable, the second thing is my personal understanding of the difference between assimilation and integration. When I was younger my aunt taught me how to weave and I think weaving is the perfect analogy for integration versus assimilation. When you integrate threads into a tapestry they maintain their uniqueness while creating unity and strengthening each other, however when you assimilate threads together you lose the uniqueness and beauty of the individual. The closing scene of the film will be right after graduation when we zoom and pan out to an aerial view of the campus to see the tapestry created by the five students’ different paths.
The short film would have a slight documentary feel but as the pace is pretty quick (4yrs in 20 minutes) only major events will be shown like Eagle Gathering, declaring a major, and graduation. I have left the plot and character development open because I want the class to choose five types of students who the class feels are misrepresented or underrepresented on campus and in which ways the stereotypes of the character will be broken or they will be represented through the film. I think that UMW is not an accessibility-friendly campus and that is one type of student I would like to represent with this short. I also personally had a negative stereotype of college athletes before I came to school and thought that they were better at brawns than brains and basically just played their sport and partied (this is an exaggeration of what I thought to get the point across) however my freshman year I had suitemates who were on the Lacrosse team and they broke my stereotype, I was able to see how hardworking student athletes are and how good they have to be at time-management. By bearing witness to others lives through the bench I hope this short can break down the barriers that identity creates.
Influences and Inspiration
Kim Kyung-Mook “Futureless Things”
Wong Fu Productions “When Five Fell”
