Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Pitch for HAMBURGER

The scene will open with a woman walking into a kitchen with a McDonalds bag. She takes a hamburger from the bag and places both the bag and the hamburger on the kitchen counter. She goes to the fridge to get a drink and when she closes the fridge door she sees that the hamburger is now gone. She looks around the area looking for the hamburger but can’t find it anywhere. She then notices a light shining from a cupboard under where she left the hamburger. She opens it and looks inside and sees an ally way. She crawls through the cupboard and finds herself crawling out of a box into an alley way.

Looking back and forth down the alley way, she sees someone having a conversation with someone not there. She approaches this person and asks them where they are. The person responds with ‘here, where else would we be?’ Still trying to find out where she is she asks until this mysterious person calls her crazy. Becoming frustrated, she asks one more time. The man then becomes angry, and he then challenges her to a battle! (of rock paper scissors.) She accepts this challenge and wins. Her now defeated opponent falls and screams dramatically before turning into a box. She looks into the box and sees endless darkness. She crawls into the box and then finds herself crawling out of a box that exits into a forest.

Now feeling very confused she looks around. A very posh looking gentleman approaches her and asks her if she needs any help as she looks very lost. She responds with a yes and mentions that she can’t find her hamburger. The gentleman, not knowing what a hamburger is, tells her that maybe the ‘master’ will know. She asks where she might find this master to which the gentleman dramatically responds ‘by defeating me!’ He moves his hand and leaves blow in that direction leading up to a table with chess set up. They start playing chess (very dramatically) and when our main character plays checkmate the gentleman lets out a dramatic cry and crumbles to the ground before turning into a box. She once again crawls through this box, which leads her to a lounge type room.

She calls out hello in this room to see if anyone is there. A man comes from behind a couch (walking like he was walking up stairs) and makes his presence known. She turns around and asks him if he is the master and if he’s seen her hamburger. She begins explaining her reason for her search and when he asks about what a hamburger is she explains that it’s cow meat. He becomes appalled that she would ever eat another animal and challenges her to a battle to which she once again accepts. They start getting ready as if they were going to do a very dramatic war like physical battle, applying war paint to their faces and putting bandages on their arms etc. Then they appear standing in front of an air hockey table and begin playing (very dramatically). The winning shot is made and the woman once again finds herself the victor with the loser having turned into a box. She crawls through the box and then find that she can’t crawl through the back and ends up breaking out the back of it.

She crawls out the other end in the same room and is now very confused. She looks around the room and sees another door, which she walks through. This leads to an abandoned attic type room with a long table in the center. At the end of the table she sees herself taking the last bite of a hamburger. She first questions why this person looks like her and then accuses her of stealing her hamburger. This person responds saying she doesn’t know what she’s talking about and she should just get her own. The copy stands up and then they both approach each other meeting in the middle of the table. Then the woman lifts a sword from behind her back and makes a move to strike her doppelganger in the head but right before it hits everything goes black.

She wakes up back in the kitchen and makes a move to rub her head in pain. She notices that the hand she was rubbing with has an crushed empty hamburger wrapper in it and she curses about ‘her’ having gotten it before her. She stands up and storms out of the kitchen, very upset. As she leaves a hand comes out of the cupboard she had crawled into in the beginning and places a hamburger with one bite taken out of it on the counter where it was previously. We zoom in on the hamburger and as you hear the closing of the cupboard the scene cuts to black.

THE END!

5 comments:

  1. I feel the intent of this piece is to amuse us and take us into an artificial world. It is a quest and mixes both imaginary and real worlds.

    My synopsis of the story is that a girl searches for her missing hamburger and gets taken into another world where she has to battle many people in order to find her hamburger. She finds the culprit is herself.
    The story works for entertainment purposes, but I don't see any other reasoning behind it. The doppleganger scenario is usually intended to show some inner struggle that a person is dealing with where they must confront something about themselves that either they dislike or weren't aware of before. I feel like there is no clear reason why she must confront herself, unless it is that she tends to blame others for things that she does herself, which might have to be established in the intro.

    The strengths are that the story is presented in detail and some of the camera work is also presented in the pitch. The story is amusing and challenges the viewer's imagination.

    Some suggestions I would give mostly have to do with the fact that I always look for meaning in films, and I feel this doesn't really have one. It could just be a personal choice, or maybe I am missing out on an intended meaning, I'm not sure. The story is very confusing and it would be helpful to have some visuals like a timeline to explain it better. I think with all of the text it's easy to get caught up in the details and miss what is going on.
    My main concern is that these things will be very difficult to create!!
    Doing a green screen with a mirror or with still images is considerably less difficult than when a character has to confront themselves in a real location. I feel that the things you are trying to accomplish would involve a lot of technical skill that we aren't ready for as college students. Even if others are able to help, it would still be a large task. Maybe Jill could suggest some ways you guys could make it possible, but as it stands, even the fact of her crawling into a box and making it seem like she is coming out the other side would be hard. You would have to find a large enough box that she could fit into all the way, and I guess it would have to be open on both sides so that we could actually see her crawling through it from the front end of the box.
    I'm not sure I"m a fan of the duels, it reminds me too much of the Scott Pilgrim movie that came out recently.
    I'm definitely concerned about how you will show a man crumbling and turning into a box. If you have a way to do this, then great, but if you aren't sure, then I have no clue! If you don't know, then you should cut the crumbling part out and add effects to a jump cut of him, then the box so it'll look like he turned into the box.

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  2. This can be a very funny movie. I like the duels, but when she duels with herself at the end you change from traditional gaming to sword fighting. Have you thought of another type of traditional gaming? Or, even using Rock-Paper-Scissors for each duel; just change how dramatic each duel is and its theatrics.
    I think it's going to be a challenge with the box scene transitions if you're going for smooth transitions. Or, were you planning on making them cheesy?

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  3. I'm glad that someone is doing a funny movie in the class, I think its an interesting approach to a short film although I am wondering if maybe there is a better prop to use than a hamburger, regardless is sounds although odd to go on this quest for a burger rather than just go buy another one, interesting especially the "battle of rock paper scissors" however I agree with rachel on how you will show the man turn into a box.

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  4. I feel your movie is about a girl going on a journey to find something she has lost, but encounters other obstacles and characters on the way. It reminds be of the Wizard of Oz.
    I feel that the storyline could become visually confusing in the transitions to different areas, so im really interested in how you all intend to shoot this piece.
    I like how you're making up another world and using comedy to do this. The use of these weird characters sounds very interesting to watch.
    I would suggest not using a McDonald's bad in the begining (for obvious reasons). I also think that the use of a hamburger as the object could be revised. Maybe a more valued item will make the quest more exciting.

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  5. Intent: To make the viewer laugh! It seems like a dream to me.

    Synopsis: A very confusing dream like sequence.

    Strengths: It is very thought out. You have all of the details it seems.

    Suggestions: Tell us more (as everyone else said) about how you are going to accomplish the turning into a box...are you going to include animation? That could be interesting.

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