This semester I'm taking Film-292, Introduction to Digital Filmmaking, at DVC. We're covering every aspect of the movie-making process, from pitching a story to editing and finalizing the actual film, and over the course of the semester we'll be making 3 short films. My first, a 1-minute "magnum opus" involving two guys, a candy bar, and a mousetrap, got finished this past week and will be up on YouTube or Vimeo once I find a slow moment. For the second, a 5-minute silent, we have to come up with a story, pitch it, write a treatment, then a script, and basically learn how the pros do it. Here's my pitch, for your consideration…
We start outside a movie theater at night. Two guys walk out, laughing and smiling, and they get into a car and drive off. Cut to the car pulling into a Denny's and them going in past a guy sitting alone in a booth, followed by cuts first to them in the middle of a meal, then after they've finished eating. The bill comes and they reach for their wallets, only to find they don't have enough cash to cover it. They look lost for a few seconds—until the loner comes to their table, puts their cash under the salt shaker, and takes the bill up to the register to deal with it himself. He comes back with the receipt, grabs his coat and leaves, and the original pair stare at each other in disbelief. They turn the receipt over and find a hand-written note: "Today you, tomorrow me." Cut to the loner walking out into the night, fade out.
Fade in again, a few days later. One of the guys is at home on his computer, reading news on the Internet, when he sees something that makes him almost spit out his drink. He prints out an article and rushes it to his buddy; it's about the loner who paid their bill—turns out he was a multi-millionaire who was found dead the previous night after giving away every last penny of his fortune. The two give each other a "you know what this means, right?" look.
Cut to a night at the same Denny's, a month later. The guy who didn't print out the article sees a young woman having trouble with her bill, just like him and his buddy that one night. He smiles, gets up…
Fade to black.
Thoughts?
