Treatment by TIMOTHY PLAIN

Treatment by TIMOTHY PLAIN
Hi Zergog,
Let me start off by saying how much I love your script. I told you this already, but this the holy grail of filmmaking: one
location, two actors, a simple idea with a complete story. It’s not easy to write scripts like this (I’ve tried) and especially not
easy to run the gamut of emotions in such a short time. Well done!
Before we go any further, I thought it would be good for me to share a few of my initial thoughts with you so we can make
sure we’re on the same page. I’m also going to describe my approach to filmmaking so you have a rough idea about how I
like to work.
Ultimately, my goal is to tell a story that has emotional resonance. When I use the word ‘emotional’, I don’t use it to stand
in for sad, pensive storytelling, I simply mean that the audience should feel something when they see our film. My job is to
make the audience care, and through a special slight of hand, engage them.
I believe films should not be a passive experience, but an intereactive one. That’s what sets cinema apart from television,
it is designed to be shared with an audience. Laughing and crying together in a dark theater is a unifying experience similar to sitting around a campfire and telling stories. This powerful experience is the reason I became a filmmaker.
Knowing we don’t have a lot of money, I think we put all our energy into a few key places: casting/performances, zombie
makeup, and camera. There are certainly other things we will work on, but if we get these three things right, I think the rest
will fall into place.
I started by breaking the script down into four dramatic beats. I’ve organized them as a checkerboard of fear and laughter. Comedy-horror works well because after you scream, you feel like laughing, so this approach gives us the best of both
worlds. I propose that we make Zombie Romance a little scary, fill the scenes with tension and danger, and then juxtapose
that with comedy.
I didn’t include every line of dialogue from the scripts, what I’ve done is told the story in my own words, sketching out the
major beats, so forgive the exclusions.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, too, of course, but here’s what I think would make this script come to life.
BEAT 1: THE MISDIRECT
I’d like to misdirect the audience up front, put them on edge. Fill them with fear of what’s around the corner.
Slow push in on the exterior of the house or apartment building at night. The wind blows a newspaper through the frame. There’s trash strewn about, maybe a fire burns in the neighbor’s yard, and a few windows are boarded up. The garage door has been spray painted with “Fear nothing” but someone has
crossed out “nothing” and written in “everything.”
Someone screams off in the distance.
Inside, Marie cooks dinner, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on outside. Maybe she’s even listening to
some music on the radio when...
There’s a knock at the door. Marie jumps.
The music stops.
Marie looks nervous.
She approaches the door and looks through the peep hole. She sees only a silhouette.
“Marie?” the man says on the other side of the door.
She takes a deep breath and starts to unlock the door. First the
dead bolt. Then the handle lock. Then the chain bolt.
Tension builds as the door creaks open.
Without warning, the man grabs the side of the door. and we see his
hand is monstrous, bloody and rotten. The audience screams!
Marie is frightened, she steps back.
The door creaks open and in the doorway stands a zombie.
“Richard?”
BEAT 2: REVEAL THE DATE
We quickly realize this is a date. The audience will feel a sense of relief, and laugh along with the jokes.
The first date. This is a relatable awkward situation. We’ve all been here before.
A woman decides within the first 30 seconds of meeting a guy if she’s going to sleep with him. So Marie’s
already made up her mind about Richard, and he has some work to do. He’s trying to impress her, she’s
trying to let him down easy.
Richard hands her a bouquet of dead flowers.
“These are for you,” he says.
“Thank you. Come in.”
She ushers him inside and locks the door quickly behind them.
And though she clearly knows he’s a zombie, she’s trying to play it cool, making idle conversation. Are
these for me? They don’t need water do they?
“I’m dead, too,” Richard says.
Uggh, foot in mouth, Marie. Way to make an awkward situation even more awkward.
“Have a seat,” Marie says.
Marie heads back to the kitchen to create some distance between them.
Meanwhile, Richard tries to sit down, but rigor mortis has set in and his joints are stiff, we hear the cracking and breaking of bones as he attemps to take a seat. After several tries, he gives up.
“I’ll just stand” he says.
BEAT 3: IS MARIE IN DANGER?
Our opening tone pays off here, Marie should be scared of this guy, and I want the audience to begin worrying again. He’s a zombie after all. And as a
zombie, I think he shouldn’t be in full control of his instincts, maybe he has a few autonomous tics that suggest a transformation is occuring.
We see that Marie is visibly scared. Her hands shakes as she tries to pour herself a glass of wine.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” she says, trying to break the date.
Richard tries to convince her he’s a nice guy, but as the subject of food comes up, she gets increasingly nervous Richard comes up behind her in the
kitchen, we think he might be coming for her. To eat her BRAINS-SSS! But then RIchard reveals he is a vegetarian. Wheww!
BEAT 4: IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD
AND THIS IS HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT IT
The mood shifts as the two of them begin to open up to each other. It’s funny and sentimental.
Marie reveals she made meatloaf for dinner.
Richard says “it’s terrible out there,” and describes his squeamishness at the sight of blood.
A shadow runs past the window snarling and growling. Marie screams, dropping the meatloaf and ruining
dinner.
She falls into Richard’s arms, on accident. She immediately pushes him away. He’s hurt, but he tries to
wash the feelings away with more conversation.
“I hear it’s gone global,” Richard says.
“I don’t think I’m going to fit in with this new world.” In your script, Marie says this line, but we should also
try it with Richard. It might be interesting to hear that line from a zombie.
Marie loses it, starts to cry, Richard approaches but she stops him with a hand gesture.
“Should I leave?” he says.
“Yes,” she says.
Richard starts towards the door, he’s hurt.
“Wait, no!” Marie is stricken with the sudden fear of being alone. “I don’t... I feel so alone.”
Richard stops and we see he’s starting to cry.
“I’ve never been in love,” he says. We dramatize this moment. Make it really resonate.
A beat. Then, Marie responds: “Me neither.” This is a departure from your script, but I think it adds something really nice. It’s their common ground that unites them. They realize here that they aren’t so different
after all.
Richard turns around and looks at her like, really? A tear falls from his eye as Marie approaches him. She
takes his hand and they move toward the bedroom.
CASTING
Casting is a huge part of doing this well. Who we cast will change this piece entirely, so I want you to be prepared for the
changes that the actors will bring to the script. We’ll find them good at some things and bad at others. So we’ll need to rework the script around their strengths and avoid showing their weaknesses. The script will evolve throughout the process,
which is a good thing.
What we’re looking for is the truth in the performance. This will be different for every actor, but it basically looks like people living in the moment and listening to each other. We need to create this reality and then capture it on film. Rehearsals
will help me understand the actors, so on the day I can help them get to where they need to be. For that reason, I think we
need two rehearsals to give me enough time time to work through my techniques and exercises.
We should place a carefully written casting call up for two weeks on a site like SF Casting. We’ll want it up long enough for
everyone to see it, but not so long that we lose the sense of urgency. We’ll have actors send us head shots and then we
can then either hold auditions (preferable) or have actors read a page or two and send us the video. In the past, I’ve had
a hard time getting actors to video themselves, so we should try to hold auditions. I don’t need to be there for auditions, at
this stage we want raw performances without my direction.
Together we’ll pick roughly ten people for each role to come back in. That’s when I’d like to work with them one-on-one
and see how flexible they are. Some actors will only be able to do it one way, some will be able to give us much more.
Those are the actors we want. Callbacks are also a time to try some of our ideas out. We need to be careful to cast the
best actor and not the best performance. The performance will come with the right actor.
I propose we offer at least $200 to actors for the two rehearsals ($50/each) and one day of shooting ($100). This will do
two things. First off, it will show we’re serious and professional, that we value their time and talent. And because of that we
will get better actors to show up to auditions.
Actors who have experience want to be paid for their experience. If we do not pay actors, we can expect that only non-experienced people will show up and that could turn out really bad for us. In the end, $200 is far below SAG minums, but it’s
better than nothing, and that makes all the difference.
Because the actors are a huge part of my job, I’m offering to pay the talent costs out of my own pocket because I can’t do
my best work without good actors.
Marie (Female, 30-40)
We need to be careful not to
play Marie as a desperate, love
starved woman. Instead, let’s
play her as a woman that’s just
had bad luck with love.
Let’s play her with a fighting
spirit, a little rough around the
edges without becoming Sarah
Connor from Terminator.
And she has high standards,
so she is hard to impress. And
now that she’s one of the only
humans left in the zombie-apocolaypse, her chances of finding someone are slim. She’ll
probably spend the rest of her
life alone.
Richard (Male, 30-40)
He’s a zombie, obviously,
but we need to know who he
was before he was a zombie.
I think he’s a nice guy, with heart.
We know he’s a vegetarian, and
when he was human, he was very
well liked.
He’s in the preliminary phases of
turning into a zombie so his human side still shines through, but
we should try playing it as if he’s
struggling against his zombie
instincts.
As an actor, he’s got to have remarkable emotional depth.
And we should find someone who
has a naturally interesting face.
like Cillian Murphy here. This will
help with our zombie makeup.
ZOMBIE MAKEUP RICHARD
It’s got to look good in closeups and be flexible enough for our actor to perform in, so I think we err on the side of simpliticy. Blue, or pale, skin color, fresh
blood, maybe contacts. We can show some broken flesh around his mouth or another portion of his face, but we shouldn’t go overboard. The guy on the
far right with his shirt on could be good. It’d be funny to see this Zombie cry.
ZOMBIE MAKEUP MARIE
When Marie turns into a zombie, she should freshly dead. Stained blood red, dark eyes, skin just starting to turn blue. She should be kind of sexy, especially if she’s in lingerie. This is a punchline to the short so I think we go all out here. Let’s go as crazy as we can with this. Should we end with a line such as
“Guess you’re not vegetarian anymore?” And we see Richard has fully transformed into his new Zombie form?
FILMING & EDITING
Both the Black Magic and Red cameras capture beautiful images, so I’m happy to shoot with either.
There may be a few shots I’d like to shoot slow motion, which both cameras do well.
And we’ll also likely be shooting low light, which both cameras do well with.
I’d like to add as much movement to the film as we have time and equipment for. I don’t want to overcomplicate the shoot,
but even if we just have a 5-foot slider, I think that’s enough to give us options since we’ll be in small spaces. And we can
also use handheld in places to give it an of-the-moment feel.
I think that each beat of the film can be treated in it’s own special way. The comedy portions should be covered simply,
wide shots on short lenses and close ups on long lenses. We may want to use sticks for this, too, to set it apart from the
other sections of the film.
And then for the dramatic portions of the script we’ll pull out the gear and use our camera tricks to help create a feeling for
the audience.
I’d like to light the scenes with soft warm lights augmented with practicals, the edges of the room falling off into darkness.
It’d be nice to have light streaming through the windows too, so if we have access to a haze machine, let’s use it. It will
add a lot to the overall look.
This is the right idea for lighting. It’s creepy and dramatic, light spilling in through the windows and a single light source creating high contrast on our
hero. If we have a hazer, let’s use it. It will give us these great shafts of light.
I’d like to supplement the set with additional practicals, like the one over the stove in this shot. Let’s keep that in mind when we’re looking at locations. If
we find a location with some of these practicals built into the space, it will make our jobs easier, and then we can bring our own to help fill it out.
We should also be looking for a space that gives us depth to each shot. I like to layer my shots so they have foreground, midground and background
elements that extend back into space.
Also, notice the set design. Brown woods, whites, yellow curtains, a yellow refrigerator, and wallpaper design that reflects the same colors. Then she’s
wearing black which really sets her apart. This is a really well integrated frame.
Another good lighting reference. Soft, warm light from the indoor tungsten bulbs, an extended background that falls off into darkness, and one practical
light in frame which gives us some realism. If I had one problem with this shot it would be the fill light cutting the contrast on her face. I’d like to see this
shot without it. I think it would add to the tone, but we could use fill light to our advantage, using it for the comedic scenes and then losing it when things
get scary or dramatic.
From a production design standpoint, this frame is exceedingly simple, but effective. The yellow walls, the dark color couch that plays off the darkness in
the background, and then the white sheets in the far background to help break it up. All the colors on set play off the overall look.
One more reference, for us to look at. Again, soft, warm key light, high contrast, with a stacked framing. It’s a bit bright outside the windows because I think
this takes place in the morning, but if you simply darkened the windows, this would be a great night shot.
This shot also has a very simplistic approach to production design. All the walls are white with brown trim, the props are all white and silver (vase, detergent bottle, the clock on the wall, the thermostat) which, when color corrected with a yellow wash, unifies this frame. Had there been a mish mash of color
or the walls had been blue, this shot would feel completely different, so we need to be aware of production design as we search for locations.
One quick note on production design before I move on to editing. I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to production design
on my early films, but I realize now how important it is now. Production design is the unifying look of the entire film from
locations, set design, wardrobe and lighting. They must all work together.
We won’t have a lot of money to adjust the production design, so let’s be smart with it as we choose our location. We
should focus on just few color tones for our set. These colors will need to work in tandem with all the other elements in our
frame, so we need to choose carefully. I think we should stay away from blue as that will counteract the lighting scheme.
Whites, yellows and browns as in my references are probably the world we need to live in. If we end up with cooler background colors, we should change our lighting scheme to reflect that.
During prep, I will piece the film together in my head so I know exactly what we need to capture, and no more than that. I
will either board out the scenes, or take pictures at the location using stand-ins so we have a clear plan. I will ask to see
every prop, every set decoration, every piece of wardrobe before we arrive on set. There is no room for experimentation
during the shoot, so anything we’re unsure about should be tested ahead of time. So I will ask for makeup tests, and camera tests, and lighting or visual effects tests.
In short, the goal on the day of the shoot is to capture all the pieces we need to edit one killer piece. If we plan well, we
will be expending our energy in creative ways and not wasting time trying to figure things out, or solve unanticipated problems.
When it comes to editing, I believe in a technique called the Kuleshov Effect, in which edits are used to tell the story. We
are not capturing a stage performance to film, we are capturing pieces that can then be edited together for a greater effect than their individual pieces. The Kuleshov Effect essentially proves that an audience projects the meaning and emotion based on the edits. That’s an important part of my approach.
The story comes together in the editing room, so I’d like to be heavily involved with it. I may insist that I edit the piece myself. I work mainly in Final Cut Pro and Avid and would love to have access to the final footage so I can play around with
it. As an editor on most of my films, I have a really strong understanding about what I’m trying to achieve and the pacing
required to engage an audience. As a tool, editing is one of the most important ones I have.
When in doubt, I defer to story. No matter how good the shots are, how great the makeup looks, how killer the lighting is, if
the story doesn’t work we’re in trouble. All my decisions are ultimately story based decisions and going back to my original
goal: to tell a story that’s emotionally resonant.
CONCLUSION
Wow, I’ve had a lot of fun breaking this down and writing this. Thank you for giving me the room to daydream on this.
If you like where I’m headed, then all that’s left is finding a good cast and crew. We’re only going to be as good as the
people we’re surrounded by.
I put a lot of trust in my crew and I need to be able to let go and let them do their jobs. I don’t like being an overlord, so
let’s work with a team we’re confident can pull this off and free me up to focus on the acting.
I’ll end with a link to my work because Zombie Romance definitely fits into the tone of everything I’ve done before. My
work also shows that I value telling a good story, and always seek out the emotional truth and humanity in everything I
do, even with stories that (on the outset) seem ridiculous (e.g. Man’s Best Friend)
http://spindryproductions.com/reel
Fingers crossed we can find a way to make this work.
Timothy
THANK YOU