IN THE DARK I SAT
experimental film script sample
experimental film script sample
by Roger Simian & Sarahjane Swan, 2012
SYNOPSIS
In the days beyond The Fluxing, the times of The Soft Borders, The Great Anomolies, Hypocritical Phenomena, when worlds collapsed and the fabric between realities became fluid, an artist and the man she lost search for each other in reflections, shadows and dreams.
CAST AND CREW
Production, Script, Direction, Performance, Videography, Editing, Sound, Music and Songs by Sarahjane Swan and Roger Simian.
SCREENINGS
Portobello Film Festival (London) - World Premier at Great Western Studios, 7th September, 2012
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Scotland) - Scottish Premier at The Screening Room, Heart of Hawick, 27th October 2012
SCRIPT SAMPLE
INT. Bedroom. Day.
A woman sits, demure and melancholy, trying out her various personae in the glare of the mirror.
Woman's Voice:
What if I went looking? Came to find you? What if I came to find you? What if I were to press my palm flat against this icy reflection? Instead of the cold solidity I was expecting I found something warm, something fluid? I would push my fingers into this glass, into this glass like a knife into honey. I'd watch my hands slip on through, my reflected self rippling, glass rippling around my wrists like the ocean around the rocks. What if I went looking? Came to find you? What if I came to find you?
EXT. Busy Street. Evening.
A man briskly wanders through the dark streets. Shadows creep and spin in the strobe-flash of passing traffic and electric shop front lighting.
Man's Voice:
I had a dream. I had to get out, take a walk. I had a dream about The Fluxing, when worlds disintegrated and the fabric between realities became fluid. Vines and tree roots grabbed at my arms and ankles like monstrous fingers. My pursuers - shadowghasts with snaking necks and blazing eyes - fell on me, spitting and hissing like geese, their long necks swaying in a malevolent dance. I hoped, I prayed that some uncharted Soft Border would appear. That I could rip through the membrane of this reality into a safer world.
INT. Bedroom. Day.
Woman's Voice:
I think I saw him again. Saw him in my peripheral vision. He was important to me. My husband, I think, in that other place. In that other world before The Fluxing. We had a life together. He saw me red on the screen. I was a photographer. Or... or was I an actress? I wish I had some photographs. I wish I'd photographed the life we had together. I can almost see him in the shadows.
INT. Hallway. Day.
In split-screen the woman stands before us, before the mirror, with her camera, attempting to capture her own reflection.
Woman's Voice:
(as though tape has been cut up and wrongly spliced back together like a William Burroughs / Brion Gysin recording)
The 244 x 173 cm painting covered a canvas in Indian red Barnett down the centre. By sticking a thin strip of European-influenced 'biomorphic' style to test the colour in reference to his own article, 'The First Man Was a lighter cadmium, the artist was the thin band only a few centimetres thick down the unevenly spread gallery wall, 'the motive force for red intended to invoke that terror of the 'New York School', whose style became known as the 'unknowable' dense masking tape.
EXT. Busy Street. Evening.
Man's Voice:
My mind drifted on the foaming waves, momentarily unshackled from time or space or logic until it washed over the sands and encountered consciousness. For an instant I saw her there. Somewhere in the shadows. The artist. In the misted distance of a glass.
