Origin Story
In a military controlled, post-apocalyptic future, a lonely woman finds something strange on the beach and decides to conceal it.
Concept
The concept for Origin Story was the culmination of a few different ideas. I was deeply inspired by this fan-made music video for Future Islands.
Future Islands - Like the Moon
Fan made music video by David Dean Burkhart
It was so thought provoking, that I developed an idea into a short script. In that script, a young man discovers an unconscious woman washed up on the beach. She has a strange connection to plants. It turns out she is an alien and quickly dies because of all the pollution on earth. My working title for this project was GROW.
The only problem was, it was going to cost too much to produce and I really wanted to create another film with Dogma Cape Fear. Around the same time, my daughter was getting older and wanted to get rid of her silicone baby.
I kept the baby, thinking, I’m going to use this weird thing in a movie eventually. If you don’t know what a silicone baby is, check them out. They are super creepy. I think they look a lot more realistic now.
I decided to shift the GROW concept, use the silicone baby and create a short narrative that would work for Dogma. I knew I wanted to have a strong female character, so I just made the main character a woman and made the baby the alien. Then, instead of having the baby start dying (like the woman does in GROW), I decided to give the female character a stronger backstory. So, I thought, what if she had lost a child in the past and wants to keep the alien baby. To raise the stakes even more, what if it’s set in a post-apocalyptic future where the military is constantly patrolling everywhere.
The funny thing is, in the end, we didn’t even see the silicone baby. My original design was to have the alien pod be transparent, but for Dogma’s budget, it just wasn't going to work. It was very difficult for the pod to be transparent (so you can see the silicone baby inside) and float on the ocean.
So we settled for this more solid pod design. The only time we actually used the silicone baby was as a prop for our actress to use inside her jacket as she was leaving the beach.
The Goal
For Origin Story, my goal was to design a look that would be in service to the story. I dabbled with color grading in the past, but with this project, I wanted to really dive into DaVinci Resolve.
Like every cinephile, I thought Blade Runner 2049 was gorgeous. For me, the tree scene in the beginning of the film was breathtaking and I just loved the color palette for Origin Story. I decided to model my color grade after this scene. I quickly ran into trouble because the conditions for Blade Runner were much different than what I was working with.
The tree scene was shot on a sound stage and they were running a special type of mist for 2 hours before filming. If you’re interested in hearing more, listen to this podcast. It’s a conversation between Roger Deakins (Cinematographer) and Gerd Nefzer (Special Effects Supervisor) from Blade Runner 2049.
We were hoping for fog the morning of our shoot, but we got clear conditions, so we couldn’t recreate the atmosphere from Blade Runner. This was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to use Blade Runner as inspiration and make the color unique to Origin Story. Here are some photos for comparison.
Obstacles
We scouted the beach location many times in pre-production. Our plan was to try to film a couple of hours before high tide. This would make the beach very narrow and create a cinematic opening frame with a lot of depth. There were also these beautiful rocks which would be a perfect cradle for the alien pod.
When we arrived, the entire beach was underwater. It was 3 hours before high tide and we couldn’t even see the sand! I was proud of the way we were able to pivot. There was another beach only 400 yards away. The challenge was, I had to flip all of my storyboards in my head and we had to shoot mostly on the rocks. The final product was a little bit different from what we had planned but I think it turned out pretty good. Check out this old clip I made for inspiration.
I created this way back before pre-production by compositing stock footage with live-action military aircrafts. It’s very close to what ended up being shot.
Reflection
After every film, I create a list of lessons learned and mistakes I don’t want to repeat. Here is a list of notes from my phone.
Simplify your shot list to only what you see in your head. Don’t get unnecessary coverage because of anxiety.
Create a list of prioritized shots that you must have for a scene to work. Basically, a simple list of “must haves” and “luxury shots.”
Remember to spend just as much time with the actors as you do with the camera department.
Be more confident about what you need. Over-explain. The crew has not lived with this story like you have.
Make sure your inserts match your wide coverage. Watch playback for this.
Make sure you are intentional with your blocking and thinking about continuity.
Get a proper script supervisor.
Get ambient sound everywhere!
Always think about perspective. Take photos for every possible shot so the perspective in your storyboards are accurate.
Fun Fact
The real baby in our film, Rose Cocuzza, is our cinematographer’s daughter and she was cast before she was born!
A fun little side note, the fighter jet and osprey flyovers were inspired by this wonderful short film by Shereen Lani Younes. Check it out.
FALL by Shereen Lani Younes
The Future
I have two screenplays I’m writing right now, both of which will be around 7-10 pages. The scope does not meet Dogma’s requirements so the challenge will be finding funding for these projects.
My goal is to develop a story with more of a character arch. A longer script will allow me to do that. I also want to work on world-building. For both of these projects, I will create a world that can be expanded into a feature film.