kagablog

A brief treatment for an expression

A man awakes to pestering sounds of early birds, from white sheets that conceal another figure assumed to be a woman. She tosses and turns under covers as he slides out to begin the pedantic morning rituals. Upon closing the door after unhooking the gown we see him staggering through a wobbling corridor, super-imposed on the (real corridor he stares through. In the bath room, he stares at himself through the mirror, shaves and showers with reluctance akin to that of a child who wished not for school on Monday. The woman is also embroiled in an alternate reality of dreaming herself being the one awake, smoking while moaning about the man in bed with her. Then, he soon cordially exits the residence calmly and in silence, leaving a portrait of abandon in the bedroom, an image of a solitary woman left to untangle her night’s dream threads without an endearing company.

He is an ardent walker as evinced by the waltz through suburban boulevards, aligned on both sides by sublime trees and kept shrubs. He wades many routes, the early dawn mist abound the city’s scrapers calling him nigh, like all the other consensual slaves moribund amidst the phallus monuments signifying what is called The CBD. Sales talk carouse his ears from all directions, pedestrian traffic marring the catwalks with feet sent to travels away from other dream spaces. Mothers begin their menial chores, tin-drum fires carried on robust heads for early tripe meals for men and other louts consecrated by the city’s belly. He seems a tad agitated here, having had to adjust to the humming brawl of the machine building, siren serenades and hooter operetta wailing with other screams of activity.

The walk merges into a dream-scape of tall standing pines, hovering over his now rising eyes and solemnly quietening inner-ears. In the midst of twigs and thorny spikes he paces towards a destination known only to him, until he reaches a clearing, a circle of trees in serene greenery and contrasted appearance to his own. A black tuxedo, white shirt and a tie – he approaches what we see as a desk, an antique telephone atop the oak finish, and a chair appropriately behind the anomalous furnishing in the forest. This is the office. He sits awhile in a meditative trance of one in search of what to do… until the phone rings.

The clamor of a rung phone in a silent forest rouses birds, insects and many animals to a rush that sounds like a tempest approaching in tremendous speeds. He picks up the receiver and yells HELLO, but it seems no one is on the other line. This process happens for a duration that seems eternal, until he starts crouching over the telephone, climbing on the desk, pulling wires until he pulls an axe from his drawer and starts hacking the table.

Then, seated behind the same table, intact… there’s a TV monitor projecting various dream sequences he was involved in, the nauseated waltz through the corridor with a typewriter at the other end commences.

Some sequences

Please note that each sentence depicts a shot or shots preferred for the purposes of aesthetic abstraction and poetry for the treatment. Each shot has its origins in a symbolism which can be elaborated upon.

Getting out of Bed – First Sequence

• A woman’s exposed neck turns – pillow underneath.
• 3 shots are angled to pull away from her eyes until her full face.
• A man’s face sunken in sheet opens eyes.
• Unfocused vision of the window letting in morning rays.
• The curtain is out of focus and so are the entire movements of his point of view.
• Windows open at will, animated into an opening and closing dance.
• Feet slide into slippers lying next to magazines and books.
• A half-naked man’s seated on the edge of the mattress, a figure at his rear.
• He stands towards the door, wading sleepishly.
• A night gown is pulled from a hook behind the white door.
• In seventeen stills the robe is worn.
• The man wades towards a shower room we assume – a figure still slightly tossing in bed.
• From behind her face, her vantage includes the man entering the shower room – POV panning with the man.
• Then, she’s seen sitting and smoking while the man lies half naked under the white sheets. (Portrait of Boredom – Dream element in camera snail movement towards the woman and her audible thoughts in voice over technique)

To follow are:

• The woman’s dream sequence
• The walk through suburbia
• The walk through sales talk of the inner city
• Entering the forest
• The office in the forest
• The violence of machines ( the phone ring sequence)
• Watching one self through a tube – tabled in dream sequence