DIRECTORS TREATMENT

Overview:

The creative objective of this production is to create a sense of realism. We will work to convince our audience (doctors) to believe that the characters, conversations and situations portrayed in this video to be real and true to life.

To create a sense of realism, I will take a documentary approach to the production. As much as possible, I will set the stage through casting, location scouting, art direction and lighting and then let the actors do what comes natural to them while staying within the content parameters outlined in the boards and script.

The client provided specific direction that the look and feel be inspired by the television series Desperate Housewives. The show has an upper middle class motif set in a classic suburban neighborhood. The set dressing is department store. Its conservative. Check the Macy's Catalog. The lighting is big source beauty light to give the beautiful "wives" a glow. Desperate Housewives also has a rich color palette. You don't often see white walls. To follow DH's lead, we are casting locations with a similar look and feel. While we don't have big sources of light at our disposal, we are going to use the sun to our advantage to bring beauty light to our show. Our daytime locations have been cast next to windows which will act as our "big source." DH's lighting style has a natural look. It mimics the beautiful moments we see in real life such as sun streaming through windows.

Read about how the Cinematographers create the look for Desperate Housewives. You need to scroll down on the page.

While we are going for a DH look, I also plan to take a more documentary style approach to the photography and performances of the actors. The writing style of DH is a bit soap-ish and darkly humorous. I imagine our show, will be more realistic and authentic. There will be some subtle comedy, but I don't see it having a lot of tongue and cheek comedy. Its not written that way. That said, I hope to introduce touches of true-to-life comedy, for example, when Bob tries on the different masks and when Bob and Joan talk about snoring in the doctor's office.

This production breaks down into four components:

KOL Shoot

Subject Interviews

Dialogue Scenes

Broll

KOL Shoot

The Key Opinion Leader (KOL) will speak to a group of doctors about sleep apnea. The KOL will have a graphic presentation to go along with his speech. This scene is inspired by The Inconvenient Truth and Steve Job's Apple Keynote speech. If you haven't seen Inconvenient Truth, Gore gets up in front of an audience and passionately presents his views on global warming. You can catch a glimpse of Gore's talk in this trailer. The setting is an auditorium and he has some really cool graphics / charts backing up his talk. We won't have as big an auditorium or as many extras but the idea is the same, the KOL will get up a talk passionately to an audience of doctors about sleep apnea, which is a dangerous condition.

Its important that it feels like the KOL is actually giving a presentation and we are a documentary crew there to capture it. The performance can't feel read from a prompter. The doctor's inflection, pace, voice-level need to tell us that he is talking to a room full of people. He also needs to come off feeling strongly about what he is saying. He needs to believe in it. The KOL's goal is to help the room full of doctors diagnose sleep apnea and ultimately help people suffer from the the sleeping disorder.

While the KOL is not delivering the entire presentation on camera, ideally he would prepare for his performance as if he were giving a real presentation. Its a lot of material to memorize, so I am not expecting that, but I would ask that he have looked over the material as he would if he were preparing for a speech. We will have a prompter for him to work from, but as much as we can have him deliver off-prompter, the better. We will cover the presentation from a variety of angles. To cover our bases we will do the entire presentation in medium and close up shots and have the KOL work with the prompter. Some of this material will be used as a voice over during the animation so we won't need to cover this in the wide, although we will if we have the time. I will create a shot list that organizes what material we need to cover with what shots.

The presentation slides will be composited onto the auditorium screen in post. That said, we need to know what the slides will be before the shoot so that the doctor can appropriately interact with them or refer to them. We'll need to "green out" the screen on which the presentation will be composited. This will allow us to shoot the doctor in front of the board and key him out.

On the same day that we shoot the KOL presentation we need to shoot the KOL's interview. We will need to find a quiet place in or near the auditorium to perform the interview. I'd like to find a different setting than the auditorium. We will have to see what location we land on for this.

Depending on the size and set up of the auditorium lighting is going to really important and extensive. We might need a pre-light day to get set-up.

Subject Interviews:

We'll interview Joe, Joe's wife (Joan) and the KOL. I imagine we'll interview Joe and his wife in their home, together, and the KOL in a location near the auditorium.

The interviews are going to be improvisational. We will treat the interviews like real interviews with real characters. I don't think we need the prompter for the interviews since the segments are so short. I will develop questions that guide the talent towards the scripted interview response. I will also create a few questions that aren't covered in the script but flesh out the story more. The actors will improv these answers.

Dialogue Scenes:

We have a few dialogue scenes to cover primarily in the doctor's office but also some pillow talk in the bedroom between Joe and Joan. We'll need to cover this to give us choices in post. Again, I will work to push these dialogue scenes in a natural direction. I want to be a doc crew witnessing a real doctor's visit. In order to "naturalize" the dialogue scene, I might need to depart from the exact wording of the script, but without affecting the meaning and intention of the scripted dialogue. It will also require that we set aside a little bit of rehearsal time on the shoot day to get the actors acclimated to the setting and performance. The day we shoot this scene might be very rushed since we also need to cover Joe's office. It would benefit us to have a rehearsal day with Joe, Joan and the doctor.

I want the coverage of the dialogue scenes to be loose but not shaky. I want to avoid static, locked off cameras that sit in a wide shot. I imagining a roving camera that finds focus between subjects. I want to move the camera as much as possible between takes to diversify our coverage and keep it interesting.

Broll:

We'll work to capture as much Broll as possible. Broll includes shots like Joe splashing his face with water and getting fixed up at the sleep center. I will also add little shots in Joe's office and home that give a sense of his character that can be used to flesh out the cut a little bit. For the Broll, I will bring on my HVX 200 to accompany the HPX to capture additional footage. I will shoot the HVX on the longer lens only in order to best match the look of the HPX. I imagine the Broll photography to be loose and organic as well.