While I'm Away Pre-Production

Planning Process

The way that this film functions is that it is a phone call that voices over the visuals of the story, meaning that my script is just a script, with my storyboard taking over the visual planning of the production. It's hard to determine how long I'd want to have each shot take place for in relation to the script, so the durations of each shot will be determined during the editing phase (which was always my plan). The making of this pre-production took a lot longer than I had planned, as I was going to do a music video with my friends' band, but they ended up wanting to wait until next marking period to do it. So, I had to do a change of plans and came up with this idea of a teenager who's listening to the voicemail of his older brother. It's a story focused on loneliness, as the main character CJ wanders about his house, alone, listening to the final message his older brother Lucas had sent him. Lucas knows that CJ is unhappy and borderline depressed during the time that he sends the voicemail, so he tries to encourage CJ in his message. The actual story takes place a lot longer after then, suggesting that Lucas never came back, and that CJ is now a lot lonelier and sad than he used to be. He considers joining a voice call with his friends, but only after listening to his brother's call does he decide to actually do so (taking off the headphones he was using to listen to the voicemail and replacing them with new headphones to join the voice chat in a symbolic matter of moving on).

Storyboard

This is the storyboard I made that shows what I want out of every shot.

Script

As said previously, my script is almost entirely just the phone call that Lucas speaks. The monologue and the actions are taking place simultaneously so it is kind of weird to write out what is happening at exactly every time that he says something, so it was easier for me to wrap my head around to have the script be just the phone call and the storyboard show what is in the shots. Exact timings will be decided in post, once the audio and visuals are recorded and with that I'll have a better idea of how things flow (specifically with pacing).