THE THEARTIST’S ARTIST’S JOURNEY JOURNEY Treatment by Ryan Hope
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I N TRODU C T ION This is a film for Guinness. Due to the brand’s incredible visual heritage, we all know the level of bravery, craft and sophistication expected. This is a film about artists and most importantly for artists, of all types, all over the world. We should never lose sight of our purpose as we really push the envelope and create something truly incredible. An inspirational and motivational call to arms, a love letter to all those that have risked everything to give a piece of their heart to the world with their art. Here is my take on how to bring a truly contemporary edge to a very exciting script and really speak to the people we’re trying to talk to.
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T HE ART IST S JO U RNEY
“The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life”. “Henry Miller”
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Two words. Artist and Journey. It’s so important we stay close to what these words mean. I know that sounds so obvious to say, but in adopting this outlook right up front it will keep us on that path of making work that is totally original, emotional and epic.
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C ONCEPT Our concept is simple; we are telling a loose and poetic narrative of three different bands on their artist’s journey. From the moment of conception to the second before widespread recognition, our engaging film will be an artistic and engaging portrayal of moments of their life defining choices, experiences and encounters. The visuals will be beautiful, considered and crafted. Our subject documentary but our execution artistic… and I mean artistic. Playing heavily with looks, frame rates, post moments we’ll go right against the grain in what could be described as docu-hyperrealism.
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What you will remember our piece for however, will be our treatment of the audio. By using authentic sound bites from sources past and present and combining these with super slick and cinematic visuals, we force our audience to lock in on a much deeper level than they would with more classic styles of story telling. Once again everything about this clip should be unorthodox in its approach.
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AUD I O TR E ATM E NT We would take these audio snippets from two places. Some from existing archive, clips online, phone calls, lectures, old films, political interviews on daytime TV etc and some we could use some artistic license on and recreate accordingly. A teacher reading a school report, actual conversations from our bands, parents and friends talking about their brother, mate, son and so on.
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We would then use these audio clips like a collage and layer them over our visuals in a sometimes juxtaposing and sometimes literal manner. This will give our film a beautiful, poetic feel and cement the love letter vibe we are striving for.
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V O I CE O V ER I loved the voice over for this. It’s not something I want to lose. In fact its something I want to champion. I am in love with the idea of our voice over beginning in the final third of our film. Out of nowhere. Just as you think there is no voiceover, we pin the viewer down and tell it how it is. A moment of true authority as our track and sound design have reached their crescendo. Leaving you breathless and most importantly – inspired.
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S O U N D DE SIG N Along with our unique audio collage and late arriving VO will be sound design. I see this being atmospheric, brooding and in parts heavily tense. Starting dreamlike with reverberated key hits or melancholic strings ending in whirring feedback, white noise, sirens, live drums and a bass guitar riff that rips the whole thing apart.
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TONE Serious and moving and sometimes funny - our film should feel warm, human, occasionally bleak but always beautiful. Sometimes awkward, difficult and intense - it will always be full of purpose. Each scene as powerful as the next, there should be no holding back with the tone of our content if we are to make the film this script truly deserves.
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The authenticity of our sound bites, the impact of our imagery and the surreal way in which we tell our story will expand our film’s reach outside of just resonating with bands and music followers. In capturing the raw emotion of this beautiful and epic struggle, the film will connect with anyone, no matter what they do. Musician, Sculptor, Carpenter, Painter, Whatever. Our film will move you.
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THE LOOK
It’s key our look is crafted in the same vein as the rest of our film and stays totally unique and remains outside of any obvious style. The only constant I see here is that everything should be clean, slick and polished. Even raw and docu imagery can feel this way with the right style of photography. Even if it’s a beat up back garden or a gnarly rehearsal room, it should look totally incredible, cinematic and beautiful.
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In more specific terms I see our look as being very British, often stark but always super photographic. Ultimately it’s about capturing a realism but giving it a unique and powerful visual. Seeing our three epic bands, cities and stories as true artists journeys.
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THREE BANDS
Although the idea of sheer determination and the overcoming of hardship is a personal journey, in its essence it’s completely universal. Littered through history’s greatest novels and acted out in all our favourite movies. Passionate struggle is an archetype that modern society is completely obsessed with.
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Guinness Amplify isn’t just about breaking the new English rock and roll band. It’s about breaking the new Irish Band, the new Scottish band or even the New French, Spanish, South African Band. The new band from anywhere.
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That’s why using three bands from some of Great Britain’s most epic Cities makes so much sense to me. I’m totally open to proceeding down the route of looking at it deeper if we desire. Cities like Belfast, Sunderland, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham Bristol, Manchester all having new burgeoning music scenes and could make this a great film too. It’s all about the technique for me, the city specifics are totally open at this stage. The most important thing for us is variety in culture, accent, struggle… it’s this juxtaposition we need for our textured, contemporary film.
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POSSIBLE O UTL I N E
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Ok now that you have a solid idea on atmosphere lets look a little further at what scenes we could shoot and could actually happen in our film. Here’s an example of what our film could be. We open on a guy walking down a street. We jump cut through different streets at different times of the day. We hear an old interview of an older rock star. “We weren’t very talented we just tried harder. We gave it all we got. That’s it.” We then cut to a Sunday league football match in London maybe on Hackney Marshes as James sits in the changing room, beaten again, covered in mud. Slow motion. Everything super graphic and interestingly shot, no typical stuff whatsoever. Still the reverberated keys boom along. We hear sounds of his mates laughing as he sits pissed off. He leaves. They head to the pub. Taking the piss out of him. “Kids just are wherever they are. This is where I was and this is what I was doing. After my Mum died this is just the world I got thrown into.” Another audio clip layered into the above of a conversation “How the fuck are you going to manage a band. You haven’t even got an iPhone for fuck’s sake”.
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We cut to a back garden at night where we see a dog staring towards us. We see the Irish flag painted. We slowly track in on the dog as we hear an argument inside the house, which we notice is behind us. Screaming and arguing ensues. We hear a slamming and we meet the back of Frankie as he storms out of the back gate. He meets with rest of the band in the back and we track them getting into a car. We don’t hear their conversation but they look animated as they discuss things as they drive. Instead we hear: “He guided me when I thought I needed guiding. He helped me out. He was my hero. I owe everything to him” We cut to some slow motion shots of faded industrial buildings of a bygone era. Once blossoming with life and trade, now dilapidated and in ruins. The light flickers, almost strobe like, as we pass through in a dreamlike fashion. “Everyone is scared at the minute. They think I’m something but I’m not that. I’m just everything I wanna be and I’ve always been like that.”
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We cut to an empty supermarket at night and we track down the aisle of soulless goods. The sound design perfectly fitting the scene. We cut to Ella over the shoulder as she scans the products. We track from a super photographic wide to an almost statuesque Ella, right into her face. The sound design becoming more and more intense as we move towards her, right into her eyes. Her expression suddenly animated, it’s unnerving, we think she’s lost it, but as we pull out we realize we’ve transitioned into a shit hole rehearsal room, she smashes into the drums. This is the first time we see a band all together and it’s full of impact set against the melancholic music and audio snippets. It’s evocative, powerful and emotional because the stage we have been setting up so far is one of true struggle. These kids don’t have an easy time. As we pull out we see everyone together and they’re going for it. We move in a straight line backwards until we hit the wall. Then another transition where we re-enter the same room but on the opposite side. Everyone’s in a different outfit now but rehearsing again. And again. And again. We keep traveling through the front and back wall at speed. Showing the passage of time. Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse. Fight. Laugh.
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We hear a sketchy phone interview of another famous rock star: “We never wanted to do the regular route ya know, the usual record company shit. You get an album out, you do a tour. It’s soul destroying that. We’ll never do a tour.” We hear a grim news interview with a politician. “So David tell us what you think about……” We cut to a back room of a pub all of a sudden. We see Frankie as he has his arm around a woman holding her as she cries. A man stands talking to the room. Super photographic and poetic we understand it’s his Dad who had died. The scene is incredible as they raise their glasses. We see the other members of the band there too. “I’ve always seen it as whatever happens I’ll react to it. That’s how we make music. As a reaction to whatever happens. A lot of bands are very blinkered and they never change. I’ve never been like that”. Then out of nowhere we would hear a siren like a war horn. Cutting through the dreamlike atmosphere as we see Ella switching on the lights in a shit hole warehouse space. We hold the shot as the sound whirs. The neon tubes flicker as we shoot off frame rate giving an ethereal, quite trippy feel. The horn continues until SLAM we cut to a ballistic edit of tight shots of them rehearsing in the space as a killer riff of one of their tracks slams in. Our edit now goes powerhouse to the music and out of nowhere our VO begins –sounding totally epic with true authority, wisdom and knowledge and most importantly – unexpected. VO: Bleeding fingers, offered up in the unending pursuit of the perfect chord shift.
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VO: And everything you are, everything you hope to be, poured out onto a single bit of paper. Then all of a sudden the quick editing and seemingly manic pace of our film climaxes. We see slow motion shots in a packed moody gig. Just as John our lead singer grabs for the mic, we pan 180º into a truly epic shot that cranes right over the whole room showing the crowd going insane. Every face screaming, It just keeps going and going in super slow mo…. VO: Nobody goes through all of that just to sing someone else’s song Fade to black. Guinness Amplify
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L OC ATIONS
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U N DE R PAS S Graffiti splayed across the lime green walls. Acid neon lights reveal the concrete floor. The only sound is the occasional car driving overhead, this isn’t the busiest road in the world. An alienated suburbia.
FL AT It’s on the first floor, a green velvet sofa sits in front of an electric fire, steel bars hatched across the front. The carpet is a pale brown. Dimly lit, the place full of 60’s furniture.
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G E N TL E MANS C L UB Old posters and flags line the wooden paneled walls. A bar sits at the end of the room, an old disco ball hangs from the ceiling. Plastic chairs are dotted around the outside of the room. Thick heavy curtains line the windows. The draught labels at the bar faded and wonky.
R E H EARSAL SPACE Part of a small time recording studio, the rehearsal space is super basic but clean. A few amps litter the room, and a drum kit sits at the back. The room’s got no windows and is gently lit by a couple of make shift lamps.
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G R A P HIC STR E E T LOCAT I O N S A range of graphic street locations ranging from the sparseness of suburbia to the east end of London in the moonlight. High rises line the side of the road between the old Victorian architecture. Night buses and black cabs glide past. The pavements are empty but the roads busy.
D I L A P I DATED IND US TRIAL AR E A S Huge piles of grit and bricks tower next to rusted old machinery. Old JCB’s from the 60’s sit unused, exposed to the elements. The tarmac road now just a dirt track that leads around the industrial park. Work mans jackets, boots and tools are dotted around disused prefab offices.
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D ISUSED WAREHOUSE Sparse and huge, this place obviously used to be a storage unit. A band have set up their own make shift rehearsal space in the corner with some lamps.
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ESTATE Political graffiti plastered across the walls. Row upon row of identical red brick houses. A deserted park with a couple of youths huddled round a bench. Promenades of pound shops, bookies and newsagents. The interiors are basic and understated.
B AC K GAR D E NS A row of small over grown back gardens separated by lopsided wooden fences. A garden shed sits at the end of each. Red brick paths cut through the lawns. Old garden gnomes sit next to small ponds.
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FUNCTION ROOM Usually used for school discos, this place has the feeling of a village hall. The floor a polished wood with heavy dusty curtains blocking the windows. A stage lined with red velvet chairs sits at the end of the hall. A set of disco lights flashes red circles around the semi darkened room.
P OOL H AL L Mostly full of old geezers, the hall is lined with 15 tables. Old school snooker lamps hang over each. The wooden paneled walls covered in framed pictures of old snooker stars from the 70’s and local record holders. “Bill the Bullet” on a bronze plaque.
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FOOTB AL L P ITCH A deserted football pitch at night, obviously a league 2 team. The seats battered and old. The roof cover made of corrugated iron. Long benches line the field for the various coaches and first aiders. A white burger van sits in the corner.
GARAGE A small space piled full of junk, lit by a single light bulb hanging by a chord from the ceiling. A couple of amps sit on the floor next to the drum kit. Old manual lawnmowers and pitchforks clutter the little space that is there.
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C ASTING PROCESS
My previous film Skin, although different in it’s tone, shares some similarities with how I would approach this project. It’s a documentary with real people, about a real subject but its hyper real in its execution. You will see a lot of this way of shooting on my reel. In fact I think there are real people in nearly every film I’ve made. Just like Skin and various other projects, our creative should be built from the bottom up. By creating an open advert, I would ask our bands in their application (through my casting director) to tell us about themselves through guided questions.
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Tell us about your band: Where did you all meet? Why did you want to start a band? What’s the hardest thing you have been through? Did you ever want to jack it all in? Tell us about it? Why did that happen? What happened when you decided not to? What’s the biggest obstacle for new bands trying to make it today? Have you ever had any fights? Ever been arrested? What’s the worst gig you’ve played? Tell us about it?
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These questions would totally inform the creative for our film, with each character’s location and narrative then being based on their actual lives. This is a brave technique I’d really push us to explore with this commercial. The response and stories would no doubt be epic and we would then work closely together on picking the most interesting moments from our applicants and piecing together our final jigsaw.
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There will be a lot of pieces of paper and we need a very big wall and a locked room for a few days. Think of it like when Renton goes cold turkey in Trainspotting and he arms himself with the porn and vodka except ours will be a little less wild than that. Or maybe I stop being so wanky and we build a website and use the internet like normal people. Either way, I’m sure you see what I’m getting at.
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I won’t go into the online and wider campaign potential of making the film in this way, as am sure the cogs are already turning but in summary: if we build the film in this way its invigorating, pure, authentic and is intrinsically doing what Guinness Amplify is: We’re already unearthing real talent from the moment we start casting. We’re getting the brand into the scene in a truly authentic way, which will add true credibility to what they’re doing as a whole.
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C INE M ATO G R A PHY How we tell that story is where we really exercise some serious flair in terms of concept, craft and innovation. This isn’t going to be a film that is exclusively hand held and docu. Visually, we should do the EXACT opposite of what you would think to do when shooting real bands we should make this film textured, dream like and stunning. Like a real tapestry of techniques that slowly builds and builds. Every 10 seconds flipping into a totally different camera technique. Taking reference from the photography of Mike Brodie, Gregory Harris and Hedi Slimane we want to glamourize the un-glamourous. Often shooting with available light, in magic hour, at sunrise and sunset or by moonlight, we’ll create a world that often feels like flashbacks in memory, romantic and seductive even if the space we are shooting might not first appear to be.
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S TR UC TUR E Flowing and climaxing to our crescendo, moving forward along a loosely chronological timeline. This is by no means your standard commercial structure.
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Moments will be left out, forcing the audience to engage and piece the story together, guided through by our imagery and sound bites. This is what will make our film poetic, lyrical and totally innovative. It’s the artistic space we want to be in, yet still retain our authenticity. Many moments will just be super short and powerful snapshots, into a moment of a bands life, like peering into the past for a split second, an abstract sound bite providing or denying its context.
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Others will be far more flowing, atmospheric and sparse, with longer sound bytes, often over lapping, generating a texturally brooding, sometimes unnerving, yet always epic to watch. In essence this film in my mind is a Guinness interpretation of authentic bands stories firmly cemented in reality yet draped in moments of pure breathtaking cinema
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EDIT
Our edit is absolutely KEY in creating our films arc and retaining its intensity. In the opening we should be locking in our audience with our concept. Keeping is slow, ethereal and flowing, we force them to engage with the film through our intriguing use of audio and visuals.
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Then as it becomes clear what the film is about we should begin to raise the tempo. Flash cutting from different scenes to the next. Each visual suggesting the band are getting closer to their dreams. Building and Building in speed, vibe, intensity, Bigger gigs, more epic visuals until BOOM. We cut to silence. Our new chosen track kicks in, a moody as hell rock tune ideally one from an actual band we choose.
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It’s super important to note that we need to include moments and snippets that aren’t just groups of people. With our juxtaposing sound bites, objects can sometimes imply so much more than characters in the subtext. We are forced to build the bridges ourselves in our minds. What does the old street sign mean? Who is that character? What does the rope swing tied to a tree represent? Whose kitchen is that? In terms of editor without a shadow of doubt I want to use Ryan Boucher at Marshall Street. He’s cut every single thing on my reel and cuts like a demon. Notably he cut Skin and my work for Absolut, both highly relevant edits. www.ryanboucher.com
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POS T T O U C H E S The final icing on the cake for our film would be to use some post to reinforce our story telling. These touches are subtle. They shouldn’t be heavy handed. They should be very simply, cool. What these will be is undecided but simple things such as manipulating spaces to make them feel empty and huge, pushing light halation to give ethereal atmospheres or simply adding finesse to certain textures. I’ve used touches such as this to great effect all over my reel and its something that can really add the little extra to making a piece feel great.
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G R AD E Grading is an integral part to what I do as a director; I constantly use colour and grading not only as an aesthetic tool but to actually weave different messages into all my films. For example; whilst one of our bands performs to an empty gig hall, I see the colours being heavily de-saturated, metallic, cold and uneasy, while during moments of heavy emotion, the colours build to far more moody, raw and vibrant tones. This way we really punctuate different looks throughout the film; the grade becomes a style of editing, a real contemporary way of filmmaking, each texture and colour decision heavily affecting the mood and meaning of each scene. This is key here as our concept has so many abstract elements. I see our final gig as being super washed out, ethereal, delicate yet completely poignant despite the waves of sweaty screaming fans it will look almost heavenly and truly breathtaking. This film has to look the bollocks. Colourists I love are Richard Fearon and Jean Clement at MPC and Paul Harrison at Finish. My choice is Rich. He has graded the things I love on my reel. Now working with Terry Gilliam, he’s the man for the job for me.
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S UM M ARY
What I love about this script is that, not only is it for Guinness, but it really is a chance to break some rules and do something unique and brave. It’s a chance to push the brand into a completely fresh, new and exciting territory. But most of all it’s a chance to create an insightful, emotional and inspiring piece of work. A piece of work that is the start of someone else’s journey. I understand this is not your usual method of forming a narrative. But this film deserves far more than the classic vignette led spot we have seen so many times before. It deserves something super contemporary and truly memorable. We need to speak to the artists of tomorrow, not yesterday. The future innovators and memory makers for many and this is TOTALLY vital to Guinness Amplify.
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…. This is our story… …and this is Guinness. At the heart of this whole thing though? EMOTIONAL RESONANCE. If you have any questions please just pick up the phone. I’d love to be involved. Best Ryan,