Something to Shoot in a Small Tokyo Apartment

I moved to Tokyo in 2018, not knowing how long I would live here, and one of my goals was to make a no-budget short film during that time.

No-budget meant as small a team as possible and as few locations as possible. So, I began searching for a story that could be told with one or two actors and that could take place in a small Tokyo apartment.

The way I search for a story and slowly piece it together is simple. I open a blank document on my computer and start typing a conversation with myself. The conversation is loose, basically stream-of-consciousness. Over weeks and months, it crystallizes into a premise, then an outline of the basic story structure, then a list of scenes, and eventually into scene direction and dialogue.

Once the script is nearly finished, I switch to Final Draft, a screenwriting application, and start copy-pasting text into it. I do some polishing in Final Draft, but the real work is done in the free-format space of the brainstorming document, so I frequently return there to flesh out new ideas or to solve problems with the story.

In this case, when I started the brainstorming document, I had no idea what kind of movie I wanted to make. I gave it the title “Something Random to shoot in Japan,” and this is the first page and a half:

So we go out and we search for locations.

We want to tell a story with as few actors as possible (if any).

This might end up being like Baraka (Or whatever it was called). Koyanisqatsi (that thing).

Is that ok?  I think we want a liiiiitle more narrative than that.

We want interesting places to shoot, we want to evoke a mood, and we want some kind of progression.  Some kind of change.

Some kind of something.

Maybe it is better to do an editing project.
I can make a fan edit.
Work with already existing audio and footage… make something totally new.
Why shoot something if I have no idea what I’ll shoot?

Let’s think first about locations. If we are using no money, where can we shoot?
Apartments
Streets (back streets)
Alleys
Parks
Train tracks
Train station?

And what is interesting to us?
Dark places in peoples minds.
Dreams.
Sex.
Pretty much it.
Seriously though.
Everything we think of… is some manifestation of the things that float behind our consciousness… shadowy things.

Can we do something cyberpunk on a non-budget?
We’d need computers, monitors.
Cables.
What would it be that takes place on the computer?
I probably don’t know enough about actual hacking to write something like that.
Someone goes looking for some internet urban legend.
Or something about gaming…

The images we have…

Dark, red, restaurant.
Why? Not sure.

I’ve really got nothing for this.
What the fuck do I do?
I need some friends who make shit routinely.
I am completely alone, though.
That is my personality.
Blip.
Blop.
Bloop.

What are the stories that we’ve come up with before?
Man and a woman meet.
I’ve got nothing, man.

Fuck it, we have nothing.  Just think about the fan edit.
It’s the only thing intriguing you right now.

Then I spend about half a page spit-balling a Twin Peaks Season 3 fan edit, in which I would condense 18 episodes, each an hour long, into a 2-3 hour feature film. This tangent didn't last long.

Nothing in the document is dated, so I don’t know what was written in a single session, or how many days passed between each line. But, the fan-edit thread ends abruptly, and my thoughts return to teasing out an original story.

Most of it looks like what you see above… rambling nonsense that is embarrassing to read years later. Gradually it becomes more substantive and I stop cursing at myself so much. This particular document was created in November 2018 and the last edit was in October 2019. During that time it grew to 188 pages and in the process I produced a 22-page screenplay.

It was an erotic Sci-Fi about a cam-girl who sends a client so many images of herself that he is able to recreate her virtually and spread her simulacra across the internet. In 2019, by the time I was finalizing the script, the idea felt played out. I enjoyed my angle on the story, and I had some stylistic ideas that still excite me, but it turned out too erotic to be made on a minuscule budget. It’s one thing to ask an actor to work for a stipend, but this particular work would involve multiple sexually explicit scenes. I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable pitching the idea.

So, that was not the movie I made.

This movie, Sub/Object, started in another document, literally titled “Here We Go Again, another brainstorm...” It was created in June 2019, last edited in April 2023, and is 224 pages long. The actual script is 13 pages.

The production constraints hadn’t changed. I planned to shoot this movie almost entirely in my own apartment with a camera guy and a couple of actors. The big question was, how do I make that kind of story interesting? Any ideas I came up with involved dreams, computers, and sex. So, I was back to erotic Science-Fiction. But, this time, no nudity.

On around page 7 of my rambling document, I hit on the idea of two people seeing through each other’s eyes. How would the brain respond to the input from another set of eyes? Our brains seamlessly combine the input from our two eyes, but they sit next to each other and have essentially the same field of view. What if the other set of eyes was on the other side of the room? What if it was on the other side of the planet? How would the brain integrate those images?

The screenplay was essentially finished by late 2019, but I kept using the brainstorming document to think through the production logistics, the visual style of the movie, and to create a full shot list. Here is an excerpt from those sections:

-Anders gets up, in that same MCU, and the camera tilts up to follow him.
-We cut back to Aneta, framed from Ander’s shoulder, standing in the doorway, so we are looking down on Aneta, who looks far away.

One problem with the script as is…
I think they need to say something.
We’ve just had this momentous event… and he just gets up and looks at her?
I don’t think they smile at each other, they are too shocked/frazzled/exhausted.

But what do they say?

I love youuuuuu

Hmm...

There is no dialogue.
Our first instinct was right.
They have to embrace, try to get back what they had, then separate.

Now, after pivoting to a 3D production, I use the same process to guide my learning, solve problems, and to craft these blog entries: I write pages and pages of free-form notes.

What does the process of writing my thoughts actually do for me, though? All the ideas come during the pauses between tapping out sentences. And, I almost never reference old notes. I got a kick out of searching for excerpts for this article because I hadn't read most of that stuff in years. But, something must have happened in those 224 pages.

It is possible that concretizing my thoughts helps drive them forward. Condensing an unwieldy idea into a few words, even if they are vague, might solidify my thinking just enough that I can push off from it and take the next step. Writing something gives a sense of progress, even if what I write is that I'm getting nowhere. I can then ask myself why I'm getting nowhere, why I got somewhere yesterday, or what I might need to get going again.

When I test a new idea to see if it fits my mental model of the movie, I'm also strengthening that model. This progress is saved in whatever is the most structured, constrained version of the movie I have at that point. Early on, it's a broad outline. Later, it is a list of specific shots. Generally, that artifact is all I need to move forward. There is little reason to revisit old ramblings, because they've done their job.

Sometimes, if I am lucky, an especially exciting idea will pop up:

These ideas are invigorating and reveal new avenues to explore. They might be the key to making a great movie. But, even the exciting ideas need to serve the truth of the story. So, the process doesn't change. I ask myself questions, offer up solutions, and decide what works. How do I decide what works? All I can do is trust my gut to tell me when something isn't good enough. I never know exactly what I should be looking for, but I know when I need to keep looking.

I can never be certain I've landed on the best possible solution. Deciding when to stop is a matter of my own aesthetic taste. It's some shape left in my brain by all my experiences, including all the movies I've seen. The best I can do is to feel out the contours of that shape. I imagine sitting in a silent, pitch-black theater: what is the first thing I hear? What appears on the screen?