Kent State University Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Departmental Honors
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LAPLACE’S DEMON A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirement for Departmental Honors by Daniel Nelsen May 2014 Thesis produced and written by Daniel Nelsen Approved by ____________________________________________________________, Advisor ____________________________________________________________, Director, School of Journalism and Mass Communication Accepted by _________________________________________________, Dean, Honors College ii Table of Contents Chapter 1. A Determined Future . .1 2. Chaos Cinema . 5 3. Cut What? . 17 4. A New Reality . 25 Work Cited . 27 Appendix 1. Casting Flier . 29 2. Shooting Schedule . 30 3. Story Board . 31 4. Shot List . 58 5. Shooting Script . 63 6. Link to Laplace’s Demon . 79 iii PREFACE The following document is an accompaniment to the included thesis film Laplace’s Demon. The film can be watched via: Google Drive ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my Thesis advisor Professor David Smeltzer, along with my oral defense committee, Dr. Allen Whaley, Professor Traci Williams, and Professor Candace Bowen. I would like to give a special thanks to the Equipment Services Lab and Josh Talbott for providing the necessary equipment to make this film. I would like to thank Matt Petrunak for showing me his film at the right time. Finally, I would like to thank the amazing cast and crew. This film would not have been possible without them. iv Chapter 1 A Determined Future “ZAK walks over to a door and knocks. Moments pass. The door opens and ZAK fires his Gun. The VICTIM flies back into the room. ZAK takes a Cloth to cover his hand, locks the door and pulls it shut. He walks away” (Nelsen 1). Storytelling is the oldest art form in human history. It is the human story. It requires attention to detail, persuasion, hard work, time commitment and embellishment. It has many forms, from the campfire to the page to music. One such form is film. Filmmaking is a difficult process. It has all the tangibles of storytelling, from embellishment to an extra emphasis on time commitment and yet, it is also unique in that it involves other forms of storytelling as well. Most films begin on a page and finish with music over the credits. Filmmaking is a long, exhausting and complicated process, one that I did not truly understand until I decided to make my own film, my Senior Honors Thesis Project. I was finishing my sophomore year in college when it was recommended that I apply for the Honors College and undertake a Senior Honors Thesis Project. I was hesitant at first, but after careful deliberation I decided to do it. I was an Electronic Media Production major and the thesis would pertain to my field of study, thus, it would be a film. What better way to truly learn about filmmaking than hands on experience? I was 1 2 part of Kent State University Independent Films and worked as a production assistant and assistant editor for their 2011 outing, Research: The Musical. Now I could make my own film, with complete creative control and get a taste of real independent filmmaking. Film had always mesmerized me. It was something that I decided I wanted to do in high school after years of fooling around with cameras, costumes and scripts. It was a determined future and now the future had become the present. I had a choice. I could do either a documentary or a fiction film. The answer was easy. It would be an original idea. Something I could call my own. I was not unfamiliar with writing scripts. I had written some before for class assignments, but this time there was an air of freedom. What genre? What would the main character be like? Would he or she be sympathetic or an antihero? The questions were endless and I dove into it. In a few weeks, I narrowed it down to a romantic comedy or a Chaplin-like slapstick silent film. I had begun writing when I happened upon my notebook from 7 Ideas that Shook the Universe, a class I had taken in the spring semester of my freshman year. I have always enjoyed science. I maintain that if I were better at math, I would have studied to be a theoretical physicist. It was this discovery that led me back to an idea I had developed after learning about Newtonian determinism. Determinism is the philosophical consequence of studying Newton’s laws of motion. Newton’s laws are so precise that one can use them to predict the future, thus it can lead one to believe that the future is already set. Everything has been determined. There is no 3 free will. This has since been disproven by the onset of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century and Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which affirms that no exact outcome can be known; the universe is ruled by probability. Nonetheless, I had developed an idea about a person trying to avoid his or her fate, yet ultimately doing what was needed for it to come true. I quickly discarded the other ideas and honed in on this new one: A philosophical science fiction film. During this time, I approached Professor David Smeltzer and asked if he would be my thesis advisor. After he agreed to advise me, I got to work. I researched the topic and happened upon the theory itself, “Laplace’s Demon” the first document pertaining to scientific or causal determinism, theorized by the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. It was then that I had my title, Laplace’s Demon. After absorbing information about the topic, I sat down and wrote a one-page treatment, which outlined the general story and characters and would be my guide as I wrote the script. My goal was a 15- to 16-minute finished product. A common rule of thumb in the film business is that one page of script will generally equal about one minute worth of screen time. My story revolved around Zak, a cleaner for a crime syndicate, no one’s idea of a hero. I knew the film was only going to be approximately 15 to 16 minutes in length. To get the audience involved immediately, I wanted the audience to experience Zak’s profession. There would be no dialogue, just action. As Syd Field wrote in his book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, “Action is character and character, 4 action; what a person does is who he is …” (Field 69). This established my character and story not by voice over or dialogue, but by action: quick, immediate and full of impact. This became a great lead for understanding the character Zak as well. From the beginning, I made a point not to make Zak a sympathetic character. He was not redeemable. He killed for a living and showed no remorse. Throughout the rest of the film, we saw Zak change from the predator to the prey. He had to rely on his skill set to live. His last victim would be himself. As a habit, I like to physically write my scripts first. It gets me emotionally invested in the words and characters; the pain from the hand cramps, the black smear from the graphite and the goose bumps when the eraser runs down to a nub get me into the story; something that I believe lacks in the typing process. After writing the outline and script, I typed the first draft, read it over and polished it into a workable second draft, which I then emailed to my faculty advisor Professor David Smeltzer. I felt as if I had climbed a mountain and decided to reward myself by going to see a movie. Chapter 2 Chaos Cinema At the first meeting, Professor Smetlzer asked me to tell him the story. He had read the script but he wanted to hear it from me. I told him how I came up with the idea and what I had planned for approaching the project. First, however, Professor Smeltzer said we had to sit and have a table read between the two of us. After the read, it was evident there was more script work to be done. I had to tighten up the story, give supporting characters actual names (not Smalls or Boss) and explain the over arching theory without laboring down the story with scientific terms that the average audience member would not understand. After the third, fourth and fifth rewrite, the story started to click and I got closer to script lock. By the sixth draft, I finally had the story I wanted to tell. The most significant change was that the science aspect of the film would be explained through the action, resolution and the film’s title. In addition, I named every character. Even if the character is a minor one, they have a role to play. They need to be real people with names. After getting the story locked, I went through the script and made sure I had everything arranged correctly, from labeling scenes and having the dialogue formatted properly. It was then that I realized this was no ordinary class project. This was the real thing. Moreover, nothing was set in stone. Even though I worked off the sixth draft of the film, the script changed constantly. This was due to location issues or cast availability. One 5 6 such example was in the aftermath of a shootout. The antagonist arrives on the scene with three cohorts. However, on that shooting day, only one of the supporting actors was available. It was not a drastic change in the story, the lines stayed the same, but it was an unanticipated change nonetheless.