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Beautiful Glitch(free three-minute promotional video script with some production tips)Sponsor this pageThis page last updated on or about 1-24-09a - j m o o n e y h a m . c o m - o r i g i n a l |
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ORIGINAL CREATION DATE: October 08, 2008
Promoting a custom necklace product while playing fairy.
Note that with Disney planning to soon release a bunch of CGI pixie/fairy films, a video like this one might get extra traffic on YouTube as a byproduct. Even big corporations often try to capitalize on stuff like this with spin offs of their own.
MORAL/THEME: Mysteries, surprises, fantasy, seeing things
SCENE 1: A male geek pores over a disassembled computer. We see at least one circuit board and various other parts lying around, as well as bright lights and tools. An electronic tester unit may also be visible. The geek's wearing magnifying lenses head gear, with the lenses parked out of line of sight at first. He talks to himself.
"I don't get it! It should work!" the geek says in exasperation.
The geek sits back in his chair for a moment, thinking. Then he leans forward again, lowers his magnifying lenses, picks up a marker, and lays down some ink on a circuit board.
Then he notices something odd. "What the heck?"
SCENE 1 HOW-TO: If needed we can use off-camera cue cards for the geek to read his lines (poster boards with the lines clearly printed on them). But most scenes here are pretty brief dialogue wise, and shouldn't need cards.
I'm picturing the ink/paint color being bright red.
SCENE 2: We see a close up of the circuit board. Near the middle of the fresh paint mark is a tiny black dot.
SCENE 3: The geek scrutinizes the dot with his magnifying lenses for a moment.
"I can't believe this! There's some tiny bug-- a REAL bug-- on the board!"
The geek stands up and moves to retrieve a crafts razor blade for its fine edge. Then he carefully scrapes at the mark.
"You're one awfully small bug!" he smiles at the scraping now on the blade. Then he carries it over to another spot, where he transfers the scraping to a microscope slide, and places the slide into a viewer.
"Maybe if you're ugly enough your photo will win the micro-photography contest at Garland next week," he speaks to the slide.
The geek then raises his magnifying lenses to peer through the microscope.
SCENE 3 HOW-TO: If we can't get a decent real microscope to use for this, we might be able to cobble together a fake one, or maybe instead use one of those extension arm lamps with a round fluorescent light bulb surrounding a big magnifying glass in the middle.
SCENE 4: We see what the geek sees through the microscope.
Here, the ink or paint mark he laid down looks like a thick, sticky, shiny blanket covering the landscape.
But there's a break in the blanket, with something moving underneath, and soon emerging. Maybe the wings are all or most all that shows at first.
It turns out to be a tiny girl with gossamer wings: a pixie. Or a fairy. She stands up, and dusts herself off.
SCENE 4 HOW-TO: We might frame these 'through-the-scope' scenes like they do in TV and film for scenes witnessed through binoculars.
If worst comes to worst, we could try blue-screening everything but the fairy here, and adding the painted landscape with effects after the shooting. But we probably won't have to do that.
The most work involved here will probably be your costume and hair and makeup work. For you'll have to look a little unreal and magical: something a little more unusual than a regular human being. But still as cute as you can possibly dream up and act.
We want to really play up the cute factor here.
You could either piece together clothing items you think would well pass muster for a pixie outfit, or design something from scratch.
If you can't come up with anything else, you might try something along the lines of an ancient Greek toga:
Fun 'n Folly Wrap Around Toga Costume for Women, MEN'S Ancient Greek Roman Toga Pagan SCA Pattern S-L and Greek Goddess Costume Sexy Toga Costumes, Halloween Costumes, Adult Costumes had some toga pics when I checked 10-8-08 (the last one is sort of a risqué mini-skirt version).
(A Google search also showed Keira Knightley wearing what was called a toga to some Hollywood event-- but it might be considered even more risqué than the mini-skirt version above, top-wise)
Remember you can adjust the dimensions to your liking: just try to keep it cute and fairy-like. Also, keep in mind the struggle to emerge from beneath the plastic blanket representing the ink or paint layer: you'll need some freedom of movement in your arms and legs to do that easily. A dress knee length or longer probably would be impractical there.
If you can find Disney cartoons of people wearing togas, that might help too (maybe the Hercules cartoon series or film would have some).
As you can see, a Greek toga is much like a white bed sheet draped strategically around the body.
In the Robin Williams Peter Pan movie Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell wore sort of a brief, formless bag with ragged lower edges, maybe supposedly made of an animal skin (from what I recall). The loose bag look didn't appear all that cute in my opinion. As I grew up seeing the cartoon Tinkerbell from Disney, that's basically what my idea of a cute pixie is. Ha, ha.
I expect though you might have fun designing your own costume from scratch. If you can make it sturdy enough to last a while, you might also get some use out of it for a few real-life costume parties down the road somewhere.
There's also the possibility we might come up with more fairy-related scripts later.
As designing suitable fairy shoes for the video could entail significant work itself, it'd probably be best just to go barefoot. Besides, a magical creature with wings probably has little need for footwear anyway.
On the fairy wings: these might be a little tricky. If necessary we could just cut out some cardboard forms and paint them blue to use them as blue screen for some sort of shimmering template effect to fill in later via video editing.
But we could also try bending wing shapes out of wire that attaches to your back (there might have to be a hidden harness of some sort to support it under your clothes: hopefully you and various female relatives or friends can handle that part).
These wings could actually look as good as you wanted them to-- but the better, the more work involved, I'd expect.
Thin plastic sheeting (like Glad wrap or whatever) could be wrapped around the wire forms. Then perhaps white paint carefully and lightly sprayed along the edges, with just a bit here and there in the middle. This would leave them transparent, but with the edges well-defined. Especially against any stark background.
A Hollywood studio pre-computer would likely have used some airbrush work on such things. But even a regular spray can can be used with template cut outs like an airbrush for some effects.
If you decided to make them more insect-like, or leaf-like, with stem-like lines branching off along the middle, some of those branches could be a frame of metal wires (with some others only being painted on (with a brush) for looks), and the metal frame could then have transparent flexible plastic sheeting attached to it to make the wings.
In this last case I'm talking plastic sheeting much like that easily rolled up stuff sometimes used for cover sheets over high end pamphlets and such. Or for high school or college report booklets handed in to the teacher. You can get such stuff in large sizes from art supply stores, as airbrush artists often use them to make stencils of all sizes. There's even a special name for the stuff that I can't recall at the moment.
Yes: the fairy costume would probably cost us a few bucks, as well as time to create. And the wings and maybe under-the-clothes harness might take some trial and error.
Another useful effect to glamorize the pixie-- if you wear your hair long and flowing for it-- might be use of a fan to blow your hair around. If that doesn't cause problems with the wings, that is. TV shows and films use that trick all the time.
You might want to experiment a bit makeup-wise for the best pixie look. Maybe zero makeup would be best. Or something kind of wild around the eyes like used for ancient Egyptian women. I have no idea. You might try a few different looks, take photos, and get votes from everybody about what would be best for a pixie.
I wonder if a bit of glitter added would be helpful too, cosmetics-wise? For such a fanciful creature. Please take precautions if you use any, as it's risky for contact with your eyes.
I think there's also a spray you could use on your costume itself to temporarily retain some glitter sprinkled on it. It's an artist's spray available at art supply places.
The thick layer of paint you struggle to get out from under in the scene might best be portrayed with a thick blanket basically created by folding over a sheet of colored plastic, with some sort of filler material inside to give it heft. So it'll be like a very thick plastic comforter.
Somehow we should give it the appearance of being at least slightly sticky or tacky too (since it's supposed to be a layer of paint or ink).
Maybe we could just apply something sticky to a few particular spots on the blanket where you'll then make a show of the stickiness there, and that will be sufficient.
Such spots might be achieved with a bit of sufficiently transparent and dried jelly or syrup spread on just those selected places?
I'm picturing the ink or paint mark (and so the close up blanket) as being bright red. But any plausible color would do.
The big thick red blanket might best be created by first spray painting red just one side of a large plastic sheet, then folding that sheet in half (so the painted side is inside), and layering towels or blankets inside to make it appear thick.
By turning the painted side in, we should get a shiny red blanket-like mass to represent the paint or ink applied by the geek to the board, at nearly the microscopic level.
SCENE 5: We see the geek with his eyes glued to the microscope, and his mouth hanging open. For a moment he's motionless, and in shock. Suddenly he moves again, making adjustments to the scope.
SCENE 6: Our view of the fairy zooms in a bit, to encompass just her top half or less (which gives us a good view of her necklace).
The pixie puts her hands on her hips, purses her lips, then slowly raises her face to soon be looking back directly at the geek through his scope.
The fairy then shakes her head in a 'no-no-no' motion, while using one arm and hand to wag her finger at the geek too. And maybe wags her hips a bit too, all in one motion (it's tough to describe the behavior I mean here; maybe you can do some trial and error with some onlookers to see what the cutest combination of motions would be? Or rehearse before a mirror).
Then she extends both arms and claps her hands together forcefully a single time in front of her, and disappears in a shower of sparks.
SCENE 6 HOW-TO: The shower of sparks might be video from directly underneath a lit fireworks sparkler, which we splice into the video immediately after the hand clap. Sparklers look like giant matches and should be widely available for reasonable cost.
Shooting one from below vertically will help all the shooting star trajectories look even and balanced. Before computers movie-makers filmed explosions of model space ships this way to make the explosion look more realistic.
Note the sparkler match will need to be hanging upside down, a few feet above the camera, for this shot. And it might be advisible to have a transparent shield of plastic of glass protecting the camera (and possible camera wielder) from the falling sparks.
SCENE 7: The geek yells "Noooo! Come back!" and rears back from his scope to begin a futile effort to reacquire her visually somewhere in the vicinity of the scope or elsewhere in the room. But he can't.
"I must be losing it," he says to himself, rubbing his eyes. "Definitely going to have to cut back on the spicy beef jerky and root bear," he continues, shaking his head.
Then he hears a beep. The dead computer which is still partly disassembled on the desk is now working.
The geek smiles with only one side of his mouth (wistfully).
"I think I'd rather have my glitch back," he moans.