11. Pre-Production for Scene Assignment

For my scene assignment, I chose to re-imaginge a scene from Desperate Housewives. I started with the script and tried to take everything at face value without giving too much weight to what I know about the actual show (easier because I've never really seen it). The script is about a young housewife who has a very mundane life and tells the viewer in a cheerful monologue about the day she shot herself.
I took that basic skeleton and began sketching things out and gathering photographs that I wanted to represent my version of this story. I decided to set it in present day, but include a lot of anachronistic visual elements to compound her out-dated housewife lifestyle and contrast with the more modern housewife at the end of the scene. Her dress style, hair, etc. came from drawings of women in the 1950's. The house itself wasn't able to be altered except very minimally, so I decided to only show very specific parts. I excluded things that were overtly electronic or modern, at least until the end with Housewife #2. I also wanted to play up the main character's "innocent little girl" angle by including a lot of florals and bright, cheerful, feminine colors. In the finished product we have floral prints on her dress, flowers by the door, flowers on the table, flowers in the garden... And I don't think you notice them very much when casually watching, but they helped to set the mood visually. For the second housewife we knew we wanted to limit the amount of red you see until the last part where she cleans the spilled blood/medicine. I also prepped with her and she came to set with her hair down and kind of tousled, smoky eyeshadow, several options for a fitted dress, etc. The details of the house, the lenses/angles, and props were all planned meticulously.
When I brought Bryan on as DP, we talked about what kind of overall color we wanted and what kind of lenses we wanted to use to fit the style. We were able to communicate easily about what we thought it should look and feel like, and that conversation carried on until the final edit of the project. In the end, there was about a month between our initial preparations and the day we actually shot. It was nice to have that time because it helped to cement everything, but I don't think the vision changed much during that downtime, it just gave me time to make sure I hadn't forgotten any elements.

I put together the standard production notebook; as an example her are my storyboards.