Overview

Portals (or Transportals) is a short film centered on Echo, a woman who discovers she can teleport using discarded street furniture. Each object becomes a gateway…but not always one that moves through space or time in a linear fashion – she also moves across alternate versions of herself.

These transmissions are known as bumps.

Every bump reveals a new facet of who she could or might have been – the same person refracted through different emotional, aesthetic, and relational grammars. Whoa.

A couple of observations interacted to inspire Portals.

The top layer, first-hand experience with the odd ways relationships ebb and flow in modern times. Are people looking to fill a role inspired by unrealistic standards and jump ship at the first sign of turbulence or to find a compatible partner and to accept their beauty and flaws as one as life moves forward?

And then something environmental, the very interesting way that people leave their discarded furniture out on the street. Easy to miss, but if you look, there are usually hints of a narrative there.

Unrelated, but maybe not? So what if we told stories where these two threads, one interior, one exterior, were intertwined?

The Portals storytelling style will build on French New Wave aesthetics like Jean-Luc Godard’s video works and character essays like Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Foutaises, but with textural science fiction flourishes that derail and modernize it.

Part character sketch, part voice memo from alternate futures and disparate pasts, the surreal premise (teleporting through furniture) feels whimsical, but the use of voice and rhythm makes it eerie, intimate, and psychologically precise and relatable.

Talent

I’m envisioning Echo as a woman whose feminine and masculine sides interact in her own unique way.

She is so deeply engaged in being herself that everything around her feels weird because of it.

And a mind and spirit with endless potential she is only beginning to discover.

Tone

Portals is set a place that is at once familiar and alien, and this sentiment applies to every aspect of the film. This will be expressed through sound design, costume, props, image control, action, dialogue, and other intervening ideas.

There will be an otherworldliness to everything, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Perhaps Echo is having a soak in the middle of a foggy, ambiguous space with jungle sounds in the distance? Is it a metaphor? Does it matter? It looks, feels and sounds cool.

Yet the atmospherics will feel intimate. Sometimes we’ll linger on defocused portraiture of Echo, a voyeuristic glance into her inner world, as we hear the narrator speak for her. And later, we’ll learn that Echo and the Narrator are one and the same person. At different times.

Styling

A time-traveling relational warrior needs an ever-evolving uniform. I’m envisioning Echo’s creativity and singular worldview being expressed in her choice of clothing. We’ll do this with an eye for fashion but there should always be a dash of something a little off.

You know that feeling when you see a little girl wearing a set of angel wings in public or a ruffled skirt over a pair of jeans? Whatever the modern chic version of that is. It’s fashion that doesn’t take itself too seriously and because of this, really says something.

Cinematography

The previous image has so much to love: a texture, the otherworldly quality of light, and the feeling of being both familiar and alien, like a glimpse at a dense urban area lit under sodium vapor lights.

Let’s lean into this idea.

Echo inhabits spaces in unusual ways. The photographic textures and tones will reflect this.

The moments where Echo bumps could be presented as layered, textural moments. Photographic metaphors for the complex processes that are happening.

But let’s degrade the image too. Analog video smears and tracking mis-alignments.

Action

Bumping has its artifacts. An entire universe’s molecules can’t be forcibly re-arranged without some new combinations being formed. So let’s work with that to great effect. As Echo finds herself in different predicaments, each will bring with it a slightly skewed logic, internal or external, through dialogue or action or movement.

Imagery

Is this illustration style postmodern anime? Ambiguous digital airbrushing?

I’m not totally sure. But I love it. And with this in mind, occasional scenes will be either fully animated or live action accentuated with a animated flourish. The slow motion tear could be cool, or the murals looking down on Echo.

Also at times, we’ll cut away to images that don’t have an immediate, clear connection to the story, and this style will play well here.

These text overlays are important too. Are they a remnant from the AOL Instant Messenger era or a communiqué from an alternate vapor wave future?

We’ll clue the audience with ambiguous fragments of conversations like these. They won’t last too long – just enough to spark imagination. This layer will add to the complexity and universal nature.

Locations

The portals themselves should feel believable but designed so that they work into the visual language of our story.

There’s an odd dignity and compositional language that seems to go into the way people leave furniture on the streets.

Or maybe that’s just the way I’m seeing it.

Props

The things that Echo finds and uses help her navigate complex worlds.

Goggles that reveal a piece of furniture’s secret history?

Abstract imagery printed on cloth that depicts a potential moment in the future?

A sparkly, bling’d out grill that glows in the dark, the only light in a completely underexposed world?

Huge, papier-mâché masks that let her blend in to her surroundings?

Screenplay

The screenplay is presently under development but we have a few scenes which could be interesting to test.

Next Steps

I’m tempted to get the screenplay in better shape before making anything but what if we did some research by shooting some test scenes?

I kinda want to see an actress explore the character a bit on camera, too. We might learn some things.

These scenes could play out into a trailer or teaser if we didn’t put too many resources into them.

Open to your thoughts and ideas. Thank you. Loose ideas on the next pages. Andrew

Loosies

End