The Journey West (Production)
The Pitch
The project we set out to create was heavily influenced by Bertie Gilbert's short film Let It Be and by the animated short The Life of Death by Marsha Onderstijn. However, its biggest influence was the Japanese Death Poems written by monks and Buddhists. The pitch created by me explained that our main character, a young man, would meet a lady all in black in an elevator, she was the physical manifestation of death. Inside the lift, time would stop as the elevator failed to work, after panicking the young man would start to talk to this figure and the dialogue would revolve around their lives and would shift to how death is necessary if life is to have any meaning. Understanding this the young man finally accepts the reality of death however still not understanding his own demise.
The lady, however, who at this point is tired of being hated by humanity and having to take lives, sheds a tear as he accepts her. The movie then ends with her extending her hand so they can leave the lift, this followed by the sound of the lift falling and crashing.
The Moodboard
Following the success of the pitch, I decided to start creating a Moodboard in order to get a look and feel for the Film. I used pictures I found online as well as screenshots from some of the short movies that inspired me.
The Research
Wanting to explore more the concepts that could be imbued with this journey about life and death I decided to delve deeper into what became the biggest influence, the Japanese death poems. I started reading Yoel Hoffman's compilation of Japanese Death Poems. The constant links to nature and the way poets portrayed death were certainly very alluring, they saw it as a passage to a greater existence and I wanted to translate that way of thinking into the film. Furthermore, I wanted to try something very different and also decided to craft the majority of the dialogue between the characters in Haiku or Poem form in order to give the dialogue a different feel, more poetic and alluring.
The film had many working titles including "The acceptance of one's withering light" and "All is clear, Farewell my dear", however, the title chosen was another allusion to the way Death is portrayed in these poems, as is generally a journey west. The title is also the first line of a Death Haiku that truly resonated with the theme therefore it was included in the movie.
Now spring has come
Into my world
Farewell
- Bainen
The journey west
a way that all would travel
flower field
- Unkown
Ending road ahead,
I should travel back home soon,
Forever sunset
- Felix Kjelberg
“Death is not the opposite of life, but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death.” – Haruki Murakami in Norwegian Wood
Inspirations
The portrayal of Death in both these shorts and the way it created a story with it as a character helped create the story that became The Journey West. The visual look of the characters and the cinematography of Let it Be was also a big influence in setting the tone of the film.
The idea of splitting the film and have it go back and forth from the lift to another location to symbolize his feelings came from the group I was working with. I thought it was a very interesting idea and much could be done with it. I decided to locate these "Dream Sequences" in a stairway to contrast the elevator, however, a new idea came to me when I was researching about death and how people perceive it. To have the character go through the 5 stages of grief as he comes to accept his own death was an idea that I new could be hard to translate, but I wanted to try everything to make this short special and different, and I decided to include it. So as you see the our character go through the motions of these emotions we cut to the physical representation of these feelings that in a way are happening within him.
The names of the characters were also chosen very carefully, while Death's chosen name was Daisy, to represent the flower fields and nature that the peace beyond life is attached to, Seth's name was chosen from a rather biblical source.
In the Bible, Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, brother to Abel and Cain who ended each other's lives. Seth was therefore seen as a new hope on the family, a new life. Choosing this name was a play on the fact he was seen as a new life, it is obvious that Seth, like any human, died eventually however his death wasn't necessarily anything tragic and was instead only the natural course of life.
The Planning
After making the research on the themes and topics I wanted to be explored I had to start planning and to lay all the ideas in an organized format so that the script could be built from there.
Themes
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It represents death in a good light, making people learn the necessity of the phenomena and understand how without death, life would be pointless.
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It motivates people to take risks, urging people to live other than just survive by demonstrating how short life can be.
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The perfect balance between Life and Death.
The scene
The short film revolves around the dialogue of the two characters, as they go on a short psychological journey. It is all set inside the lift, a small location where the two cannot do anything else other than talk to each other.
Narrative Arc
The arc of the story takes us inside of the elevator as both characters express all their feelings and ultimately come to terms with their fate, realizing the beautiful balance of life and death.
Stylistic Approach
Since it is set in a confined space, the film will focus on their dialogues and expressions, but also exploring the many shots that are possible in that small place that might deliver interesting perspectives. The light inside the lift shall be warm while the "dream sequences" will have more blue tones.
The Journey of the Characters
The main character slowly realizes through the dialogue that despite still wanting to live and to still have hopes and dreams for his future, he has indeed already lived a good life, and he understands that death is ultimately necessary,therefore he shall accept it when it comes. The woman on the other hand, (the living personification of death) as she talks about her job, that she despises, also comes to terms with her existence. When the man unknowingly accepts her, she feels needed once more, and she concludes that it is only because of her that people get to live and experience so many beautiful things during life.
Audience:
The film is aimed mainly at people from 16 to 25 years old who have dealt with a loss for the first time and need to find peace with the phenomena of death and accept how short life truly is.
It also targets people who are afraid to take risks, and it urges them to live other than just survive.
Long Synopsis:
Seth is a young man who after walking out of his apartment as usual steps inside the elevator with a peculiar woman dressed in black who just seems to simply be standing there. As he clicks the button to the bottom floor the lift shakes violently and then everything stops. Seth panics for a bit as he realizes he is stuck inside the elevator with no way out he enters the stage of denial, the audience is then taken to a different location with a darker tone where you see him running down a set of stairs only to find himself in the same floor once again, this happens a few times before he decides to look back and he sees the woman who was by his side in the elevator looking down on him with an apologetic face. The audience is then brought back to the elevator.
Seth is still in a panic, but he is now using it in a different way he seems to be getting angry at the situation, and at himself. He flashes to find himself in the staircase once more but this time he is simply and aimlessly hitting a wall with all his strength he then falls down on his knees in frustration and slowly stops hitting the wall. As he does so a familiar hand reaches for his shoulder. He is now back on the lift.
The woman who has been trying to approach him does so, she asks him to calm down because everything will be all right, she clicks the button to call for help and Seth calms down slowly. He apologizes for his behavior, but the girl seems to understand. He then introduces himself and she does the same, telling him her name is Daisy despite stuttering a bit. Seth then checks his phone only to realize that it is completely frozen, which he founds odd but dismisses as a software issue, he asks Daisy if hers is working but she replies saying that she only possesses a pocket watch, but it seems to be okay despite soon be running out of time. Frustrated he leans back against the wall and sits down on the elevator clamming that they’ll just have to wait. He then starts hypothesizing the possibility of him not getting inside that elevator, and that leads him to find himself on the staircase again. This time he is simply sitting on the stairs, two steps bellow Daisy talking to her, despite all sound being muffled he seems to be begging her or asking for something, but she just keeps a sad face and then the words ‘I’m sorry’ are heard as he goes back inside the elevator with once again no memory of that sequence and no effect from it.
Daisy then sits down on the opposite side of the elevator and starts talking to him, the dialogue between the two seems poetic and counted. She talks about farewells and memories while they discuss opinions, Seth then feels sorry for himself, he feels alone and lost, and that takes him to the stairs. He is now sitting on the same level of the stairs as Daisy but facing the other side, he seems distant and sad, his expression is empty. The woman then looks back at him. And then they return once more to the elevator.
This time she vents about her life and how she feels miserable and Seth realizes how good of a life he has lived in retrospective, how happy he is of the life he led and the people he loves. And then he helps Daisy realize that her life is not as lonely as she thought and tells her she is needed, she is loved, despite being a harsh love. He accepts her as she is, and she drops a tear of joy when hearing this. She then blurts the famous The Journey West jisei (Japanese Death Poem), from an unknown writer, Seth enjoys this, and it brings a melancholic joy to the two of them. The same noise that was muffling the stairways sequence starts to grow slowly. The woman looks at the watch and sees it has stopped ticking, she gets up and tells him to come with her because the time has come for them to leave. She extends her hand to him and he tries to reach it, as they are almost touching hands the audience is taken outside of the elevator. The sound is mixed with the music, but it slowly goes silent as the elevator scratches and then drops and crashes when the screen turns black.