• I’m contending that the Western Genre is at its best when critiquing/subverting/not abiding by  its own genre conventions. Showing the reality and cruelty that is the Western frontier

 

Joel’s Story

Its opens with 3-4 establishing shots of the area, of the pylons, trees, metal. These will be all images of desolation.

In time with the music my lead character, Joel, hits a nail into some wood that he is attaching against a tree, we see a shot of his hands doing this. For one bar he hits the nail, then for a bar he stops, then in the next bar he hits the nail against the tree. There is dirt on his hands. I cover this by shooting a closeup of his hands and a longish shot from behind of him doing this (so we can’t see his face). We then cut up and see Joel’s face, he is angry and tired, he looks at the tree and the sign it says nothing. The music stops on this cut. There is a pile of sticks nearby, on the sticks he has on it what he owns, there is a backpack, hammers, nails and tin of paint. After picking these things up he walks back to the tree and writes ‘Forever’ on it. He looks at what he wrote and puts his hands on his hips. He walks back to where his stuff is and picks up a pencil and a notebook, he begins to write. He writes this.

To whomever may read this, There is nothing for me in this life anymore, no food, no water, no emotion.

Goodbye,

He then looks up and around his environment he sees barren land, he sees trees. He is thinking about what to sign his note. He then decides.

He signs it as ‘anonymous’.

Brydan’s Story

Brydan is chopping a piece of wood. He looks at his stuff by the tree and navigates the landscape, he decides to sit by the tree. He looks upset and forlorn. Brydan is sitting near a tree, he has a mug of water in his hands and he delivers this directly to camera.

Well, when I wake up I feel like I’ve woken up on a boat, or in a plane but not on solid ground. I take a step out of my bed and I feel like I’m falling, that at any time, in any moment my life could just evaporate into nothingness and I could be erased and I wouldn’t have changed the world, I would just be another person that lived and faded and (cut out on this line) no one really knew them. After this we cut back in and see Brydan drink some tea. He then says to the camera ‘Not a bad cup of tea’.

We hear gunfire in the distance. Brydan is sort of startled he turns and looks to where he has seen the shot. Here was cut on Brydans turn to another angle so we see his face properly. The camera cuts to a point of view shot (which looks up to where Joel was) the camera cuts back and we see Brydans reaction. He is initially sceptical, he stands up and puts his hands in the air and shouts ‘Don’t Shoot’ ‘Whose there’. Eventually he puts them down and begins to run up the hill. Here we cut from a conservative medium close up to a long shot behind Brydan, we see him run up the hill. At the top of the hill he looks at Joel lying face down in the dirt (or slumped against a tree). Its a long shot of Joel, under the sign that says ‘Forever’. We cut back to a sad Brydan (who now understands the importance of forever)