Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 Project Idea

For my project I had always wanted to involve some sort of romance but phycological movies have always had a special place in my heart. Once I exchanged my ideas with my partner about the similar genres, she had also wanted to do something involving a romance and once I officially introduced her to the psychological genre, she totally agreed and love it. I then explained how I've had a friend from freshmen year that would always pay some much attention to her studies and school work to the point it would just deteriorate and diminish her mental and physical health. This friend of mine works hard and is going to college for sure..but is on the verge of developing different sicknesses as she skips meals or eats meals at 4am or breakfast at 3pm and never gets sleep. 

Andrea (my partner) understood how my friend was and it led to how I feel her personality and character traits would be good for a film. So eventually, we created our character named Ana, who strives to work extremely hard in school, stays up late working and feeling successful pleases her as a student. She creates his image in her head where she only prioritizes school and manages to neglect her loved ones; her parents, her friends, and her boyfriend. One of  our potential actresses that is one of my friends, has the most simplistic, clean, nicest room I think I have ever seen. I was once over at her house and her room was very straightforward and she didn't have any crazy posters, plushies everywhere or something that would make her room make her appear as an extroverted person. This friend of mine I'm currently talking about is introverted and her room resembles it perfectly. We also plan to add a scene where she is falling asleep doing work after she stays up all night and we can show that time had been passing by utilizing a jump cut.

For Ana, I figured that exact type of room would be perfect considering the fact she always and only has one thing on her mind, school. I want Ana to give a very cold, stubborn in a way about involving herself into relationships with people who clearly care about her. Me and Andrea will be able to incorporate this idea throughout our film by involving shots of when her boyfriend is calling her and she turns the phone off or times like when she's walking in the halls by herself. We want to make her seem isolated throughout her school day. We are also planning on using several shots that are able to describe the way she is being seen by others at school such as long shots of her being alone in the hallways. 

We then wanted to involve a clear and obvious factor of the fact that her mental and physical health isn't as good as it should be. We planned to create this by having Ana get called over by the school therapist while she's alone. The film would then show the conversation her and her therapist have that is clearly about her mental health. We want the therapist to sound genuine and worried about the fact Ana is not going down a good route for her health which is extremely important compared to the way Ana disregards it as much as she does.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This movie was our main inspiration because of the way it is able to involve the symbolic code theory and simply involve so many different factors that add up to different scenes of the film. This film is able to give different messages through different factors such as color theory and they used this when Clementine, one of the main characters would dye her hair that was go along with the season they were in.

This film also uses amazing cinematography throughout the film overall. There are so many different factors that make one think about the film long after it finished. Andrea had introduced this movie to me and once I had watched it, we both had wanted to insinuate that the main character of ours, Ana, had a love interest but kind of just drop a small hint just like they did in this movie. Towards the beginning of this movie, they create a close up of the main character while Clementine who would be a later love interest, is all the way in the back of a beach the main character is walking by. With this shot it let's the main character think that there was no one else on the beach but himself and  that random person which must mean they have something in common but he doesn't think much of it. The movie constantly uses color theory to use Clementine as a colorful, fun, open person and normally use dark colors on the main character, Joel, to keep his character seem very mediocre, dark, and simple. But we eventually realized we wouldn't be able to do that the exact same way as the film, but we do plan on using similar shots or editing techniques they used in this film. 

Me and Andrea wanted to use some sort of color theory to add to the plot of our film opening considering the fact that Ana, is a very mediocre person who doesn't care for those types of things. I love the way they are able to create Clementine as a completely different person next to Joel. There are several shots to when her hair, hat, or sweater is the only thing with a bright color in the same shot as Joel to add important and connection to her and Joel. They used so many different types of lighting or music to add onto the type of message they wanted to give off which I truly enjoyed watching and I hope that me and Andrea are able to create something similar to those exact factors. During the film, whenever it would be Joel clearly having a bad day, alone, struggling, it's almost as if the screen would go grey but one Clementine would come in with her colorful hair and clothes, it's like his world found meaning again.