Lets start at the beginning. Once upon a time, there was the beginning of term when we were looking at shorts that had been submitted to various film festivals/ competitions (see my first post). This was to provide us with an idea of what would be involved when we came to make our own films.
Over the weeks that followed our tutor Mike, assigned our film groups and gave us the script "What would you do for a pair of shoes?" written by Pascha Hanaway. Our adaptations could be interpreted however we liked, bearing in mind that our film could only be shot over a weekend and had to have a running time of 5-8mins. There was also no budget for our films, so we had to be extremely practical.
"What would you do for a pair of shoes?" Tells the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a pair of shoes in a shop window. She can't afford them, so takes on various jobs to earn money. Whilst working as a waitress she takes a woman's purse and using the money she finds in it, buys herself the shoes. However, after purchasing them she is no longer satisfied and desires other inanimate objects.
This is the original Shoes (2009) [Dir. Gemma Huntingford]
When I first read through the script I felt there were a lot of directions that it could be taken in, such as replacing the shoes with something more symbolic? Or focusing more on the idea of morality. But finding one that would be easily accessible whilst being entertaining proved more difficult than I'd expected. Especially with Mike telling us we needed to add suspense!
Looking over our first draft the outline was very similar to "What would you do for a pair of shoes? " I believe we stayed true to Hanaway's script whilst adding a sense of realism to the story.
I think that I was really fortunate to work with the people in my group as everyone seemed to have a similar vision for our film, and we had a lot of fun working together.
