REGRESS
a short film
Thriller / Horror
Synopsis
Samuel and his wife, Michelle sit eating dinner after recently finalizing their divorce. Michelle has been suffering from an unexplained illness. Helpless, this illness has taken a toll on Samuel. Soon after the divorce, Michelle passes away.
Samuel cleans up Michelle’s single apartment. He tries to move on by seeing a woman he met at work. Yet Samuel can’t seem to shake his ex-wife’s memory. While on a date with this new woman, Samuel gets overwhelmed and runs to the bathroom.
Suddenly, he wakes up confused in a hospital bed. The doctor and nurse come in to identify him. Everyone around him seems very familiar, but he can’t place it. Finally, Michelle comes in to comfort him. But Samuel doesn’t recognize her.
A man and a woman are having their final supper at a restaurant on the day their divorce was completed. Latin music is playing happily in the background. After that, a woman dies suddenly due to an unexplained illness that she had been suffering from before, and at the same time, a man suffers mental stress from complaining about her illness every day and goes to the hospital.
After the death of the woman, with the cooperation of the landlord, he finishes organizing the separated room she rented by herself, and afterwards the man eventually sees another woman through his job. But strangely, the man begins to see an illusion of his wife, and gradually develops a phobia in which the conversation this new girlfriend is speaking is replaced by the voice of his former wife’s about illness, then he gets panicked during their date.
However, it is actually a dream, and when he wakes up, the man is hospitalized, and a patient who looks exactly like the landlord who is hospitalized next to him calls a Nurse. The doctor and the nurse come in, and he starts to confirm their identities. It appears the nurse looks like that new girlfriend and the doctor looks like the guy whom he used to see at the mental hospital. He just stares at them like he can’t figure it out.
After the doctor confirms his identity, a woman enters and begins to take over his care for the doctor. she looks like a former wife who should have died. the woman says to him “Are you ok?” and the man says “Yes, thank you. Nice to meet you”.
Concept Gallery
Concept
Dissociative amnesia
Dissociative amnesia is a type of dissociative disorder that involves inability to recall important personal information that would not typically be lost with ordinary forgetfulness. It is usually caused by trauma or stress. The diagnosis is based on history after ruling out other causes of amnesia.
Generally speaking, the older you get, the more vulnerable you are to stress. Especially in this pandemic of COVID-19. Sometimes we see the news media report a crazy person committing a crime for some particular reason, or for seemingly no reason at all. Did that person do it for money? For revenge? Is it that simple? People around the world have been patient in this stressful society. Somethings may have appeared to have opened up around you, or you might also think that everything has closed down. There might be someone out there who can help you, but we are still individuals. No one can understand you perfectly. Health management is mandatory year by year due to the extreme biasing of information. Also, your body is supposed to react against any harmful matter to keep healthy. So, you already have a defense system. For your body to be healthy, your body protects you from everything, your body does anything it needs to that end. In your daily life, there are a wide variety of moments in which you would experience this.
At times we must fight to save someone or save ourselves, but if this gets out of our control, we can be harmed or even something fatal may happen to us. I might be able to say it is one of those diseases which the source is undefined like ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), but this film won’t go into detail about it. It just focuses on how people affect each other by exploring how this kind of disease is experienced and how it affects us. Yes, it is an experimental trial. From this, I am curious if we are able to see why we need happiness.Message to the audiences
This film will explore an episode of a serious health problem exacerbated by ignoring it. And I sincerely would like to say “Think of your own betterment immediately if you’re experiencing any health problems and don’t even question it. Otherwise, these health issues could ruin your life. Your body is always informing you.”I want to allow the audience to become confused regarding the timeline of the story. This is because, in order to understand “Dissociative Amnesia” it is better for one to show them these trials and tribulations of the main character beginning to lose their memory.
Creativity
Cinematic Mood
As for the cinematic mood of this film, we’d follow AMAZON ORIGINAL “Them”. (IMDb).
This series “Them” has some elements that resonate with my concept for “REGRESS” that I’d love to express.
The reasons:
1. Something invisible to us makes the character go crazy.
2. The cinematic world is always somewhere between a dream and reality.
3. Lighting, Color, clothes, any visual aspects are going to collapse into a hellish appearance. I would especially love it if the cinematic atmosphere of the character’s life and this cinematic vision to proceed to complete hell if the character doesn’t take any actions to recover. Also, I believe this is a sort of truth. In terms of diseases, they might become cancerous. We need to take some actions to prevent them from being so in our real life.
Cinematic Approach
Also the film will take strong references from the work of Steve McQueen (Shame, Hunger, Small Axe)
Basically, I’d tell this story as if this story could be real or a dream in such a way that the audience cannot decide from the beginning to the very end.
The main character faces divorce, and tries to start a new life, but his wife has been seeking help with her various terrible symptoms everyday through phone calls. One day she dies, but still he is haunted by her memory. In the end, She is not dead, but he is in the hospital, struggling with amnesia.
What is our own priority? What is the most important reason we have to live our lives?
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Keyword: Trauma, Dissociative amnesia, True happiness, Mental health, stress, Die, Kill, Loss, Burden, Ghost, Horror, Small world, Fiction
Feasibility
We have applied for two film grants.
2021 April – July : Script Development
2021 April – Sep : Financial development
2021 Aug – Sep : Staffing
2021 Sep – Oct : Casting
2021 Nov – Dec : Shooting
2022 Dec – Feb : Post Production
2022 Feb – : Submission to Film Festivals
We creative team will start it by submitting to the script contest and occasionally using crowdfunding.
In the case of larger actual cost than we expected,
1. I would postpone to start the production.
2. I would consider and adjust the script to lessen the cost.
3. I would adjust and negotiate some things to the creative team as I already have a creative team to fit the possible budget somehow. The most occupied items I need to assign in my plan are these:
* Post production fee
* Location use
* Personnel expenses for production
We creative team would deal with the above 1-3 methods to realize the production.
Creative Team
Masataka Ishizaki is an Actor, Director based in New York City. He was born in Boston, USA, and raised in Osaka, Japan. For over 10 years, he has been working as an actor for films, televisions, commercials as well as doing voiceover acting. As for the director, his short film project “Cookie” has been screened at some film festivals such as NewFilmmakers NY 2020.
Parker Damm is a Producer, Actor, Director based in New York City. Originally from Maryland, he got his start in improv. Over the last year Parker has been producing and directing sketches for various comedy groups including Scoot Scoot, a PIT House Sketch Team. This past October Parker produced and directed Unsustainable AF, a workplace dramedy tackling unhealthy office expectations. He is looking forw ard to expanding his storytelling playbook and fostering new narratives.
Seattle born Los Angeles based producer Thomas Yount has produced a wide range of music and soundscapes for artists, film, television, commercials, and video games. Recording original sounds and practicing synthesis have been a central starting point for adventures brought into his music production. After discovering his affinity for synthesizers, his curiosity for playing with “electricity” was born.
The art of storytelling and the language of music purvey throughout Thomas’ work whether it be as a composer, sound designer or music producer. Carried by the belief in the story over plot, he grounds his sonic game into the essence of the stories and characters presented, carving intentional paths in a wide variety of narratives.
Contact & Donation
There are many risks associated with filmmaking. The usual risks are not completing our financial goals, so we would be very grateful if you could support us! The money raised will ensure that we can complete a safe and risk-free shoot, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you can't contribute financially you can still help by sharing our page or just spreading the word in general about Against Reason! Thank you so much for taking the time!
