We open to a low angle shot of our character lying at the edge of a wooden pier. One arm dangles over the edge and playing with lily pads. We see several dotted on the surface of the water.
Titles fade up and are blown away by a wind. "Violet" or "The Purple Lake"
The camera pans to the left and we see a lone yellow lily pad, away from the other pink ones grouped together. She looks up at it. We cut to a low angle shot from behind the yellow lily, making the viewer focus on it's importance. In the distance we see her looking at it.
We cut to a high shot from behind her, and it is obvious that the yellow lily is out by itself. Much like our character. She looks between the two. Back to the low shot from behind the yellow lily, we see her rise to her feet and approach it. Her hands swoop into the frame and take the yellow lily. We see her walk back to her spot, and lean over the side of the pier with the yellow lily in her hands.
It cuts back to the high backshot, and we see her leaning at the edge of the pier, obstructing our view of the lillys. She stands up and pauses, before carrying on down the pier to the left. As she moves out of the frame, the wind blows her hair out of our view of the lillys and we can see that she moved the lonely lilly blossom over to the others, so as to not be by itself. This again is a metaphor to help condition the audience as to the characters desires.
Cut to a long sideways shot of the pier with the character walking slowly along it, wind still blowing. These kind of shots are inent of building tension and mystery. I want the audience to get a sense of a task, or a purpose that is being fulfilled during this chain of events.
Another cut to a close up of the girls head and shoulders, a long bacdkground pans and she walks. She turns her head from our direction to look to the left, the screen cuts to a slow pan of the left lake side. We rejoin her, and looks to the right, we see a slow pans of the opposite lake side, there are two broken boats there not unlike her own. This is to show that there are others out there.
A high point over view of the pier on the lake, and her reaching the end slowly. We see a little boat tied to the end of the pier. The right of the frame gets gradually darker and dense with cloud/mist.
A low shot over the edge of the boat, and looking down the pier shows her legs and skirt approaching. SHe pauses at the end of the pier. The boat is rocking slightly in the water.
There is then a side shot where the pier, boat and action is in the far left third of the frame. She bends down backwards and reaches her leg out to try and find the boat. She fumbles a bit and eventually falls backwards into the boat, causing it to rock. This is a sweet scene making us sympathise with the character and find her cute. (She climbs to the edge of the boat and releases the rope)
Return to the high shot of the pier on the lake, and we see her heading off in the boat (rowing or moving by itself?) and towards the darker edge of the lake.
There is a side ways pan of her in the boat, looking up, down and around as she and her boat move into thick purple fog that then obscures her from our view. The background begins as the lighter shades we see at the beginning of the film and gradually get darker. Giving a sense of forboding? Or that she is moving toward a place of purpose.
As she moves out of the mist her boat stops, at the bottom of two vast clouds, lighter in the darkness, with a kind of shaft leading up between them. She looks up at the clouds.
There is a close up of her in the boat. She looks down to her chest, and raising her arms, presses them to her chest, in doing this her whole body scrunches up.Hold. When she pulls her hands away, a light is drawn from her chest and is now held in her hands. It is a white ball of light that is her beacon, her life light. She looks at it for a second or two in her hands.
We cut back to the view of her at the base of these two giant clouds, she looks up from her light and towards the sky. She stretches up her arms and sends up the light. Speckles dance on the water and move with the light as it floats up between the clouds and dissappears. All light is gone.
She waits, looking around for a time, and then slumps back into her boat after nothing happens. She looks up, and the then jumps the edge of her boat looking out and stretching to see as far as she can without falling from her boat. And we cut to a backshot of her in the boat, and a lighthouse, faint in the distance stood on a rock island.
The next scene is simply her boat, abandoned on the shore of the rock island, the wake of the lake slowly lapping at her boat.
We are then inside the lighthouse and see her slowly push open a large door and peaking her head and hands around the edge. She looks behind the door, the behind her, and noticing the stairs, looks up. The camera pans up a panoramic background leading up the lighthouse to the roof.
We then see her burst through a door at the top of the lighthouse and her the roar of wind. In the foreground is the switch for the search light and she throws it with eagerness. The light spins, one, two, three times, and she is running back and fore along walkway looking.
A far away low down shot shows the lighthouse on the island, with the light spinning round once.
We cut back to her at the railing and she is visually dissapointed when nothing happens.
Back to the far away low down shot we see the light house light shine once, and then is turned off.
Back at the top of the light house, we see the girl leave the edge to turn away and return to her boat, but as she heads towards the door, she notices that her shadow has been cast on the wall, and turns around to see what has created the light. Then we see a backshot of her, with loads of little lights, windings their way up in the air.
She steps forward cautiously, reaching out a hand.
A close up of her hand getting closer to a ball of light.
Fade to white.
The End.
* I have left the end open so that the audience can make their own discisions on how it ended. The presence of the lights will communicate to the audience that there are others down on the lake, sending up their own beacons. And that she is not alone, anymore.
CREDITS - Stills that didn't make it into the film that are my favourite. :)
