BFA Treatment

Rehearsor - A Narrative Short Film

Ethan Wu - Director

Log line:

A person who gain confident from continuous rehearsal encounters enormous anxiety when he has to compete a speech in 24 hours.

The Short Film:

This is a narrative drama short film and I will be directing this BFA project. Currently, this project is under development by myself. This main concept of this short film is about rehearsal. Rehearsal here rather has a broader meaning of repeated practice and preparation before doing something interacting in a daily basis than the idea of a trial theatrical performance before a formal one.

This story follows a man who gains confidence through rehearsal in his daily work. The main character is a young business man working in an advertising firm. One of his daily task is to communicate with client through meeting, phone call and presentation etc. As one of the top-rated employee in his firm, he is considered by his colleague as a very talent and, most importantly, a confident man. Client loves his presentation that is always well written and articulated through speech. People all know how good he is when he is dealing with a client. Only he knows that, however, how nervous and anxious he was until the minutes before. He is afraid of uncertainty and therefore talking with a stranger, client in this case, is super uncomfortable for him. He is so nervous that he has to rehearse every time before actually do anything. He talks to himself ten times before calling the client to practice his introduction, being afraid of stuttering. He practices and memoizes even his hand gesture before going through a presentation. However, nobody ever knows it. Until one day, he is suddenly given a task that he needs to prepare a speech, the night before the day. He encounters enormous anxiety.     

Breakdown the concept:

The word Rehearsor means, as I personally created, a person who rehearses before one performs publicly. Our society appreciate the power of collaboration and communication in work environment, and therefore people are encouraged to interacted with each other. It improves the efficiency of works and also becomes a key value for evaluating one employee. When it comes to communication with others, how to express oneself clearly is very important and sometimes can be very hard to articulate a idea or opinion instantaneously.

So people rehearse.

Rehearsals give people time to organize their content, whether it's a public speech about human rights, a powerpoint presentation of company's latest product, a business meeting, a phone call, or even just a hand shake. After one getting well-prepared through single or, usually, multiple rehearsals, one will become confident when one performs the action. While a few people feel confident to improvise anytime they need to, most of people still need rehearsal to gain confident. I know this because I am one of these persons. 

A little example from my experience, I get super confident when I know the fact that whatever I am going to say in next few minutes is correct (supported by evidences or clearly articulated). On the other hand, I get super nervous when the first condition is not fully met, even just by having a slight doubt.

So people gain confidence through rehearsal in their daily work. We rehearse at home and bring the best to the work. However, we hardly even talked about it. This makes rehearsal sounds like a dirty secret lying under their mask. We, or at least I myself, feel embarrassed to tell other how anxious we are when we rehearse, but there isn't anything disgraceful about it. 

About This Project and BFA Program

As a director, my ultimate goal is to tell a compelling narrative story with images and sounds. Since I got here at Emerson, I have been kept pushing myself, to learn and challenge myself in order to achieve this goal. No matter it is class work, personal project or working outside Emerson classroom. By apply to BFA, I want to use what I learned in the past years and devote myself into one single project, working on material that I believe, I am personally familiar with and I understand. I want to use this unique opportunity of one year intensive learning and production to present my best, to make a short film that is well-made in terms of quality and compelling in terms of story.  

Diversity Statement

I believe that everyone should have equal chance on professional working environment. I kept this principle throughout the past years and will keep doing so, especially throughout my BFA project. Everyone will be treated equally and professionally on set and off set, regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation etc.

Time Table

Before Spring 2018 semester start - Competed first draft written script along with tear sheet for references.

March 2018 - Final draft will be competed and the pre-production including crew call and casting will start.

June/July 2018 - principal photography start

August 2018 - Post-production start

Sample Budget

Personal Work and Information

Directing Reel (Spring 2017)                             https://vimeo.com/234451096

Music Video from directing class                 https://vimeo.com/237565442

(Treatment for this music video)                       https://13yxew.wixsite.com/mysite/music-video

Email: yuxuan_wu@emerson.edu

Phone number: (857) 472-0606