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SWAY
Bic Runga
Director: Karen Lamond
The action begins with Bic sitting in a car. The car is parked up in the space outside a
convenience store. Bic's looking through the windshield at the store window. She's tapping her
hands on the wheel and taking deep breaths. Inside the store, we glimpse the shape of a male
figure moving through the aisles.
Bic gets out of the car and goes inside. There are no customers in the store. She pauses by the
door and then walks down the aisle towards the counter. She stops at a magazine rack and
begins to look through the magazines. She's too distracted to concentrate properly and though
she holds a magazine open in front of her, her gaze is fixed on the counter and the checkout.
There is a cute buy working at the counter. We see him from Bic's point of view. His back is to
Bic. he bends down beneath the counter, then walks down the aisle away from her. She only
gets fleeting glimpses of him as he moves about the store. We, the viewers, never see his face in
the video. It's always obscured by the goods on sale in the shop, or one of the display stands, or
blocked by another customer. Bic watches him for a long time before putting the magazine back
on the rack and spinning it around. The camera focuses on her standing in the store with the
fluttering pages of the magazines swinging past her.
These shots of Bic in the store will be cut with footage of her sitting on the end of her bed in her
apartment. It's late afternoon and a warm, pale light is coming in through the window, spreading
patters of shadow over the wall. Bic is performing a song.
The action cuts back to the convenience store. Bic is standing by a cold cabinet. She opens the
door and the pale, luminous light washes over her face. As the door swings 'round, she holds it
so that she can watch the cashier in the reflection in the glass. He stands by the cash register
serving another customer. Once again, we can only see glimpses of him. As Bic observes him,
she reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a carton of milk. As she drags it off the shelf, it slips
form her grasp and splits apart on the floor.
The action moves on and we see Bic walking up the aisle toward the counter. Her arms are full
of canned goods and jars of coffee. She has a pack of blank video tapes and a newspaper. It's a
real mix of stuff. She's cradling it all in her arms in front of her and moving forward slowly,
carefully to keep it balanced. She reaches the counter and spills the stuff out in front of the guy.
He begins to ring it up and bag it for her. as she does this, she looks down at her feet. She's too
shy to look him in the face. She glances about her while he sorts through her groceries. He has a
name badge pinned to his shirt, and she stares at that for a long time and then looks away. She
carries the bags out of the store, drops them onto the front seat of her car and gets inside.
As the track nears its end, we see Bic still sitting in her car outside the convenience store. It's
night and the guy is locking up. He turns out the lights and then comes outside and rolls down
the metal shutters. As he does this, Bic slides in her seat and hides herself from his view. He
closes up the shop and walks away.
These shots are cut throughout, with more footage of Bic performing in her room. In the early
parts of the track, the camera keeps close in on her and reveals very little of the apartment. As
the piece moves on, however, the camera pulls slowly back to show that the space is filled with
goods from the convenience store. At the end of the track, we see that Bic is performing
surrounded by magazines, and videotapes, and canned goods, and jars, and packets. It is clear
that these are all things that she has bought on one of her many visits to the store. She's been
buying all of this stuff just so she could get near to this guy and, thus, they form a very visible
symbol of her unrequited love.
This will all be filmed in a way that combines an emphasis on the details of the convenience
store, with focus on the strength of Bic's performance. The shots inside the store will have a
cinematic, stylized quality to them. The camera will move slowly and bring a hyperreal feel to
the action. In Bic's apartment, once again, the action will reflect the fluid movement of the track
and offer beautiful photographic images of Bic performing in this space, framed by the goods
around her.
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