Toast Milk

Toast Milk is a short scene in witch a boy eating toast milk gets held at gunpoint.

Toast milk

 

The whole scene is in just one camera shot, and the angle never changes.

A boy is sitting at a counter dipping some toast into a bowl of milk. He is wearing glasses, and a uniform that is very neat. He is also wearing a hat that is pulled low onto his face. His phone is beside the bowl, yodel music is being played. Another version of himself starts knocking on the window from behind, the boy takes no notice. The boy in the window is blurred. A hand comes from off screen holding a gun; you can see the arm up to the elbow. The boy looks at it, and then turns his attention back to his toast milk, he seems sleepy.

 

Voice off screen: I am holding a gun to your head.

 

The boy ignores the arm, and picks up his phone; he flicks through it and then turns the music up louder. He then places the phone back where it was, and returns to his toast. Several arms then appear from all sides of the screen. They start changing the boys appearance. One arm takes his hat off. Another one then styles his hair. An arm takes his glasses. One arm takes his batman-designed bowl and another replaces it with a normal one. An arm from the top (the one who took the hat) pours cereal into the bowl. An arm takes the toast, and replaces it with a spoon. All the arms then start altering his uniform, except the one holding the gun, the arm has just stayed there the whole time.  After all the arms have gone, the boy has completely changed and the arm with the gun remains. The boy just eats his cereal, he then switches suddenly with the blurred boy that was outside, who had continued knocking slowly throughout. Not the boy as he once was is outside, and he hits the glass manically. The arm slowly turns, and then shoots the boy now outside. The blur picks up the phone and then changes the music. The arm disappears before this, and then the blur continues to eat the cereal.

Author's Note

Be brutal as you like, or don't. Just be honest, i can take it promise. I only want to improve.

Reviews

[BobM]

So my take is that this is a commentary on how the superego forces a person to change themselves in order to fit in with societal norms. The boy begins the scene with an unusual taste in music, an unusual breakfast, and a hat on that covers his face- which I believe is symbolic of his unusual antisocial behavior- all of these being the things that make him an individual.
However, the socially normal version of the boy, which is outside of the boy's house(which is perhaps his mind) is insistingly banging on his window, which could be seen as the border of his consciousness. The superego literally puts a gun to the boy's head, while stripping him of his individuality and replacing him with the socially normal version. Eventually it is the original unique version that is outside his conscious mind, and this image is permanently destroyed by the superego.
I really like this concept, and I actually think that if it were to be filmed well enough it could easily receive a great deal of attention. I think that keeping the outside boy blurred from beginning to end is a good idea, as it confirms that he is indeed just a characterless image shaped by society. I would consider omitting the voice, though. In order to ensure that the audience believes that both the outside boy and society are just outside his consciousness, I believe that the only noise present should be from the music and the banging from the outside boy. If a voice directly speaks to the boy, even if it is implied that he doesn't hear it, it breaks the wall between the outside world and his inner-mind. I would also consider making the original boy wear something as unusual as his other tastes, so as to match the general theme. I can see where his cleanliness is swapped for low-riding pants or something similar, but it doesn't seem to fit with the other details to me.
Overall, I really do see this as an excellent concept. If you flesh this out into a full script, I am sure it will be successful as a short film. -Bob

[T.Langham]

Thank you so much for this review. You hit the nail on the head. Im so glad its understandable as I had to explain it to my friend. I absolutely agree with you about the uniform, and will be altering this. I hadn't thought about removing the voice completely but i'm definitely going to play around with this idea. Thank-you again
T.L