New Project | Monologue

So, I was tasked by my University Course to create a short film using a monologue from a film or TV series to drive the narrative. After searching for over half an hour for a monologue my group could all agree with, we decided on a speech given by one of the main characters in the NBC comedy show, 'Community'.

The speech given by Joel McHale's character, 'Jeff Winger' is as follows:

"We’re the only species on Earth that observes shark week. Sharks don’t even observe shark week, but we do. For the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve and go like this [breaks pencil] and part of you dies… just a little bit on the inside because people can connect with anything. We can sympathise with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an academy award for screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything but themselves. 

Look at me. It’s clear to all of you that I am awesome. But I can never admit that because that would make me an ass. But what I can do is see what makes Annie awesome; she’s driven – we need driven people or the lights go out and the ice cream melts. And Pierce, we need guys like Pierce. This guy has wisdom to offer. We should listen to him sometime; we wouldn’t regret it. And Shirley. Shirley has earned our respect; not as a wife, not as a mother, but as a woman – and don’t test her on that because that thing about the jukebox was way too specific to be improvised. And Troy. Who cares if Troy thinks he’s all that? Maybe he is. Do you think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No, they’re trying to impress their high school’s prom king. And Abed. Abed’s a shaman. You ask him to pass you the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup, because you know what, soup is better – Abed is better. You are all better than you think you are, you are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself. 

I want you to look to the person to your left. Sorry, look at the person sitting next to you. I want you to extend to that person the same compassion you that you extend to sharks, pencils and Ben Affleck. I want you to say that person, ‘I forgive you’. Pierce I’d like you to say I forgive you.

You’ve just stopped being a study group. You have become something unstoppable. I hereby pronounce you, a community."

We decided to take the brief more literally and using this speech we created a story of our character preparing and giving the speech to an audience. From this we then needed to chose our actor, unfortunately I drew the short straw. 

So, our film splits into two main sections/locations. One where our character is preparing and practicing for the speech he is about to give and one of our character giving the actual speech. Unfortunately, we could only shoot in one of our locations as the other is not going to be available until this Saturday. We managed to get most of what we needed in our first location but the crew is prepared for re-shoots if needed. Everyone is ready, though, to be up early Saturday morning to get the rest of the shooting completed so we can make a start on sound recording and editing.