Post 9 - Film Development

INTERVIEWS

For this post, I interviewed a friend,with this information and asked them to provide feedback on our film ideas.

Interview:

ME: What do you think of the plot? Is it a plot which seems fluid and will fit into the 5 minutes we have?
Is there anything which seems out of place? Or can be changed?
Does this film idea excite you? /Entice you?
FRIEND: I think it sounds perfect and I don't think I would change anything, I think it would work really well within the 5 mins time limit. And yes I think it sounds enticing.

ME: Is there anything you think we can do with the character or with locations?
FRIEND: Maybe somewhere busy for the end part where he looses his mind? Because he'd be knocking into lots of people and that would make him even more unstable and also show why he has so many drawings on his walls of peoples memories? And you said someone kind of social awkward was it for the character? i think that would be really good, like if normally he doesn't have much to do with people so that would especially be why he cant deal with all these memories and emotions form other people?

NARRATIVE THEORY

As mentioned in the beats of our film, our plot does not end how the beats of a film normally would, as there is a lack of conclusion. Whilst it fits with the majority of Todorov's theory of narrative, where a state of equilibrium is shown, disrupted, attempted to be repaired and the repaired or a new equilibrium is shown, the ending of our film neither repairs the equilibrium nor brings upon a new one. 

With Propps theory of narrative, our film does not fit either, as our characters do not fit into the categories it suggests. Our hero can also be seen as the antagonist, although the film neither proves this nor doesn't. There is no heroine, or helper, or donor either. Even the antagonist is unknown, as there is not a particular character showing the characteristics of a 'villain'. 

CHARACTERS

From the interviews above, it was clear that having the character as a misfit was a good idea and I decided to work with that. So for similar characters I looked at the TV show 'Misfits' which as it also is related to supernatural powers, as our character may have, it is also relevant to look at.The character of Simon appears to be similar to our character, that of an ignored character who appears as a 'social outcast'. 

I also looked at the character of Hermann Gottlieb from the film 'Pacific Rim', after talking to the second interviewee about characters she mentioned this character as he 'seems pretty social awkward and prefers to stick to numbers which make sense to him?' This character seems to be very similar to our character as he was a social outcast as a child and would rather work with machines and numbers than people. But can have friends and relationships.

LOCATIONS

I’ve looked at locations for our film and the basic ones appear to be one of group’s houses to film the bedroom scenes and the kitchen scenes. This will open and end the film. I also looked at which town we can use for the main part of the film; it will either be Watford town center or Hemel Hempstead. Watford is a more traditional high street and has a lot of space to film and run about it. Hemel has a more modern setting with Marlowes with a lot of glass.

 

I have also looked into parks, as we could have a scene with the main character rushing away to a park. The easiest will be Abbots Langley Park, as two of our group live right next to it, but it also works as a setting with large woods behind a large amount of space. It also contains a skate park which our character could sit on to contemplate his course of actions.

RESOLUTION

After we had decided we would most likely end our film with a cliffhanger or without resolution, I looked into some books which I love and have read to find similar endings. I looked at the book 'Emil and Karl' by Yankev Glatshteyn. Whilst the story is a suspense novel, the ending is something of importance, at the end the reader is left with a feeling of lack of resolution as after all of their trials and tribulations the two best friends are separated at a train station with one off and one on the train. Looking more into this ending as a group, to me would benefit us as writing a novel with an unknown resolution is difficult to pull off well as is doing so for a film.

I looked more into use of cliffhangers both in stories and in films. The definition of a cliffhanger can be 'an ending to an episode of a serial drama that leaves the audience in suspense', however, as our film is a one-off without a sequel this definition does not work. 'Cliffhanger' may not be the right word to use for our film, however, as our film had no resolution and the audience is left with a sense of questioning, it is what I will use.

The video below is about whether 'cliffhangers are overrated?'

Note from this video:

I also looked through a website and looked at whether happy endings are a must and the 'ingredients of a perfect ending'. Key points from this were:

• 'Without doubt, happy endings are enjoyable, uplifting, and reaffirming.'
• 'But does this mean all endings should be happy? Are sad stories with sad endings the domain of the lonely, the manic-depressive, and the masochistic?'
• Sad stories don't equal depressing ones. A story can be sad to someone but not to another if they evoke emotions within parts of the audience.