I have pretty much completely changed my idea for my short film, mainly because I really wasn’t happy and wrote my one-liner very quickly, due to a mounting of stress last week- my cousin (who I love with was in hospital). I decided there were so many flaws in my storyline, especially surrounding character motivation and desire; why would Annabelle want to find the novels she didn’t really care about? I couldn’t really resolve this problem so I decided to start brainstorming again and really think about what I wanted to achieve with my script. My brainstorming was all over the place, so I don’t really want to bore you with the tedious notions of my brain. However, I think I really discovered the best way for my to brainstorm and that is on paper. I know that I’m meant to keep track of my ideas on this blog, but sometimes I need to leave the internet and screen world behind and resort back to that old method of pen and paper. I found the non-linearity of being able to write anywhere and made thinking more spontaneous. As for my new idea…
I started by first flipping my original story to have the person that bought all of Annabelle’s books as my protagonist and have the money-driven greedy Annabelle as the antagonist. This weeks lecture and reading really helped my focus on protagonist and antagonist, enabling me to think really clearly about character and because it is recommended that we only have to characters it really limited your options- one has to be the protagonist and one has to be the antagonist. However, I still didn’t find much conflict in the scenario and then just thought of the idea of the collecter. It’s always interesting when people become obsessed with something that can mean very little to a lot of other people.My first idea was to had a man thats pride and joy is collecting something. However, when a greedy other collecter wants to buy our protagonists collection the protagonist must decide whether money or the collection is more important, especially when the buyer becomes more and more obsessed with buying the collection, really playing on the protagonist’s mind. I was having a little trouble finding resolution in the ending because I had this great visual of just the protagonist sitting in an empty room with nothing, but that creates no resolution what-so-ever and would be highly disappointing to the audience. So, I scraped that idea and started thinking about who else would be annoyed or go against someone collecting something, if the protagonists desire is to grow the collection, who would want to make that desire impossible to achieve? I then thought the envious wife, who thinks their husband likes their record collection more than them. This got me thinking even further, however I wanted our sympathies to still lie with the collector, not the wife. I therefore decided this:
The husband is meant to go out and buy a wedding present for a friend of hers and then when he goes out and spends 200 dollars on a record instead it is enough to send the wife over the edge to the point where she sells his entire record collection. I orginally thought that he forgot to buy her a birthday or anniversary present, however I thought that would elicit sympathy towards the wife instead, I therefore wanted it to be something reasonably petty. Due, to the records being the protagonists pride and joy he packs up and leaves her to re-collect his entire record collection. After he re-collects all the records he finds himself happy with the entire collection, however the subtle irony is that he has nothing else.
I like this because there is resolution but there is something bitter in the resolution, which creates a dynamic drama. There is a really strong desire and a thwarting of that desire. I feel like this has all of the key ingredients to a good story and therefore good screenplay. I decided on records because I wanted to think of something that is logistically in terms of props easy to find a large amount of, it is also nostalgic and people often hold on to things that have a nostalgic presence. I think that I should probably re-create a one-liner:
When Ryan (35) buys a record instead of doing his wife a favour, what extreme will she go to in order to punish him? What will be the ramifications for Ryan and his most valued possessions?
Annabelle always found writing easy, never putting much effort into her work. However, when all of the copies of her newest novel mysteriously disappear, who will she discover that will flip her world upside down?
This was the final version of my one-liner, I decided to make it more ambiguous, because I thought my original one-liner said to much. This one leaves much more intrigue, who is this other person? I’m still going to continue along the same line in terms of the story, which is highlighted extensively in the previous blog post. I also wanted my one-liner to be less wordy, because I found it a bit hard to read coherently. Anyway this is an extremely short blog post and is more for my benefit than for anyone else, as a reference to when and why I changed my one-liner.
To be honest, me being completely non-religious I had never really been exposed to this concept untill I watched Seven, the 1997 film by David Fincher, in which a serial killer kills his victims according to the 7 deadly sins. It is an amazing film, with an amazing concept, yet it’s already been done and probably wouldn’t squeeze into a five-minute film, in fact that would be impossible. Therefore when approaching my short film I don’t think I will have such a complex approach to the theme. I thought I would do some research into the seven deadly sins in terms of exactly what they mean and then nut out where my character will fit. I found a site on the seven deadly sins, which places each sin against its opposite and therefore gives a type of comparison, for example the opposite of pride is humility and therefore:
Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone else’s pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride.
It gives more insight into each sin by highlighting it’s opposite, giving a more precise indication of exactly what pride means. In terms of the other 6 deadly sins, their opposites are: Greed/Generosity, Envy/Love, Anger/Kindness, Lust/Self-control, Gluttony/Temperance, Sloth/Zeal. I think it would be kinda cool to have a character that is a kind of mixture between the two, for instance is extremely generous towards other people, but then hordes money and possessions that could infer greed. You get the drift, so it’s almost like a conflict between two opposite traits. However, that wouldn’t really create a dynamic storyline. So this is kinda what I was thinking along the lines of, because I know a lot of sloth-like characters, that would create a really dynamic short story. Something along the lines of:
24-year-old delusional Daniel is doing nothing with his life, except for drinking his life away and watching television. With no life prospects and no ambition Daniel finds himself kicked out of his share house, with nowhere to go.
I need to think of a catalyst, which will turn Daniel around or let him crash even further, with a small aspect of hope at the end, however there needs to be something learnt along the way. I was also thinking of some really successful artist, who has always been lucky with success, while being incredibly sloth-like in his/her approach to work. However when he/she finds that all his/her work has mysteriously disappeared from a gallery, will he/she finally learn that effort does count. Therefore something like this:
Annabelle always found art easy and made millions of dollars from not much effort. However, when all her art mysteriously disappears from a gallery, will she finally learn that effort sometimes counts?
However, in some aspects this needs to be worked on because I want to draw in another character, perhaps the person who stole the art is a envious competitor or maybe it’s just someone that collects a ridiculous amount of art in a gluttonous act. However, representing this may be slightly difficult because I would need to collect a ridiculous amount of art. Maybe, I could swap this around to perhaps an author and then someone buys/steals every copy of one of his/her books.
Annabelle always found writing easy, never putting much effort into her work. However, when all the copies of her newest novel mysteriously disappear, she must discover why anyone would want them all. Will her encounter with the eccentric maths professor that traps her in the words of her book change her perspective?
I really like this because it leaves a lot of options open for me when I begin to write the script. When I was thinking of who would buy her novels I thought of someone who you would never expect to be eccentric and never expect to be interested in novels. I have more interest in this character than Annabelle because I really enjoy quirky characters, and I want Annabelle to be very conservative and unemotional, someone who writes from what she has learnt rather than experience and emotion. The conflict lies in her meeting the maths teacher, where there is this thwarted desire between her being particularly lazy doing something she knows she can do well and doing something she actually wants to do. As with the maths professor his gluttonous act towards literature will bring this conflict to the forefront because even though he is a maths professor his absurd collection of literature will help her realise that there is more to life than doing what you excel at and making money from it. I like the idea of being trapped within the words of her book, which will also thwart her desire because it brings on this idea of never being able to escape, when she really needs to in order to find this new sense of what she wants to do. I also like how it gives a quirky spin to traditonal narrative.
In terms of theme, she represents the sloth, but also greed in a way because she is being greedy in terms of creating money out of something she finds easy and pays little attention to. In terms of the maths professor I like this idea of gluttony but really in a almost positive light because it will really make her realise that she as a writer doesn’t enjoy literature as much as a maths professor.
In the week one reading on narratives it makes a point of traditional storytelling starting with an equilibrium, then that he equilibrium is disrupted and then a different equilibrium is formed. I think in terms of my short narrative it starts with an euqilibrium of Annabelle being a successful writer, not realising that it is something that she doesn’t really enjoy. It is disrupted by the professor who makes her discover that writing isn’t really her passion, it is almost his. A different equilibrium is formed when she does something about it and feels a sense of happiness.
I will work on this further throughout the week to get to a full synopsis for next weeks hurdle.
Reference: Branston, G. and Stafford, R. The media student’s book, (p. 32-48). 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2003.
One sentence that encapsulates your idea.
For me a good one-liner is something that wants people to know more, almost like a suspenseful and pithy statement that has people wondering what the film is about. I looked through some of last years one-liners and decided to pick a few that I particularly like, and some that I don’t like and reflect on them in this blog post.
Popular yet neurotic Darcy has a problem. He is in love. Not with his gorgeous girlfriend Anna, but his pet fish Wanda.
I like this one more because it seems really quirky and I want to know more. Firstly, the popular yet neurotic line really draws me in because you wouldn’t expect popular and neurotic to be together in a description of someone, also what doesn’t really sit right is that a popular person would be in love with a fish. It’s so quirky and I love it. Except that the Wanda thing has already been used; A Fish Called Wanda. This takes credit away from this one-liner for me a little bit. Yet, it is really intriguing and I want to know why Darcy is in love with his goldfish and more likely why he is popular, yet has these non-popular qualities. It also creates this tension with desire that Christine discussed in the tutorial, because Darcy’s desire to love his fish Wanda would conflict with his desire to be popular. This also creates a sense of a secret; if he tells anyone he will become unpopular. Therefore it is already creating a dynamic storyline only through a few short sentences.
Sofia is beautiful and gets noticed for her looks, but how can she be noticed by someone who can’t see her?
This to me seems like the typical case of wanting what you can’t have or wanting something that you can’t have. Yes, it brings up the idea of thwarted desire but in a cliched sense. Of course the beautiful girl that is always noticed wants something more, someone who doesn’t see her like everyone else. I feel like this has been done over and over again and immediately turns me off this one-line. However, it would be interesting to see if the result of this one-liner is as cliched as I expect it to be.
Patrick snakes through the twilight hills towards home, confident that a days corporate misdealing had resulted in nothing more than dollars and smiles. Meanwhile on a balcony not so far away a darkly clad figure watches the headlights as they wink through the trees growing nearer by the second.
This one is my favourite because of the highly descriptive visual language that draws me into the world. I’m already imagining the setting as it places you right there. Snakes through the twilight hills is such a lovely description, and already releases information about the setting. His confidence already brings up a great scenario clashing with the darkly clad figure that is approaching him, will this affect his confidence? There is so much in this one-line and I feel like every word holds its own weight, there is nothing redundant. I want to know more than anything the relationship between these two characters, are they strangers? Do they already know each other? There’s a lot of ambiguity, which wants me wanting to know more.
In doing this exercise it made me really think about my own one-liner and it was really helpful to read the other reference used in the blog on 1-liner, where the student writing the post really thought about the exercise.
I think the one liner task is highly intriguing as it leaves the audience dwelling in thought.
It talks about an approach to working out a one-liner and that is thinking about a main character and then thinking about another character, which stimulates a change or cause/effect with our main character. I like this approach because it already creates a dynamic relationship between two people, will main character take on this change or reject it? Will this cause conflict between the two characters? It already brings up integral parts of traditional story telling. This student has obviously put a lot of thought into the details of the character and really nutted out what motivates this character, and what would send everything into chaos.
For me I really think it would be worthwhile to nut out a full character and relate it back to the theme of THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS. In what way does my character represent this? I think once I have a character in mind you can really figure out where the conflict lies, because it is something that they are really opposed to or something that would make them uncomfortable. Once you’ve got the conflict I will then be able to nut out the catalyst of that conflict, whether it is another character, an event, etc. This will therefore ensure that the plot is character driven.
I will continue over the next few days to investigate this further.
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