Developing Story Ideas - Pre-Production Planning

Developing Story Ideas - Pre-Production Planning

After coming up with a few story ideas we then had to pick one to flesh out a bit more. This means adding parts to the story to make it an interesting and meaning full short film. We decided to go with the story idea about the lonely character who's only friend disappears or dies.

The first draft of the story was as follows:
(* means something that will most likely be changed)

• Equilibrium:
• The short film starts with a lonely character who only has one friend.
• H spends most of his time with this friend.
• Whenever the character is with his friend he is happy and whenever he is not with his friend he is unhappy.
• Disruption:
• His friend commits suicide or disappears due to depression/loneliness. *

• The lonely character sees that his friend is dead on the news.
• The lonely character continues to live a normal life - he is always sad now because he doesn't have his friend.
• Recognition:
• One day the lonely character is walking through a woods, like he does normally, and he sees his friend (this is a hallucination because he wants his friend to still be alive).
• He doesn't realise that it was his friend until he has walked past him and when the lonely character turns around he has disappeared.
• This is when the character realises that he needs to find some new friends to try and get over the grief of his friend dying. 
• He goes onto Facebook and starts talking to people to try and make new friends. *
• There is a cut to black when he agrees to meet with someone.
• What the audience think is the New Equilibrium:
• Then we see this character going about his normal day, however, he is happy and smiling.
• Actual New Equilibrium:
• The final part of the film shows a news show when the news anchor is saying that the character has committed suicide.

After we created this first draft of the story we can to one conclusion. We didn't like the ending of the film because it was very confusing and we felt that it would be hard to follow. Therefore, we came up with a second draft with an extra part added to it:

• Equilibrium:
• The short film starts with a lonely character who only has one friend.
• H spends most of his time with this friend.
• Whenever the character is with his friend he is happy and whenever he is not with his friend he is unhappy.
• Disruption:
• His friend commits suicide or disappears due to depression/loneliness. *

• The lonely character sees that his friend is dead on the news.
• The lonely character continues to live a normal life - he is always sad now because he doesn't have his friend.
• Recognition:
• One day the lonely character is walking through a woods, like he does normally, and he sees his friend (this is a hallucination because he wants his friend to still be alive).
• He doesn't realise that it was his friend until he has walked past him and when the lonely character turns around he has disappeared.
• This is when the character realises that he needs to find some new friends to try and get over the grief of his friend dying. 
• He goes onto Facebook and starts talking to people to try and make new friends. *
• There is a cut to black when he agrees to meet with someone.
• What the audience think is the New Equilibrium:
• Then we see this character going about his normal day, however, he is happy and smiling.
• He keeps checking his Facebook messages, but, she has not seen any of his messages (for example where are you). This makes him upset because she didn't come and meet with him.
• Actual New Equilibrium:
• The final part of the film shows a news show when the news anchor is saying that the character has committed suicide.

Red shows the part that we added

We added the extra part to the story of the film because it made the ending easier to understand from an audience perspective.

The reason we decided to use Todorov's narrative theory for our short film was because it makes it clear to the audience the issues that we are dealing with. Todorov's narrative theory uses a linear narrative structure that we felt would have a more significant impact and the audience and make it easier for them to understand. Additionally, it would make the key themes and issues of the short film, which are loneliness and depression, have more of an impact. Furthermore, the ending of our short film is experimental depending on which one we choose. If we choose the one where the audience are not sure if the protagonist dies or not this will not fully follow Todorov's narrative theory. This is because when films use Todorov's narrative theory they normally have closure at the end because of the New Equilibrium, however, the ending where the audience don't know for sure if the protagonist has actually committed suicide or not doesn't have closure and it leaves the audience questioning the ending which could potentially have more of an impact on the audience.