From Endings to Beginnings

In todays lesson, we were given 3 shorts phrases for endings of a film, and in pairs we had to create the rest of the plot (beginning and middle) just from this ending phrase. They were:

• “They kissed”
• “He dropped dead”
• “The car drove off”

 

Me and my partner Susanna came up with these ideas for the three endings:

• “They kissed” – Set: World War Two

Genre: Historic Romance

Plot: A soldier leaves his wife to go and fight in the Second World War, but   unfortunately he goes missing and so his family, friends and his wife are devastated, then at the end of the war he returns home and the ending shot would be that they kiss.

 

• “He dropped dead” – Set: 2048

Genre: Sci-fi

Plot: There is a radiation bomb and the main character survives but becomes immortal which means he can save those people who died when the bomb hit. But unfortunately, because of this it drains his own energy and he dies at the end.

 

• “The car drove off” – Set: Texas

 

Short film

These are the main storylines that we achieved during this lesson.

We then went into groups of four and put our ideas together so that we could film a short film. These ideas included:

“The murderer got caught” – Set: Modern day

Genre: Homicide Crime

Plot: It begins with a glimpse of a murder, not showing who the murderer is. Then a man is wrongfully convicted and his brother is the only one to believe that he is innocent, and therefore works towards freeing him by finding the real murderer. He finds a suspect and gathers evidence against him, eventually presenting a case and convicting him and therefore freeing his brother, throughout this there are transitions into the life of the wrongfully convicted brother in prison, showing his experiences. The climax of the film is the confrontation between the brother out of prison and the actual murderer, and while this is happening the imprisoned brother is experiencing a prison fight after tensions caused by accidental events.

 

After showing the class our ideas, we got opinions for what would work and what may need a slightly different approach to regarding the mise-en-scene and also the storyline.

What worked was how we were going to open the short film, it was going to be a flashback clip of the murder, this is because it makes you confused about what’s going on and then intrigued to find out why we have shown them that and so would make the audience want to carry on watching it.

However, the fact that it was just like any other ordinary crime plot, we need to come up with other ideas to make it stand out and be more interesting than the average crime film. What was suggested by class mates was to have it set in a different place other than an alley way due to this being similar to the average storyline of crime genred films.