Final idea.

Stage of events.

Here is a picture of my suggested stages of events. At the moment I am thinking of having my character split into two narratives. Person A misses a call which results him being forward in time, he gets splashed by a car, and he forgets his wallet- all because he misses a phone call as his phone was on silent. After this, he witness a murder and sees a dead body. He is somehow framed for the murder. Whereas in Person B's life, the phone is switched on vibrant and this delays time. He doesn't get splashed by the car and he remembers his wallet because he answered the phone. On top of this, he never sees the dead body and is never framed for the murder.

I now need to decide on my ending. At the moment I want one at least one character to die, causing the other character to carry on living but basically as the same person. I was thinking of having one character walk past their parallel dead body. In 'Sliding Doors' one of the narratives dies, but the other life is brought together at the end, in a similar way to the other narrative. I want to do something similar, where both the stories meet. I will need to brainstorm some ideas.

Ancillary tasks: poster mock ups.

After I developed my protagonist, I began to mess around with the image on photoshop to practice making a film poster. I wasn't using a professional photoshop however, but I am still pleased with the outcome. This could be a starting point to develop my ancillary tasks. I edited the firstphoto by adding two images, one is behind the other and I did this decreasing the opacity. After this I added a filter called scratches and then I put on another filter which changed the lighting and colour. I then added text and decreased the opacity to decrease the blackness of the text. With the second photo I added a vigenette and blur to decrease the visibility of the photo. I prefer the text in this photo and the positioning as it reflects a typical film poster and this is what I'm aiming for. At this moment in time, I feel I should take a lot more photographs as this image doesn't reflect a good standard for a film poster. I must also choose wisely with the font choice and colour as my poster and film have to reflect synergy between the two. I edited this on: http://pixlr.com/express/

Developing my protagonist and idea.

Further development of ideas.

The Silent Call

Developing my protagonist.

Before I try to develop my main character, I want to research into my favourite films and find out why I prefer the protagonist in those films to help me design a character. I have picked films ranging from different genres, and chosen narratives which have a male protagonist as my film is going to star a male character. I firstly looked at Toy Story, as this was my favourite film as a child because of the character Woody:

Occupation: Sheriff. Age: ?The reason I liked woody as a character was probably due to the fact he is the main character and leads the other toys in Andy's room. Even though in the first film he is jealous of Buzz, he restores his character by showing kindness at the end of the film. Because I enjoyed this character so much it has influenced me to like the actor, Tom Hanks, which has made me enjoy his films such as Cast Away or Big. I then looked at my other childhood film Back to the Future and focused on Marty Mcfly:

Occupation: Student. Age: 19-22? When watching the films the main reason why I liked Marty was simply because he's cool. He plays the guitar, he skateboards, he gets trouble at school and most importantly, he travels through time. "Although Marty is often accident-prone and sometimes thought to lack critical thinking skills, he is nevertheless brave in the face of danger and can be very resourceful and clever." Source. The next film I looked at was Dances with Wolves and John J. Dunbar, even though he is later called Dances with wolves (which the indians call him) because he is friends with a wolf called two socks:

Occupation: Lieutenant. Age: 30-40.  The main reason why I liked this character was because he is kind and helpful to the native american tribe. His kindness is also shown with his friendship with the wolf Two Socks, which portrays his character as kind and honest and to an audience, this reflects that he is a good character. Throughout the film we are constantly watching his side of the story and this makes us connect with him more and understand his actions.The last film I looked at was The Shawshank Redemption but I prefer Andy and Red:

Andy Occupation: Banker. Age: 30-40. The reason why I liked these characters so much was simply because of their friendship. I liked Red because he's funny, honest and even though he was sent to prison because of a murder, we still warm to him as a character. On the other hand I liked Andy because for one he's innocent and we sympathise for him, and two because he's smart, kind and genuine.

Reflection
Looking back through these characters I can now identify the main characteristics about each of them:

• kind
• interesting
• cool
• funny
• innocent
• honest

All these characteristics reflect typically good qualities in people. However, in other films such as Pulp Fiction we like the characters which in real life would be horrible people. For example Vincent and Jules.

Occupations: Gangsters. Age: 30-45. In real life these are horrible, terrifying gangsters yet we still enjoy them as characters.The reason for this is because they are presented as the "loveable rogues" which add humour to the brutal action.Hence, this has made me think carefully about my character. They have to connect with the audience whether they are good or bad. They have to reflect some similarity in order to present familiarity which the text.

Possible locations and actors.

POSSIBLE ACTORS

POSSIBLE LOCATIONS

 In my AS production I remember taking photos for a possible location. In the end we filmed everything inside to reduce the pressure of filming outside with weather. Now in my A2 production I feel that I want to challenge myself so these locations near a canal and a footpath might be possible locations for filming. I have also taken pictures of my house where I will be filming the inside shots- on is the hallway, the other is the stairs and the other is the front door.

Narrative ideas.

Now that I know I want to create a short film with a split narrative, I feel I should start creating possible storylines. My vision at the moment is centred around a male Protagonist that is portrayed in two different situations throughout the short film until they collide together at the end. (like a parallel universes to an extent)

1. Beginning: Protagonist separates into two different narratives
2. Middle: ???????????????
3. End: Protagonist joins back together or one narrative dies or both narratives die

I am currently stuck on what I should focus my short film around. I feel this is a key aspect as I want to portray something that is meaningful to me and my audience. So I came up with some ideas and one was a secret and the other idea was that both narratives contrast each other. This lead me on to decide about making the split narrative (both characters) include binary opposites. So one character is the opposite of another character. I came up with a few binary opposites which have attracted me to possibly include in my short film:

• good/bad
• innocent/evil
• orginal/copy
• inside/outside
• reality/fake
• soul/body
• female/male
• son/father
• centre/margin
• natural/unatural
• truth/fiction
• modern/postmodern
• high culture/low culture
• waking/dreaming

The colours highlighted in purple are the binary opposites which I particularly want to focus on with narrative, and the binary opposites highlighted in red are the binary opposites I want to focus on with camera techniques and filming. After this note taking I soon wanted to develop my idea: