Proposal
I’ve been reading ‘Screenwriting’ by Ray Frensham from the ‘Teach Yourself’ series and it’s definitely helping me to think about my characters a lot more (though a lot of the book doesn’t really apply for a film as short as 2 minutes). Regardless, I’ve used the layout for a few chapters for organising my proposal. Forgive me if it doesn’t make much sense in places, I’ll try and explain what the book is asking for/trying to make me think about!
Night Shift (working title)
The one-liner: Try to express your story in one sentence using no more than 25 words. In this sentence, try to focus on the core idea of your story:
“An embittered homicide detective, his whole life revolving around his job, is called to a crime scene in a downtown apartment where he must face his inner demons.”
According to Frensham, there are only eight basic stories from which all others generally stem. In this case, the story of Achilles:
“The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless individual (Samson and Delilah, Othello, Superman, Fatal Attraction and, of course, film noir). It is also the cornerstone of the crime drama - the flaw belonging not to the hero, but the villain.”
Both of these ideas relate to my piece, in fact both relate to just one character in my story: the protagonist.
Using the classic three-act structure (set-up & introduction, development, climax) I’ve managed to form a basic plan for the plot of my story:
Act I: Homicide detective + voice over in dense New York-esque city (“Noir York” - I’ve been playing Max Payne 2 recently ;)). We start with the credits interspliced with shots of running footsteps and a murder scene (lots of close extreme close-ups so that it’s quite ambiguous as to what exactly has happened). We then cut to our protagonist splashing water on his face in a bathroom - he’s out of breath and clearly somewhat stressed and panicked. Taking a deep breath, he pulls himself together and calms down. We hear a phone ring and cut to him approaching the phone at his desk - it becomes clear at this point that we’re in the police station. There’s no one else there. Answering the phone, he’s called to an address of the latest murder scene.
Act II: We’re at the crime scene, we follow our protagonist up the dank hallway of a run-down apartment block until we reach the apartment, cordoned off by yellow police tape. Inside we follow our protagonist going over the clues and evidence spread over the apartment. Through both voice-over and actually talking to himself, we go through what he thinks happened at the time of the killing. Soon it begins to dawn on our hero that all is not as it seems.
It starts to become clear that his mumblings to himself and the voice-over actually begin to converse with each other. We then find that the voice-over actually belongs to another character, an “instance” of himself (doppelgänger), and that we are in fact in the detective’s apartment. The doppelganger pulls a gun and the murder is committed exactly in the manner that was described by the detective.
Act III: Having just killed ‘himself’, our new detective runs from the crime scene, back to police station (either because he needs some kind of alibi, he thinks work may be able to take his mind off what has just happened, or he simply has nowhere else to go), utilising the same footage that was used in the opening sequence. He comes in a heads straight for the bathroom, where he splashes his faces and tries to recompose himself. The phone rings. Cut to black.
My Aims
I would like to produce a character-driven piece of animation which also includes lip-syncing. My aim with this idea is to try and create a cyclical piece that could simply repeat over and over again and still work. A big inspiration for this idea was Memento, a film where the truth is kept far from the protagonist at all times, however whereas Lenny has a proper medical reason for not being able to remember certain details, I’m taking a bit of artistic license in making my protagonist forget his own address and what his apartment actually looks like. I want there to be some familiarity evident, but I don’t want it to be clear if it’s because subconsciously he knows this is his own apartment or because he sees the same thing everyday of his life. I really want to produce a piece that can have lots of different explanations for what happens on-screen, I’d like people to have different opinions on what they think happens and why. I would like there to be loads of small details that become more obvious in subsequent viewings - I want this to be a piece that people want to watch a number of times to work out exactly what’s going on (or at least their interpretations of what is going on).
Theme
Theme is a vital ingredient in a screenplay. When discussing your script with an industry professional, two questions always crop up: “What’s it about?” (the one-liner), followed by: “What’s it really about?” This is where your theme enters.
At present, I haven’t really worked out what I want the theme to be. Luckily, Frensham says that this isn’t a problem - you don’t normally establish the theme before you start writing; it simply becomes clear during or after you’ve written the exploratory draft - something I’ll be doing over the coming days!
Inspirations
My inspirations for the piece include Chris Nolan’s Memento, Se7en, work done by Japanese anime director Shinichiro Watanabe (creator of anime series Cowboy Bebop and the A Detective Story short from The Animatrix) and classic film noir such as Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon.
