NARRATIVE

FIRST PLAN (EARLY SEPTEMBER)

We want our piece to start in mideas res (in the middle usually at a crisis point) and then go back to the beginning again. It would start as a girl walking into the road then whippan cut to darkness followed by the sounds of an ambulance and an accident. Starting in mideas res creates enigma codes from the beginning and keeps the audience interested, trying to find out what it was about and what caused it. It would make it ambiguous of the accidents position in the narrative. We also want the same accident sequence to play at the very end of the short film, as if the narrative is going in a circle. We want the audience to be able to play it through on repeat in a circle from beginning to end and back again. This acts as a metaphor for how repetitive and trivial life is, as well as the cycle that our protagonist is stuck in, and as she acts as a microcosm for teenagers in general, it represents the struggles of teenagers lives.

This is most obviously shown through the relentless disequilibrium, equlibrium of the narrative. It would also shock the audience as it starts with disequilibirum and does not follow Todorov's narrative theory. Even worse, it ends with disequilibrium too, so is a complete reversal of the narrative theory, as you can see from the diagram below.

FINAL PLAN (EARLY OCTOBER)

We decided to adopt the vignette structure and to separate our narrative into five days. The beginning of each day goes back to the shot of the girl at the window. These will have slight differences, becoming slightly darker to follow the disintegration of the girl. The last day the girl will not be at the window, which signifies she has broken out of this stage of her life and moved on from the problems. We did not want to use the generic day titles at the beginning of each day as we felt this lacked imagination. We also wanted to make it more ambiguous as the days represent stages, it is not important that the days are straight after the other and it could be spread out over a year, which the important days picked out. We chose to show the passing of time by using day and night establishing shots, so if it is night shots of the street light, or if it is morning shots of the sun rising. Most importantly however, every morning the girl will have a cigarette and put it out in an ashtray. Day one there will be one, day two there will be two and so on, and this will represent the passing of time. We also are extending this metaphor by having the ashtray gone from the window in the final window shot. We were thinking of replacing it with a vase with a flower to show purity and beauty that is found in nature, in line with the natural imagery we use throughout. This natural imagery will be harshly juxtaposed with the damaging and unnatural smoking and shows how she is making positive changes in her life.

Here are the five days, each representing a different stage in the teenage period and her disintergration:

On her own, calm, walking in the park, pretty natural imagery, very quick shot of her in town and walking down her road to her door
Playing about with her friends on the beach, no shots of faces apart from hers to isolate her, sound of the gentle waves, chatting and laughter, ethereal feel, dream like quality with motion blur, shots of sunset with pastel colours, playing in the water, slow peaceful piano playing
Walking into a generic boring looking party, classic red plastic cup, 'Shadow In A Rose Garden' by The M Machine playing, walking forward and the shot is reversed backwards, then forward, (like a stuck tape), then backwards, shot of close up of drugs, forwards, backwards, pupils dilating, forward, turns from boring party to crazy party with lights flashing, strobe lights, close ups of dancing and lights flashing on faces, begins to kiss boy (cannot see his face) same shot of the boy behind dissolves into mirrored with the boy taking his top off, close up shots of body parts in black and white which harshly contrasts to the pink silhouettes kissing
Girl having a breakdown in the bath, heavy rock music playing, overwhelming, black ink running down her body and is projected onto the walls with crazy images shown around her
Final day with the same window shot as the beginning of the rest of the days but without the girl there and a flower in a vase instead of ashtray