Writing What You Know... And Then Some..

 Hello again! I'm back once again to update the blog with some progress on the story for the film opening. Despite still not being finished with the overall writing of it, I thought that I'd share the process of coming up with this story, including early iterations of the plot as well as mentioning other completely different ideas I had for what the opening could be about. 

The advice "Write what you know' echoes in my mind constantly, after having heard the importance of it from my teacher. However, as a sheltered teenager living in suburbia, there's not a whole lot of excitement in my life. Immediately, my initial thoughts turned to documenting some unique person who I know and how they might have an experience worth talking about, though this idea was short-lived, since it still didn't fit with writing "what I know", and additionally the prospect of writing about someone else's stories doesn't really appeal to me. I ended up trashing this idea, due to its poor integrity as a source of content, along with just me finding it personally boring. Next, I turned to dreams of making a whole story based on finding the beauty in suburbia, and how one can find excitement and adventure in even the most bland of places, yet once again I rejected this idea after some thought, as I thought it was too corny and I didn't really believe in the message it would preach. 

Some other scrapped ideas for openings were:

-A piece about two lovers who, after discussing their estranged families, realize that they are in the same family.

    (I honestly liked this idea, because of the dark comedic spin I would put on the romance, but I ended up adapting it to be a short play for my creative writing class, and I didn't want to recycle material.)

-Some sort of fantasy-inspired landscape

     (I don't have the budget to make my own massive set pieces. Plus, there wasn't really a story, it was just focused around establishing the world the story takes place in.)

-A story told mostly through flashbacks and voice-overs, about a son visiting his absent father's grave, reflecting on the man that his father was, only for it to be revealed that this is a dark twist on beloved children's character Waldo from Where's Waldo. 

    (I loved this concept, and almost stuck to it, but realized a couple of flaws with it. Mainly the fact that Waldo is a licensed character who I didn't have the rights to, as well as the fact that this is a self-contained story, instead of the opening for a larger plot. Sadly I had to abandon the Waldo script, but maybe down the line I'll revisit it....)

-A buddy cop intro about two guys who ignore duty calling to get donuts, only to find that the call came from the donut store.

    (Honestly I have no idea what I was thinking, this movie would suck.)

To be clear, pretty much none of these follow the advice given to me by my teacher. I just allowed my imagination to run wild, and jotted down any idea that came to me (There was very little quality control during this brainstorming session, as you can tell by the mere existence of the cop idea). However entertaining or interesting these concepts were to me, I had to acknowledge that I had pretty much no experience with anything involved in these stories, which felt disingenuous and not right. Therefore, I cast them all aside to find the perfect story for this project...

What I Ended Up With

Now, after a long and arduous brainstorming process, I had finally settled on a story. The opening for the film would begin by following these two friends sitting in their car, pointing out passerby and making up absurd backstories for each one. The radio broadcast in the car describes some active serial killer on the loose, with several disappearances around town.. After a few, their attention is turned to a boy of their age, suspiciously shuffling around as he lugs around a large bag. This opportunity to jest does not escape the two boys in the car, and they immediately pin him down as the "definitive murderer", making comments on his appearance, the suspicious bag, and all of it. It should be clear that they are just joking, when one of them proposes that they track him down to catch him in the act of murder, just for the fun of it. After going through a brief montage of them monitoring his strange habits (especially his obsession with using hand sanitizer- will be highlighted through the use of graphic matches throughout the montage), the duo comes to the conclusion that he might actually be a murderer after all. As they part ways for the night, the camera tracks one of the guys as they walk home during the night, with the camera freezing on a shot of a dark street as the boy continues walking. The camera will then dolly down the street to capture a murder happening. The act is quick, quiet, and most notably, clean. When the deed is done, the camera should be fixated on an over the shoulder shot of a hooded figure crouched over the body, and the camera rises with them as they get up. A close up shot of the hands of this person then shows that the person is cleaning the blood off their hands with hand sanitizer. The opening ends with the person taking off the hood, revealing themselves to be the other friend. The final shot should be of the concrete floor, showing the dripping of hand sanitizer next to the body, and then the killer walking away, with the scene fading to black, and the title of the film boldly standing out against the black (title TBD).

Why This Story?

     After going through my past ideas for the openings, I found myself preferring the ones that blended dark themes with slight bits of comedy (Lovers realizing they're related, the whole edgy Waldo script). Once again, I set out to come up with an idea for this opening that fit in this sort of dark humor field, while also appealing to the phrase that had haunted my entire brainstorming session-  Write what you know. Like a previously mentioned, there's not a whole lot that I know that would be interesting to have a film about. One of the few things I do know, however, is the close friendship that's exhibited by the two main characters. When I was thinking for ideas on a story, I suddenly remembered countless days spent with my best friend as we sat on the porch together, dreaming up impossibly wacky stories about our town and the people within it to pass the time. I feel like this kind of relationship is something that most people can relate to, which is why I believe this scene is a good way to start the opening. It makes the characters relatable while also conveying a comfort and closeness with each other that is conveyed solely through the nature of their conversation, and not by other cues. However, I then had to come up with an idea on how to make a hypothetical film based on this interaction. That's how I brought the sense of twisted humor into the story- What if one of those wild fabricated stories you made up with your friend turned out to be true? And how would I make this fabricated story between two friends into a plot device? By having them joke about some random guy being a serial killer, I set up the conflict in the larger film. And to make sure that this callout doesn't seem too out of the blue, there's a radio broadcast playing in the background of the scene, either subconsciously or purposefully serving as the inspiration for the joke made by the two friends. While the middle bit of the story needs work and fleshing out (I mention it being a montage for now, ideally I'll be able to develop a script that doesn't require a montage, but for a first draft that's how I'm dealing with a less developed middle part of the opening. I did make sure to include the motif of the hand sanitizer, adapting it in the montage to be connected through graphic matches instead of having it be a detail in every scene that could be missed. The ending is probably the most suscptible to change, as I've flip-flopped on it throughout writing. Several iterations had the person being murdered being one of the two friends, and other iterations had no twist of the killer being one of the friends. As of now I'm still on the fence about it, however it's possible that I switch some things around in order for aspects of the story to make more sense (Maybe the friend will be the one with an obsession with cleaning their hands, so that keen-eyed viewers will see the end of the sequence and know the identity of the killer before it's revealed, instead of being used as a red herring to subvert the expectations of the audience cheaply.) Though these changes would be pretty big and important to write.

While this story is clearly a work-in-progress, I wanted to share with you the several failed film ideas to illustrate the behind-the-scenes work that I'm putting into this project. I want the brainstorming phase of this production to be well documented so that you can understand my creative process, throughout all the quirks and retcons I employ in the final script. What I described in the section discussing the first draft is to clarify that this is what the story stands as for now: a rough, rough draft. While the general idea is there, I may change a lot about the characters, plot, and maybe even the genre, but I wanted to share the first complete documented draft for the film opening, even if it will change drastically over time.

Next time, I aim to research genres that could fit my film opening concept well- maybe through the research I can come to a deeper understanding of what conventions in the genre I can implement in my script to work around some issues in the script! 

Until then, I'll see you then!