LO 1: Idea Brainstorming

Film Type

• Documentary
• Narrative

Genre

• Mystery/Dark Thriller/Sci-fi

Themes

• Exploitation (Inspiration from Mother, Mine)
• Hidden messages
• Suggested Psychotic Character
• Leaves the audience with an opinion about the ending (ambiguous ending)
• Flash Forward/Hints in the first 30 s of the film (Inspiration from Shaun of the dead and At Worlds End)
• Looping story
• Clothing/props represent the personality of the characters
• Virtual Psychological Mental story which is isn't actually real, the narrative allows the character to eliminate his bad qualities
• Apocalyptic setting
• Elements that hint the characters are within a dream

Characters

• Main Character is joined by a group of other people, survivors that represent qualities of the central character
• Each of the characters represent an emotion/bad quality of Samuel, who die off or are ejected from the narrative and in doing so, Samuel changes.
• The other 4 characters represent Anger, Fear, Greed and a good quality, Empathy. The character's clothes represents their relation to the emotions (e.g Greed will be wearing a tattered suit)
• If possible, the actual names of each of the characters is not mentioned but the emotion they represent will be stated subtly (e.g in an argument between Greed and Anger, Anger will call Greed 'a selfish greedy bastard')

1. Samuel
2. Greed
3. Anger
4. Empathy
5. Fear - Inspiration from real life character in Lost, Daniel Faraday

Locations

• Derelict Factory Area
• Hospital Room

Story

Start - Exposition to the problem

Thrown straight into the story, we see Samuel and a group of other people running into a derelict factory as if they were escaping from something, which the dialogue from the others represents. The first shot is of a closeup on Samuel who shows brief confusion as to what's happening. It suggests that he has no idea what's happening or where he is but after a few seconds he realizes that he's running with a band of other survivors who encourage him to 'get in before they get us', they close themselves inside a factory.

Progression - Killing off the entities
The premise to the story is that each one of the characters will die off and the quality/emotion that they represent will be gone from Samuel. There has been tension between Anger and Greed for quite for some time and greed takes or is revealed to have been keeping valuable supplies from the others and Anger flips out. Anger confronts Greed and ends up killing him. Once a character dies the other emotions become amplified and Samuel feels all the emotions the most. Empathy gets wounded, meaning Samuel becomes more remorseless; events occur that Samuel ends up leaving anger left for dead, as he escapes another chase from the unknown. The emotions of just empathy and fear left, leaves Samuel feeling guilty for letting Anger die. Samuel, Empathy and Fear are trapped in a room and Empathy needs both in order to escape. Fear exasperates and runs off leaving the other two while Empathy dies of his injuries, after saying to Samuel 'This wasn't supposed to happen, find out who...'.

Ending - Blatant Twist or Subtle hint that will leave the audience confused/intrigued
A close-up on Samuel transitions into him laying on a hospital bed in a brand new area to find that the events have been a hypnotic dream like state; a nurse walks into the room revealing to Samuel that the  'physcological alteration procedure' was a success but there were 'unpredicted complications'. Another doctor comes in to say 'We've got no time, we will have to start now'. The final shot is of the doctor's clipboard, labelled DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency - said to have been looking into creating super soldiers). Samuel is in an confidential underground military complex, A-51 Sub basement 29 Room 101.

Film Title

• Alter
• Transmute
• Emote