Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Initial Planning

Today we began to plan what direction we wanted to take for our film noir short. We have the rough outline of a plot premise, with some character ideas developing.

We knew from the outset we didn't want to shoot on-location scenes in our local town, as it is not becoming of the noir genre and many locations have been over-used in previous years; we decided to film in a city of some sort, and deducted that Cambridge would be ideal. It has a distinct architectural style, and is not too far away to be easily-accessible to us.

The intricasies of the plot have yet to form, but we know that we wanted our protagonist to work in a field with the potential for moral dubiousness, à la classic films noir, but decided on journalism as it is a more up-to-date and commonplace profession than policing or detective work. The protagonist, who we have tentatively named Scott, will be an intern working at a newspaper agency, while the femme fatale (Robyn) shall be an infamous yet mysterious journalist who has got herself in too deep with a drug scandal.

I have transcribed the main bullet points of the rough notes I took down in the lesson below.



Planning -- 22nd January

  • Plot:
    • Writing/newspaper?
    • Drug lords/dealers?
    • Newspaper clippings? Jarring objects.

  • Setting:
    • Cambridge
      • back streets, less pretty areas, etc.
    • Press office
      • classroom with blinds?
      • Dom's basement

  • Characters:
    • Protagonist
      • intern -- fall guy
      • possible actor: Chris Mutter?
    • Femme fatale
      • high-ranking journalist?
      • in too deep with drug lords/a story.

  • Titles
    • Title of piece:
      • possible inspiration from LA Confidential:
        • city of the angels?
        • trouble in Paradise?
    • Title of newspaper:
      • The Herald
      • The Bugle
      • The Citizen

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