Title: Write Away

Genre: Drama/Suspense

This film is a suspenseful drama that engages the audience with the story making them question whether or not the actions proceeding in front of them playing on their senses of imagination

Duration: 5-10 minutes

Target Audience: Teens and young Adults

The target audience is ranged from teens to adults of all genders. This film aims to make the audience question what is occurring on-screen and what is going on within certain characters mentally. Audiences enjoy quirky narratives that have unexpected or unusual endings, especially if they are ambiguous. This is very much in-line with Brecht’s estrangement effect on audiences robbing them of a climactic catharsis.

Narrative Outline:
WRITE AWAY is a short film about TREVOR SLACKMAN, a struggling writer, who decides to enter a short story competition in a local newspaper – however things take a turn for the unusual/strange when it turns out HITCH TURNER, the character TREVOR has created has seemingly come to life. TREVOR is in shock disbelief and HITCH is far kinder and friendlier than he had imagined. Overwhelmed TREVOR leaves HITCH alone to catch his breath and upon returning HITCH is nowhere to be seen. TREVOR assumes he has had some psychotic break and returns to writing his short story. HITCH sneaks up on TREVOR after he is assumed to have left but just as he is about to attack him TREVOR deletes his story. The audience is left to contemplate whether or not HITCH was in-fact TREVOR’s creation and if so did TREVOR escape? This story is set in present day England, Southport.

Characters:
TREVOR SLACKMAN – TREVOR is the protagonist of this project; however, he is a passive protagonist. He is a failed writer who has resorted to short stories in order to reclaim some essence of success. He is quite timid and a bit of a pushover in most situations. The key element of his personality in this project is his quirky personality and vivid imagination. He is of average height and dresses in casual clothing.
HITCH TURNER – HITCH is the antagonist of this project. He puts on a façade in order to gain peoples trust just before he betrays/kills them. He is a dark character who masks his true intent by being friendly and overly accommodating. He was created by TREVOR but is unaware of this fact. He is of average height and dresses in a prison uniform.

Audio/Visual:
In terms of the visual style the film will look fairly simple staying mostly with handheld camera and camera on tripod shots. Some visuals will take inspiration from Edgar Wrights Hot Fuzz with close up shots of objects and rapid cutting between other objects to jarring sounds, this will create a feeling of urgency and repetitiveness around the ‘writing’ of the story and TREVOR’s procrastination. Other visuals will be more basic and take inspiration from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, more specifically the conversation between Jules andVincent in the Diner. TREVOR and HITCH will be sat at a table together and as their conversation progresses the camera will move in closer on each of them to create intimacy and tension, this should promote and air of danger, or potential danger. The slider will be implemented to create interesting and visually pleasing tracking and stationary shots to immerse the viewer in with the plight of the characters and their motives.

In terms of the audio style it will be mostly synchronous sound as the story is mostly dialogue or monologue. However, during scenes in which TREVOR is providing a small voiceover of his writings the sound will be asynchronous. All sound is diegetic and adds to the narrative. In one scene, the audience’s attention will be guided with muffled sound of TREVOR talking to HITCH and a focus pull to a block of knives from HITCH with the knives in focus.

For lighting, we want to maintain a realistic and normal look. This will be done by using a balance of frontal lighting and backlighting to create a contrast of light and dark between TREVOR and HITCH. However, this will be subtle throughout the piece to maintain a natural look (softer lighting will be used) and also to avoid giving away the ‘twist’. For HITCH’s ‘escape’ the lighting will be minimal as it will be outdoors and during the daytime.

The style of editing we will use is best described by Walter Murch’s ‘Rule of Six’; emotion, story, rhythm, eye-trace, planarity, and spatial continuity. We want our audience to feel the disbelief of TREVOR but also the suspense of the danger that he is unaware of in HITCH. Some light analepsis will be used when showing HITCH escaping from his captors. Temporal editing will be used to tell the story with flashback sequences, but the underlying editing method used will be continuity style.

The overall production design of the film will be akin to a drama with realistic set design, costuming etc. It will be quintessentially British, yet realistic, a good example of this is Richard Curtis’s About Time.

Foley work and soundtrack will play a key part in making this film ‘work’ for the audience. We have chosen to not have any music in the background and to allow the ambience of the room, awkward silences, and hesitant pauses to add to the emotion. There will only be dialogue, room tone and a wild track. There will be minimal usage of sound effects which will be achieved with quality audio with Foley.