Plot Outline

I have come up with my plot outline for my film, based on Pinocchio. 

• Opens with a newspaper report on P’s father’s death and there is narration about the murder

• Zooms into photo of the body on the newspaper article

• Photograph flashes of the body and the sound of sirens fade in. The shot fades into there same shot, however at the actual scene and not just a photograph (after the camera flash)

• Shots of the crime scene and the detective (area of grass beside a body of water, e.g. lake)

• Wide shot, the wind blows and a card can be seen blowing in the wind towards the water

• Close up of the card landing on the water, reads “Kill   $50,000”

• Cross fade into the next shot; graphic match of a similar card that is played on a table that reads “lure the boss’ son into the gang   $20,000” (or something similar). The card is being pulled away by the femme fatale

• Wide shot revealing the femme fatale and two others at a table, gambling

• Dialogue from femme fatale “I’ll do my best” (or something similar), screen fades to black then fades to next shot

• P is walking in the street, she approaches him and starts talking to him. A number of different shots are shown conveying the progression of the relationship, fade into one another, voice over

• Shot of the same group gambling, plus P. Someone slides a card over to P and a close up is shown “kill   $50,000”

• P walking in street, approaches friend, friends expresses concern of his new life involved in crime, P pulls a gun from his coat and shoots him

• Photograph flash of dead body, graphic match of a photograph on the gambling table, zooms out

• Man throws a bag of money/stacks of notes on the table, P looks clearly impressed, is told that he’ll get it next time

• Fast motion shots, fade into one another (similar to a time lapse), all of them gambling, etc.

• Back to normal speed: close up as P rolls dice and gets a card that says “Rob a bank with a partner   $60,000”, fades to black then fades to next shot

• Shots of them opening door to bank, caught by guard, femme fatale talks herself out of it with her charm, guard tells her to leave and goes to call police on P, P shoots him

• Outside: meets as a group, P asks where his money is, they hand over a bag filled with stacks of notes

• Walks away from the group, pulls out a stack, inspects it and realises it is fake. Voiceover of his thoughts 

• Shadow follows him, shoots twice, misses and ends up shooting the bag and his leg. The motive of this was that the person did not want anyone to know of their scam so they attempted to kill him

• Limps into home, mother asks what happened to his leg and he lies about it to stay out of trouble

• Shots fading into one another, him in his bedroom looking at fake money, frustrated, etc., voiceover of how it was a mistake, won't be involved anymore, should've listened to friend, etc., fades to black then to next shot

• Leaves home next day and encounters the femme fatale, threatens her with gun and asks for money, the two other men come out from hiding and both point their guns at him, demanding him to leave

• Shot of the three at the gambling table, card saying “Kill   $50,000” is slid to a player (not revealed who)

• Extreme close up of gun shooting a bullet, P dead on the grass, photo flashed of the body

• Graphic match with the photo on the board, zooms out and a pin board is revealed with photographs and information about the entire case (revealed that the deaths of the father and P were at the same time and the kill card was the same one that was shown in the beginning) and shows the three suspects (three gamblers)

• Person enters room and hands detective the card saying “Here’s new evidence”, close up of card and zooms in on the red lipstick at the top, voiceover by detective that femme fatale is the only suspect left

• Zoom in on her photo on the board, graphic match with a shot of her getting her mugshot taken. Camera flashes and the screen fades to black

• Southport Broadwater used as the grassed area/lake for the crime scene

• Circular table and couches in the Jennifer Reeves building used as the gambling table

• Alleyway on Scarborough Street with the wall art used as the alleyway/street

• Classroom used as the bank

• My house used as Percival’s mother’s house

• Computer room in the old library used as the detective’s office

• Blank wall in my house used as the backdrop for Kat’s mugshot scene

New Fairytale

For homework, I looked through some different fairytales that would be good to change into a film noir film. I was reading through a couple and came across Pinocchio. I think that this fairytale would be interesting to transform into our film as there is a lot happening in the plot and there are many aspects that can be seen as metaphors. For example, the part of the plot where the Fox and the Cat deceive Pinocchio into investing money and then stealing it from him can be translated into the femme fatale luring Pinocchio into a life of crime and promising him a large gain that he doesn't receive.

I talked to the group about my idea and they seemed to like it, so we have decided on this one rather than The Poor Boy in the Grave. We brainstormed some ideas for our new storyline and came up with a general idea:

- The femme fatale (the Fox and the Cat) lures Pinocchio into a life of crime involving gambling and promises he will earn a lot of money doing so
- Playing cards with instructions on them (e.g. Kill for $50,000)
- Pinocchio's father is murdered in the beginning
- Pinocchio's friend (talking cricket) is killed by Pinocchio after he tries to warn him about the dangers of being involved in gambling
- Pinocchio completes a few of the crimes instructed on the cards, however doesn't receive the money that he is owed from them
- It is revealed at the end that the femme fatale was the killer

Since the draft for the design suite is due in less than a week, we have decided that we're going to create our own stories, then for the film task we will be choosing one as a base then merging our ideas to create a new story.

Idea Two

After brainstorming a few ideas on how to transform The Poor Boy in the Grave into a film noir style film, we decided against this fairytale. It is too difficult to change the different characters into the femme fatale, the detective, etc. and the storyline is really quite dark with not very much happening, so we decided to take another look at other fairytales we can do. This held us back a bit with time as most of the other groups have sorted out which fairytale they are doing and have started working on their plot for their film. However once we work out the fairytale we are doing, which will be next lesson, we should be able to get some rough ideas together quite quickly.

Our brainstorming for The Poor Boy in the Grave is:

- The 'poor boy' would be a female, rather than a male
- The foster mother is the femme fatale; her and the detective are lovers
- The detective kills the daughter (instead of suicide)
- The parents hired a hitman to kill their daughter (who is the bad detective)
- Was killed with poison and they planned to make it look like a suicide
- There is an investigation involving the bad detective and a good detective
- The film begins with an interview in the detective's office - the mother and father acting really upset about the murder

Brainstorming - Our First Idea

We have been looking at different fairytales that we can turn into a film noir this lesson and we have been trying to find a good one that is not very common. Eliza found one called The Poor Boy in the Grave. Here is an outline of the story:

- There is a foster boy whose parents are both dead

- His foster parents had bad hearts and were greedy with their money and belongings

- The boy therefore ate very little, and was still punished/abused

- One day he had to watch a hen and her chickens, but a hawk flew down and stole the hen

- The boy called out "Thief! Thief! Rascal!" but the hawk didn't return the hen

- The father came out after hearing the yelling and beat the boy as he saw one of the chickens was missing

- The boy then had to take care of the chickens without the hen, which was difficult as they kept running around

- He tied them together so that they couldn't run around anymore, however, the hawk returned and stole them

- When his father saw what happened, he beat the boy so much he couldn't move from his bed for several days

- The father send the boy to a judge, with a basketful of grapes and a letter

- This tormented the boy as he was starving, and he therefore ate two bunches of grapes

- He took the basket to the judge and the judge read the letter and said "Two clusters are wanting"

- The boy confessed he had eaten them because he was starving, and the judge wrote a letter to the father asking for the same amount of grapes again

- The boy ate the two bunches again, took the letter out of the basket and hid it under a stone

- The judge made him explain why the bunches were gone again

- The judge wrote a letter to the father to feed him and teach him right from wrong

- The father gave the boy a task and threatened him with a beating if he did not complete it

- He accidentally cut his coat as well as the straw and was frightened his father might kill him for it and decided he would rather take his own life, than have his father take it

- He drank some poison that they had and said "Folks say death is bitter, but it tastes very sweet to me"

- He sat in a chair waiting to die, however he felt strengthened rather than becoming weaker
- He drank the rest and made his was to the graveyard where he laid himself in a newly dug grave
- He died and after his father found out, he was terrified he'd be brought to justice
- He fainted and his wife ran to aid him with a pan of hot fat
- The flames from the pan spread and lit the house on fire and they were forced to live the rest of their lives in poverty and misery, and suffered from a guilty conscious

This fairytale is really dark so if we chose to use this, we would have to change a couple of aspects so that it wasn't as dark. I think that the line "Folks say death is bitter, but it tastes very sweet to me" would be cool to use in the film if we end up choosing this fairytale.

Fairytale to Film Noir

We received our task for this term which is to transform a fairytale of our choosing into a film noir style film. I am looking forward to this task as film noir is probably my favourite style of film and I usually have the most fun in creating the storyline and filming it, especially using the different lighting and shadows. It is a group task this term and I'm not quite sure how it's going to work out due to the fact that we have to create different storylines in the planning, then merge our ideas as a group for the actual film. 

I am in a group with Eliza and Rose, two people I have never worked with before in film. I hope that we will work well together as a group; I really like their films that they have done in the past, so I think that our film should turn out good, as we can all get tips from one another for editing. The only thing I'm worried about regarding this is that our editing styles are very different so it might look a bit weird when we put our thirds of editing together.