The Meeting - Development Day

Throughout the past week I've been thinking of ideas for my short film. I thought of a lot of different possible stories including somebody waking up from a coma and meeting another character, to somebody going missing and finally being reunited with a loved one. Weighing up the pro's and con's of my ideas and the one I believed in most for this particular brief, I decided to go with the idea that someone is meeting there biological parents for the first time. I decided on this idea as I knew I could highly dramatise the scenes and push a lot of emotions and feelings through both narration and non narration sequences. I also thought about the goal and change of my idea and how I could create a twist ending to what the audience may think could happen to what actually happens.

To develop our ideas further, we was set a 'Development Day' task. This would be so that each individual could pitch out their idea to a small group; we would all then give honest critical feedback and help each other out on what else could be added or taken away from the idea. We each started out with a piece of paper that had our ideas on which I've shown below.

Development Day:

Idea Facts

Student Name: Ruby Rogers

Genre: Comedy Thriller Drama

Location: The scene starts with a split screen of the two characters bedrooms, the camera would then cut to them living their everyday life routines, with the idea of showing how different both characters are. The two characters meeting location would be in the living room.

Characters: Unsure on the genres however I want either a mother and son or a father and son.

Example; (genders aren't definite yet)

CHARACTER 1: The father (Rick) is very uptight and stubborn. He is scrubby, untidy and unemployed, however he earns money by doing dodgy jobs and living off benefits. As a person the Dad doesn't care too much about anyone and can be very moody. Living by himself leads him to be quite an isolated and lonely man. The father is a heavy drug abuser and doesn't take care of him self at all - believing there isn't anything wrong with him and that he would change for no body.

CHARACTER 2: A very bubbly naive teenage boy (Josh, around the age 18). Highly OCD and takes care of himself very well. Living with all females all his life has led him to have quite a feminine soft side to him, which pushes him to want a father figure in his life when he finds out he was adopted as he has always known he's not fit in with friends and family all his life.

Goal: The son wants to connect with his Dad and thinks they will both bond and be able to have a strong relationship. Longingly waiting to meet his father, the teen has built up very high expectations of what meeting his Dad is going to be like and hasn't considered the negatives at all as he's built up such a beautiful, happy picture in his imagination of the day they meet. 

 Problem: The Dad is a drug abusive man slob who has a lot of problems and is the complete opposite of his son, who is a loving, caring, OCD neat freak. The two don’t get along and the Dad only meets him so the son stops nagging him to meet through sending many letters to him. Both characters soon realise they are the complete opposite of each other. One of them needs to change before starting a father/son relationship could even be considered.

 Change: The son realizes his father isn’t the man he expected him to be and begins realizing that the family he already has is all he needs.

The Idea: A young boy discovers he was adopted at birth when he turns 18. Being in such a close knit heavily female family, the boy realizes he might need a father figure in his life and wants to trace his biological father and try connect with him. As he is so young and naïve he has a high expectation that when they meet for the first time it’s going to be perfect and his Dad is going to be a successful kind man who will take him under his wing. However, both characters don’t get along and don’t relate to each other at all.

After development day. 

After creating the ideas for our scripts, we was put into a group of 4. We then each took it in turns to pitch our idea to everyone and share ideas and thoughts on what we could change.
The development day really helped my idea as although I had written only one idea down, I also told the group one of my other ideas. However, the group said that the adoption story was much stronger than meeting someone online. The group also said I should use subliminal messages to show the boy looking back on photos so that when he meets his Dad and shows the photos again, the audience will automatically remember - this idea was taken from the film 'Soft' when the baseball bat is slightly shown towards the beginning of the film which we don't particularly take note of, however we then see it used again when the boy takes it and remember seeing it earlier.

My group also helped me change the location for my story as originally I chose the living room to be the main location, however, I think that basing my story in a kitchen would prove to show more isolation and interrogation as they can be sat opposite each other at the table. I haven't yet decided if I want the location to be the fathers kitchen or the son's as using the fathers location could show how badly he lives compared the young boy's sparkling OCD home. I also think it would make more sense if I use the fathers location as it would make more sense than the father coming to the family home.