Maggie and Natalie are young women working for ‘Pineapple’
an English Multinational Corporation headquartered in London, which designs,
develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, online services,
and personal computers. After working
there for 5 years Natalie has earned the trust of her co-workers and often
deals with many of the companies digressions as well as dealing with the company
finances. Natalie gains no credit despite the hard work she does, besides
perhaps the occasional thanks from her boss who relishes in all the profits. Maggie
however after only 6 months decides she’s had enough of her small apartment and
cheap clothes and manages to manipulate and convince Natalie that she deserves
more than occasional thanks. Together they embezzle millions, at first
everything is great, they get designer clothes, new cars, move into luxury
Chelsea apartments. Suddenly everything starts to fall apart as Hannah, Natalie’s
sister, becomes suspicious and eventually realises what they have been doing.
Hannah threatens to go to the police if the money isn’t returned to company as
she believes what they have done is morally wrong.
Natalie tells Maggie about
her sister and Maggie is furious, she refuses to go back to the life she had
before, saying to Natalie “If you don’t fix this problem, I will”. Natalie
struggles through the day terrified that any minute the police could burst
through her door. When she is cooking dinner the phone rings, she answers and
immediately hears two gun shots followed by the words “Problem solved”. Instantly believing her
sister has been shot she breaks down.
Angry and confused she goes to the police
and confess’. Yet the police don’t believe Natalie’s story telling her how earlier
a young lady (Maggie) had come in and told them everything.
Maggie had blamed everything on Natalie, showing various
documents signed by Natalie to support her statements Maggie explained she hadn’t
come forward with information sooner as she was afraid of being implicated. Natalie
is arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. As she’s arrested she walks
past the interview room and sees her sister alive and standing with Maggie
comforting her. We then discover that after Hannah threatened to go to the
police, Maggie visited her, explaining how they could split the money and leave
Natalie with the blame convincing her to keep quiet. The final sequence is
Maggie and Hannah driving out of London laughing in an brand new Porsche.
The highlighted section is what will be using as our opening
sequence.
This is the film story? You need to concentrate more now on the opening sequence and the actual film plot. Will it be a non linear plot? Once the highlighted section has been seen, we will then go into a flashback? I am assuming that this is how the sequence will unravel?
ReplyDelete1. Conversation where Natalie and maggie are having heated discussion (face to face?). Good opportunity for a lot of S / RS work here. Demanding of your actors to make this convincing. Costume will have to reveal that they are living the high life? Your dialogue sequence here just be thought through, also where will this meeting be taking place - in a car, a house, remember - these two have been living the highlife through their illicit earnings. Some thought required here to make it convincing.
2. When the threat is then made that she had better fix the problem - again, great thought needs to go into how this is communicated with real emphasis to your audience.
3. The next part is perhaps more difficult - when she is worrying about what will happen - will you show this or not? If not, how will you make reference to it. It is important because you want your audience to also believe that the girl will be going to the police. Needs careful thought. Just a suggestion, but it could be a series of phone calls through the day (on her mobile - call withheld or unknown number and she just ignores them during the day?
4. Then the actual phone call. Sound Effects are crucial here.
5. You could end it here and then a fade to black and then a 5 years earlier type thing perhaps which suggests the rest of the film.
This has potential but, as with every opening, requires very careful thinking about and planning. Don't make it too complicated. Remember who your characters are - and you have to create them. Its beauty is also its simplicity - only two characters.