3rd group meeting

Today Abi, Dan and I met up to discuss our idea in more detail and tackle character development issues and progress with storyline ideas. 

We have decided on some personality traits of our characters. 

Man

• Arrogant.
• Somewhat pretentious/a bit of a hipster. Very much concerned with appearing cool.
• Physically attractive.
• Slightly rude

Woman

• Visually quite plain and unassuming.
• Chatty and girly. 
• Bossy and confident. Is not afraid to put people in their place.

We thought their relationship could begin with the man trying to escape the situation, but realising he's trapped. We thought the woman could be quite eager to befriend the man as he is attractive, and so thought she could continuously try to instigate conversation with him. He could not be very impressed and find her slightly tedious, as her topics of conversation aren't the most riveting and she could be slightly ditsy. We thought perhaps the man could then snap at her and be rude, which in turn shows another side to the woman, who doesn't accept any disrespect. We thought that the man could then try harder to get to know her and start to like her, but thought that she could begin to dislike him. At the end we thought it'd be nice to show them both warming to each other, and on the pivotal moment of them deciding to see one another again, we thought that the store should reopen, leaving the ending on a cliffhanger.

In this group meeting we also watched through a number of sequences to inspire idea's. I showed the others my favourite film Once, as I thought the dialogue and the style of naturalistic acting could be something which we could replicate, however Dan and Abi were put off by the low-budget filming quality and did not appear to enjoy the style. We did also watch a short BBC film, called Turning, which we found on a blog. We all agreed that we liked the eccentricity and grotesqueness of it, and that certain quirky style may be something which we could try to reproduce in our film:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVpUJ_tYHpA

We feel that the devil is in the detail and so tried to come up with some sequences and situations to include in our script:

• We thought that perhaps the man could be dressed up as a cowboy, supposedly from a fancy dress party that he attended the previous night. This would add some comedic value to the film, as the camera could focus only on his face to begin with and then draw back to reveal the tongue in cheek costume - perhaps some of which could be scattered around different locations within the department store. Not only would this be humorous, but would provide a segway into some of the intertextual sequences which we wanted to include (i.e. we could create a cowboy/western type imagination sequence, spawning from this costume) As well as this, the idea of finding items of clothing or belongings spread around the store, provides a nod to the happenings of the previous night, which could also make way for some blurry flashbacks, as well as aiding continuity (i.e. the physical progression from room to room/setting to setting)
• We thought it would be humorous to use the props that came with this costume and thought that in one scene, where both characters are bored, the male character could annoy the female character by squirting his water pistol (i.e. cowboy gun) at her repeatedly. We thought that this could also provide a transition from the imaginary cowboy scene back to reality, and also display progression in time.
• We liked the idea of doing a comedic montage sequence to display the passing of time, as well as underline the fact that the two characters are irritating each other, or doing random irrelevant activities to pass the time. I thought of a specific scene in the film Wanderlust that displays the shifting dynamic of a relationship during a road trip, in a humorous way: 

Something similar in style to this may be effective to create.

• We felt that the ways in which the man could irritate the woman is by being highly pretentious and self assured. We thought he could quote films regularly and try to make poignant statements. We thought that the woman could be overly chatty and talk about quite tame, uninteresting subjects. However, I do worry that these characters could became caricatures, and so I feel we'll have to reign in the dialogue quite a lot so that they still seem believable. I think that we'll have to definitely delve a bit deeper into the characters psyche.
• We have yet to find a subject matter for the characters to somewhat bond over. We will have to look into this in further detail in our next meeting.

I asked my group the following questions which I felt needed answering from my last blog:  

• 1. Why is the department store open late?
• 2. Why is there no security? Should we even make reference to this?
• 3. Do the drunk man and woman know each other before this night? Do we want the audience to keep guessing for the first few minutes as to whether they know each other? Does it turn out that they are actually a couple at the end, and that everything they have been telling each other before hand is fabricated and some sort of role-play?
• 4. Do we want to include flashbacks of their night, previous to them being locked in a department store?
• 5. What are their personalities like? What are their interests? What do they look like? What is their relationship like with one another?
• 6. What do they learn from one another?
• 7. Do they go their separate ways after this night?
• 8. Do they both comically role-play what their life would be like if they were together? i.e. domestic bliss or depressing.
• 9. How will we be able to film in a department store? Will we have to build sets?

The others agreed that, given the length of the film, some of these issues (such as in bullet points 1 and 2) do not have to be explicitly addressed, and sometimes it adds to the charm of the piece if its a little more vague and unanswered. We decided that the the man and woman should not know one another, as this allows them to find out information about each other, as and when the audience do. We would like to include flashbacks as this will allow us to confuse the audience in terms of which sequence is in real time, which is imagined and which is a flashback. We still have to work on number 5 as it stands, but we definitely have more of an idea about our characters following on from this session. Number 6 is one which we definitely have to consider in further detail. We seem to have answered number 7 by deciding that we want to leave it unanswered: i.e. the audience doesn't know if they do see each other again. We have decided that the characters will definitely reenact certain aspects of their relationship in the style of a different textual genre. As it stands we know that we can definitely use Abi's dad's bathroom and kitchen store.