Initial Ideas

IDEA 1

STORYLINE:

A girl sent to a mental asylum from a young age says she is haunted by her inner clown, a demon that has haunted her for her entire life.  She endures torture and suffering by old fashioned and traditional techniques which were used in the time 1891 where the film is set. Her inner clown makes this innocent looking girl kill the other inmates and doctors that live among her and somehow she gets away with it by having a chain of witnesses and more murders. The film follows her from a young age to the day she finally escapes her imprisonment along with her inner clown. The structure of the film is in a non linear format with the opening sequence actually showing her at an older age and the story shows flashbacks and memories throughout. I took inspiration from '500 Days of Summer' for its layout as I think it will be very effective to watch.

OPENING SCENE:

The opening scene will start with a moving shot going down into a corridor with patients in their cells making gruesome sounds and some with their arms reaching out of the bars. The camera will then change moving/swiping from cell to cell to the cells on one side of the wall showing a brief introduction to some of the other characters and insane and loud patients each different, until the camera swoops around and stops still on a room with a single girl inside sitting peacefully crossed legged whist strapped into a straight jacket.  As the camera zooms in from the bars into her face she makes eye contact directly with the camera. We hear a sound effect of a cell door being unlocked and a rustle of keys and a nurse starts talking to the patient, patronising and insulting her.  The camera is still focussed on the girl (POV shot) as the nurse opens the cell door and enters the room.  The nurse stands in front of the girl continuing with her insults whilst slamming a food tray down onto the ground.  At this point all we can see are the nurses legs and the girl seen on one side of them, but as the camera moves around crossing the nurses legs it focuses again onto the girls face on the other side but it has now turned into something else -  a males clown face talking as if he was her answering her questions but more deviously.  Whilst we still see and slightly hear the female nurse talking, she is now almost muted as he comments on what she says, mocking her and insulting her. It then returns to the girls face with her telling it, her inner clown to shut up, which the nurse then takes personally and slaps her across the face which is now slightly distracted with her head slightly raised. This event of switching from girl to clown occurs a number of times but with quicker transitions until the girl / clown stands up, head butts the nurse out of anger and starts violently biting into her neck, swapping faces and emotions, laughing, growling as the girl and the clown. It then ends suddenly as the nurse screams in pain and the girl stares into the camera whilst still biting into her neck. 
Black Out.

IDEA 2

STORY LINE:

A criminal raises a daughter teaching her everything he knows but twisting it as if he were the hero, not the villain.  All her life she has been fed a pack of lies but only discovers this towards the end and obviously refuses to accept it.  Her father was once part of the international secret service but turned rogue and joined a mafia like hit group. After he was killed by his previous employers, the international secret service who hunted him down having labelled him as dangerous and a threat, his daughter who escaped the family home sought to seek revenge and to kill every living agent that worked along with her father or those who knew his name. Her training meant that she could not easily be controlled or stopped and so she starts a large disturbance within the service and so they have no choice but to hunt her down.

OPENING SCENE:

The opening scene will start with a shot of a man working out, doing push ups very close to the camera in a dark room.  We then see a part of a choreographed battle which dips into the scene often as it is the centre of the whole opening scene between himself and another man, but we are still focusing on the main protagonist as this will be shown by the other man being blindfolded.  It then goes back to the same man doing push ups again, but this time it is in slow motion and when we see his arms push up again the camera zooms in focusing on his face and eyes. The shot destination changes but we only know this when the man pushes himself up again, still in slow motion, off the ground to start running.  Now we see him in a forest chasing someone that we can see in the distance. The speed is now accelerated as he chases and weaves in between the trees.  We then see him, mid way, jump over a small hill but we see him land into the beginning of the battle choreography again fighting the blindfolded man. It then transitions to him outside a swimming pool ready to dive, preparing in slow motion again until, during mid shot we see him land into a grim looking lake.  These shots will swap from the lake to the swimming pool until it stays on the lake and he climbs out, but as he climbs out of the pool by zooming into his face again, it then switches back to the choreographed battle. They continue to fight and then it changes to the two men running along a loading pier by the grim looking lake, then back to the choreographed battle.  He brings a gun out and the camera focusses in slow motion. We see the trigger pulled, then the shot switches to the pier and the man he was chasing bent down on his knees facing out to the lake with the same gun pointed at his head. We see it being taken off safety and about to shoot, but it transitions to a gun range and 4 shots are fired. It then returns to the pier with the man no longer on his knees but dead on the ground with blood dripping into the water. As the man begins to put his gun away we see glimpses of shadows of someone watching.  He begins to start noticing and looks around but says it is nothing until he bends down to pick something up out of the dead man's pocket.  A shot of his neutral face begins changing into pain as it then cuts to a shot of a knife in his back and it is violently pulled out. A girl is standing dominantly over him, she then bends down, pulls him by the hair and whispers into his ear, ‘for my father’, and continues to slit his neck. She walks away.
 Black Out.

IDEA 3 

STORY LINE:

After a horrifying car crash a troubled teen was believed to have died but he survived or that is what we are led to believe. He was supposed to have died in a road accident in a drug hit by a mafia drug dealer group after owing money for drug taking and satisfying his own addiction.  He had been in hiding for 5 years until he fell unconscious at the wheel one day after visiting a local cafe to carry on his studies. His life had just began to turn around after treatment in rehab.  But in the cafe he was drugged by a new, unknown sort of tranquilliser put into his coffee.  The effect of this drug is that it slows down the pulse rate to one every 60 seconds. It is untraceable to doctors and so he is confirmed dead at the scene.  But he is still  alive and fully conscious.  This was his punishment that the drug dealers had promised would happen if he had not paid the money back, that he would die in the most painful way possible. The film includes a number of flashbacks and it is filmed in the first person from his point of view,  trying to wake up from his drug induced coma and to get himself noticed by doctors or anyone who sees him, but spoilers (sorry) he fails and dies whilst being cremated. During his funeral the leader of the mafia group stands at the back of the room in a long coat and afterwards walks up to the coffin and places a rose on the coffin to show that they have succeeded. 

OPENING SCENE:

The opening scene will begin with a shot of a body bag on a trolley on the way to the hospital morgue for his body to be examined. We hear the voices of two doctors talking briefly about the young man. We then see a shot of the hospital lights flickering on the ceiling as the bed is still moving and then it switches to a POV shot of the body inside the body bag lying still. Then we will see the trolley from a long shot and it turns a corner into another room and though two swinging doors. The shot then switches to a close up on the wheels of the bed turning the corner, it switches quickly to the body being dropped onto the medical metal bed to be examined. Once going through the doors there are quick shots of different forms being written out and preparations of medical equipment for the autopsy.  We then see a shot of the man’s name being written on a tag and placed on his big toe by one of the nurses. An announcement over the tanoy interrupts their work, calling the doctors away to an urgent meeting.  As the doctors are about to leave we see another POV shot of the man starring at his surroundings, very close shots of his eyes moving around, bloodshot and red, frantic and then we see a shot of one of the doctors turning back around, to pick  up a file, and sees him sitting up, we see reaction shot and then a very close shot of her eyes blinking.  They open to reveal that it was all in her imagination and so she walks off out again. We then see another POV shot of the man looking around but paralysed and unable to move. We then see a shot of his hand beginning to twitch and feet start to shake out of frustration but no one is there. The shot switches to another POV shot of him inside himself screaming for help, fragmented shown in fast pace shots, but then it switches to outside and he is just lying there silently as before. We then see a very close shot of his bloodshot eyes again but one begins to cry, as the tear falls down his cheek we see another inside shot of him and he whispers the word ‘Help’.  The camera then returns to a long shot whilst moving back, with the man still lying on the metal slab.  The camera turns and leaves out through the doors.
 Black Out.

IDEA 4

STORYLINE:

A man who has been brought into interrogation has no idea how he got there. He has been accused of murder by the police 7 years ago but has no memory of the crime or of him even committing it.  The police, of course, have head this all before, but as the interrogation continues he learns that this is not an interrogation at all but a set up by the police themselves. 7 years previously he had seen a crime committed against an old homeless man and that 4 police officers, all drunk whilst still on shift, decided to beat him to death. The man had reported it to the police but there was no evidence and no proof as everything had been wiped clean.  To keep their high reputation as a department, the police had closed the case but 7 years later new evidence had emerged and one of their colleagues had been sent to jail, guilty of the murder.  The other officers have a plan to frame the man with the murder as revenge. Does justice really get served? But whose justice? 

OPENING SCENE:

The opening scene will begin with a man in a suit waking up in an empty interrogation room with the lights off.  As he wakes up a very close shot of his face shows him beginning to panic, trying to get up and move, until he realises his leg is chained to the ground. The lights suddenly flicker on and he looks around his surroundings. He realises where he is. He sits down on the ground and tries to remove his foot from the chains but fails. he quickly gets upand starts calling for help but no one answers.  He then walks over to the one sided glass wall, intrigued and looks into it and calls once again.  The shot then switches to the other side of the glass where we see the man inside the room but from a POV shot of the two other men standing.  We see nothing but the legs of these men and their hands reaching into a pack of peanuts. The one who is holding a coffee cup takes a slurp out of it. We then see a man facing a wall with tape recorders and different types of equipment until one of the standing men clicks his fingers to him and he presses a button and music begins to play inside the room which the man inside automatically responds to.  The shot then returns to the man, now wandering around the room screaming for help more and more as the music continues to get louder,  we see a shot of the technician making the music louder on a sound deck. We then see a fast paced roughly cut montage of him becoming angry and he starts flipping the table over and banging on the glass wall and punching the walls which shows a juxtaposition to the uplifting piece of classical music which is being played. The shot then switches suddenly to him sitting in the corner, still with the music playing and him humming along as if he had gone mad,  red eyed with shaking fists.  He looks directly into the camera until a folder is slid under the door, the music is finally quietened and he walks over and picks it up.  We then see different short shot of him rearranging the room and then after he sits back down at the table, he opens the file and discovers inside 5 pictures including the 4 police officers and the old man's corpse. The one picture of the police officer sent to jail has ‘guilty’ written across it boldly in red. We see a reaction shot of his face until he then turns over another picture to read the sentence, “YOU WILL PAY”.  He whispers it under his breath and the door lock begins to unlock.  He stands up, dropping the file onto the ground, which falls in slow motion. The handle begins to turn, he steps back and the door begins to creak open.
 Black Out,
but we hear footsteps and the shutting of the door.