Initial Ideas : Story Telling Unit
On the bus journey home from UCA there was a group of young 15/16 year old school boys who, from first impressions seemed to be the kind that are into big name labels and don't care much for school education. They were discussing the latest football game as well as having a passionate discussion about a game that they had played and lost at school. The boys seemed to be disagreeing with the reason as to why they had lost and an old man sitting next to them asked the rowdier boy to "sit down and be quiet". The boys response wasn't particularly nice but he did what he was told. It was from this moment that i had an idea of replicating this scene between the old man and the young school boy for my screenplay. I completed a mini risk assessment in my head of creating a film on a bus and realised that it probably wasn't the best plan i could think of due to:
- the bus being a public service
- not getting permission from both the bus driver and/or members of the public on the bus
- the bus being a moving vehicle i couldn't be confident that the kit would be safe as well as not having the room to set it up.
- following on from the previous point, the shots might not be as i would expect them to look due to the bumpy ride that you get on a bus.
So after all that, i realised i would need to change the scenery completely and place my two characters in a different situation. I studied the newly found characters further. The old man was VERY old. From what i could see he had little if any hair and wore a cap and a green mac coat with woollen lining in the collar. His coat reminded me of the old uniforms from WW1 which inspired me to make his backstory a soldier who fought in WW1. After a while i found a flaw in this character detail as WW1 soldiers are no longer around in modern day times. So, i figured i would begin to add detail to the idea by changing the time period to the 80s. Again this sprang up another problem, this time regarding to location. I began to think of places i could situate these two characters both realistically as well as where my time period would fit. I remembered doing many a carol concert with my old school in a care home which always seem to have very dated decor, sparking an idea of where i could place my old man.
I began to think of how my other character would come to meet this old man in a care home and what kind of a conversation would begin between this pair of completely different characters. I remembered that when i was 15/16 everyone in school was given the chance to go on work experience and decided that this was a route that i could make my young school boy character explore.
I liked how the old man on the bus grounded the schoolboy because it seemed to amuse the rest of the passengers on board the bus. I figured that I could continue this characteristic through with the old man which created my idea for the change that needs to happen in the story. From this, i decided to place the young schoolboy as my protagonist character as i felt that throughout the bus journey he highlighted to me the biggest change. At the beginning he was a loud mouthed boy who got annoyed at a difference in opinion to being put in his place by the old man and realising its not worth arguing about.
So this gave me the meeting and the change, however i was still yet to give them an excuse to talk to each other. There needed to be a motive for the old man to ground him. I began thinking back to the old man's coat looking like a WW1 trench coat and remembered the John Lewis christmas advert about the Christmas Truce between the german's and the British 1914 where they played football. From here i could develop both characters into having a common ground. Football could be their opening discussion!
I thought about making my schoolboy character's motive to be a professional footballer, sparking the old man to talk about how he played football on the battlefields of WW1.
After the bus journey home i developed this idea into an entire scene after creating character profiles alongside the scenes themselves. The full development of this idea can be found on my blog page.
- the bus being a public service
- not getting permission from both the bus driver and/or members of the public on the bus
- the bus being a moving vehicle i couldn't be confident that the kit would be safe as well as not having the room to set it up.
- following on from the previous point, the shots might not be as i would expect them to look due to the bumpy ride that you get on a bus.
So after all that, i realised i would need to change the scenery completely and place my two characters in a different situation. I studied the newly found characters further. The old man was VERY old. From what i could see he had little if any hair and wore a cap and a green mac coat with woollen lining in the collar. His coat reminded me of the old uniforms from WW1 which inspired me to make his backstory a soldier who fought in WW1. After a while i found a flaw in this character detail as WW1 soldiers are no longer around in modern day times. So, i figured i would begin to add detail to the idea by changing the time period to the 80s. Again this sprang up another problem, this time regarding to location. I began to think of places i could situate these two characters both realistically as well as where my time period would fit. I remembered doing many a carol concert with my old school in a care home which always seem to have very dated decor, sparking an idea of where i could place my old man.
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| A Care Home With Old Decor |
I began to think of how my other character would come to meet this old man in a care home and what kind of a conversation would begin between this pair of completely different characters. I remembered that when i was 15/16 everyone in school was given the chance to go on work experience and decided that this was a route that i could make my young school boy character explore.
I liked how the old man on the bus grounded the schoolboy because it seemed to amuse the rest of the passengers on board the bus. I figured that I could continue this characteristic through with the old man which created my idea for the change that needs to happen in the story. From this, i decided to place the young schoolboy as my protagonist character as i felt that throughout the bus journey he highlighted to me the biggest change. At the beginning he was a loud mouthed boy who got annoyed at a difference in opinion to being put in his place by the old man and realising its not worth arguing about.
So this gave me the meeting and the change, however i was still yet to give them an excuse to talk to each other. There needed to be a motive for the old man to ground him. I began thinking back to the old man's coat looking like a WW1 trench coat and remembered the John Lewis christmas advert about the Christmas Truce between the german's and the British 1914 where they played football. From here i could develop both characters into having a common ground. Football could be their opening discussion!
I thought about making my schoolboy character's motive to be a professional footballer, sparking the old man to talk about how he played football on the battlefields of WW1.
After the bus journey home i developed this idea into an entire scene after creating character profiles alongside the scenes themselves. The full development of this idea can be found on my blog page.
this is some GREAT work. Really good way of developing a story.
ReplyDeletein terms of time-frame - if you looked at a world war 2 veteran then that would place them at the right age for today... however, that loses your idea about the football match.
Think of the old man - the easy way to think is he is "right" the young boy in "wrong"... but maybe find a way of the old man having something that's not quite at first thought... maybe he has a secret... maybe he changes too... the boy just learning to not to argue, is not a change enough in its own - he needs a new outlook etc.