Final Synopsis

After researching into thriller short films, Abigail and I feel very confident with our choice. We feel it is something we can really be creative with and enjoy. We now have the knowledge we need to manipulate conventions of thriller short films, into ours to make it more realistic and professional. We therefore feel ready to create out final synopsis for our short film.

Above is a picture of our final synopsis. It was important to make the synopsis to summarise our final plot for the short film. Also going into brief detail of any shot ideas, edits etc. This allows us to start doing in-depth plans of what we will need to plan before filming. Also as we are working in a group, we need to have an agreed plan of what we want to do, and the synopsis allows us to combine our ideas into one and build around it.

As you can see on the image, I layed out the time scale of our film, and created a diagram of how the viewer would see the plot and in what order. Obviously we wouldn't need to film in this specific order, however recording the two narratives and organising where they will go now will make it easier for when we come to the editing stage. I also did a time prediction, to get an understanding of how our limit of 5 minutes will pan out. And have colour coded the different narratives to be more clear.

This is also the stage were we decided to not include dialogue into our Short film. Many of the thriller short films we researched into didn't consist of large amounts of dialogue. They were all very brief to create the mysterious atmosphere. Also we felt the plot was so strong we wanted it to essentially speak for itself, the silence engages the audience as a technique making them want to be told more and know what is going on. The emphasis on diagetic sound such as breathing and footsteps will built tension, with any speech being spontaneous for the actors making it more realistic, and a good representation of real life.

We wanted to create a parallel narrative to create that intriguing and captivating story for the viewer. This can determin for a viewer to think and feel a wider range of responses by providing differing views or perspectives in experiencing and viewing the action. There are many aspects of the final narrative we have chosen. As it is considered a 'complex narrative structure',  conventions such as (shown below), will be considered and studied by myself and Abigail to develop our work:

• Repetition
• Flashbacks
• different character' point of view
• different time frames
• flash forwards
• multiple plot lines converging at the end
• pre-figuring of events that are yet to occur
• backwards story telling, where the outcome is shown first and explained through the plot

 As our decision of challenging Todorov's narrative theory, it sways to linking towards Claude Levi Strauss's. His theory reflects the binary oppositions. This means that Strauss looked at opposite values which reveal the strudture of media texts. For example 'Good' and 'Evil'. He did not look at the order in which the events occurred but the deeper meanings of themes. Conventional and common binary oppositions used in today's media include:

Earth                Space

Good                    Evil

Humans             Aliens

Past                 Present

Normal            Strange

Known         Unknown