Final Major Project - The Interview

As I needed something visual for the end of year Screening, I teamed up with James Ogden, Ashley John and Scott Fisher (all whom were just writing for their projects) and we created a series of interviews for the showing.

These interviews are each of us in turn, talking about our project. We used all of the same questions for each interview, including things such as "How did you think of the idea?" and "What are your hopes for the project in the future?".

In order to do these, we used a green screen. This enabled me to learn how to edit green screens on after effects. We also, rather than a standard boring background, wanted to make it look like we were in locations relevant to each of our pieces - hence the GreenScreen. This is known as Photorealism. We managed to edit the lighting accordingly, and film each of us in a way that we were able to input ourselves into a good location - for example, my piece is very dark and gothic, and a basement features prominently throughout, so I put myself in a very dark basement.

This benefited us greatly, helping me to learn new skills in editing, as well as creating something solid that can be used within the screening.

I will also be submitting this interview as part of my project, as I believe it helps to give a personal opinion of exactly what my project is and why I decided to do it.

Final Major Project - Bible Death Research

Whilst writing my treatments, I needed to find some interesting ways that Edward and Evelyn could murder people. Wanting to keep some form of religious aspect, I found some of the most gruesome Bible deaths I could find, and I either combined or modernised them. Whilst it may have been fun to write these deaths in a script format, I had just as much fun writing them out as treatments.

One death I found, was about a couple being buried alive, this happens in the Old Testament. Thus, I gave Edward and Evelyn a murder in which they bury a couple alive for "sending their son to hell".

Possibly my favourite death I wrote about in the treatments was the combination of two from The Old Testament. The first was about King Eglon - a mad king who suppressed Israel during the time of the Judges. Because of his treachery, he was approached by one of the Judges, Ehud, who promptly said to him "I have a message from God for you" and proceeded to stab him in the stomach - ultimately killing him.

The next one I found was the Third Son of King David, Absolom. After betraying his father, war ensued, and during this war, Absolom was completely routed from his supporters. As he was being chased down, he got his long flowing hair caught in the branches of a tree. Unable to escape, he was found by his pursuers, who executed him by stabbing him multiple times with pikes, leaving his corpse hanging in the tree he was caught in.

I took these two deaths, and combined them. There is a point when the twins are chasing down a Police Officer. Whilst she runs away from them, in the forest, she gets her hair caught in a tree, thus getting stuck there. Upon finding her stuck, Edward quotes Ehud's line "I have a message from God for you" and he plunges a knife into the Officer's stomach. This is then followed by him and his sister mercilessly stabbing her multiple times, leaving her corpse in the tree for the police to find.

I had great fun researching all of this and it really aided me in thinking of creative and interesting new ways to murder someone (within my script of course!), and keeping it Bibular, I stuck to the religious themes of my story overall.

Final Major Project - Treatment writing and editing

Whilst writing the treatments, I had a bit of a problem. I was making things too hard for myself by going into too much detail. I was also not spacing them out enough.

To get around this, as well as spacing them out in order to give the reader an easier read, I actually didn't find it too hard to cut them down. Where I was including every single minor detail, so it would read like a script, I summarised things a lot more.

Also included in a few treatments are some essential lines of dialogue, that I felt needed to be put across, but there aren't too many.

In the end, I feel my treatments tell a good story, and are presented in a way that is interesting and easy to read. There are times when I believe I may have gone into slightly too much detail, but I have summarised as best I could. One of my main issues whilst writing these was getting around having too much detail. As I say, some points are probably too detailed, however, the only reason behind this is because there was no other way to get around saying what I wanted to in order for the story to progress.

Being a crime/thriller drama series, there are many small things that happen, sometimes a lot happens in just one scene, thus I found it hard to summarise it into just one or two 5 line paragraphs. I do however, believe that these have come out to the best of my ability, and I am happy and proud with the story I have come up with, as well as how they are written.

Final Major Project - Final Drafts of Script

When I got to the final few drafts of my script, it was brought to my attention that there was a major flaw within them - the setting.

Initially, I had a very Gothic undertone to the piece. Within this, I had the main setting being the Tamlock residence - a Gothic manor house. This had acres and acres of grounds, was very large itself and even had a butler. This matched the inside of the house, filled with religious iconography and old furniture. This however, as I was informed, seemed too obvious.

The problem was, if you saw this house on a screen, you know exactly what's going to happen on the inside. Something reflective of what you are seeing on the outside. The storyline of my piece would have been obvious and an audience would be able to guess what will happen in this setting. So I changed it.

I changed it to a standard semi-detached house in a suburban estate in the country side. This, I think, would let many people relate, as many people live on a place like this, but I gave it a twist - I kept it the same on the inside. So initially, when the reader were to look at this house, they would think that nothing out of the ordinary is going on here, but when you get to the inside, you realise just how dark and backwards the family and the house really is.

This change led me to having to change Roland as well. Initially, he was the twins Butler, but this was changed to their Grandfather, who lives adjacent to them. This way I was able to keep the paternal instincts Roland felt towards the twins, and have it justified rather than having him as a family friend or neighbour.

Because of this, I felt I had to change Edward slightly as well. Not his personality, but his clothing. Initially he was going to dress himself very gothic - like an old victorian gentleman, complete with cravat. This changed to a slightly emoesque style for him. Dark skinny jeans and dark shirts, with all the buttons done up. I felt by doing this, it modernised the character slightly and it also gave the same feel as the house - normal on the outside, but dark and twisted on the inside.

Another problem that came up was Edward murdering Evelyn's boyfriend, Richard. Reading through, there wasn't any real probable cause for Edward killing him, apart from him not liking him. It was me, as a writer, killing someone for the sake of killing someone. So I decided to give Edward a reason to kill him.

Edward now tries to connect with him, but discovers that Richard is cheating on his sister. Finding this inexcusable, Edward then takes things a step too far and decides to murder him - and the woman he was cheating on Evelyn with - leading to a very dark and disturbing murder/kidnapping couple of scenes.

One major issues I came up all over my piece was being too melodramatic as well (as mentioned in an earlier post). But other than that, I made things too long. A scene that needed to only be a few lines would be drawn out for as long as 4 pages at a time. By finding these scenes and singling them out, I was able to cut them down, making them more dynamic by just being a couple of lines in length - also allowing for more plot lines and things to happen within the story as it gave me more space to write more.

Final Major Project - Character Inclusion

Whilst writing the treatments, there were a few characters I had to introduce in order to improve the story.

The first, was a Detective, originally named John Hastings. The idea of Hastings was to be the Detective set on the murder investigations from the killings that Edward and Evelyn performed. There was a problem with John however and that was the way I introduced him. Initially, he just first appeared in a Police Station, nothing exciting or original at all. It was also pointed out to me, that my script is very Male dominated. So I made a few changes.

The first change I made was turning John into a woman, so I was able to have another central female character in my script. Enter, Detective Charli Hastings. Charli is not your ordinary police detective. She is first introduced whilst having aggressive sex and taking cocaine with a small time mafia leader, Fred. This immediately gives a sense of surprise to the reader and to the audience when they find out she is actually a Detective. She is passionate and driven, but at the same time wrestles with what she wants. On the one hand, she thinks she is in love with Fred, so will do anything for him, but on the other hand, she does love her work and is passionate about doing it correctly, and solving the Michael Yates case (the murder the twins did which she is assigned to investigate).

This leads me to talking about Fred. Initially, I wasn't too sure about where to go with him, whether to just have him as a background character or not. I decided I liked the idea of having a small time mafia/gang involved, as it made for fun and interesting plot devices I could use as both sub-plots and part of the main story.

Fred himself seems quite jolly and charming, but is actually quite sinister. At one point, he even gets Charli to show her loyalty to the gang and to him by murdering someone in cold blood - which she does, despite being a Police Detective. I also included that Fred knows the twins Grandfather, Roland, as they used to work together - Roland used to run Fred's gang with him.

This all lead up to Charli eventually choosing her job over Fred, so a massive Dog-Cat-Mouse chase ensues in the final couple of episodes, between Fred, Charli and the twins. Essentially, I believe bringing Fred into it was a good decision, as it gave the story slightly more depth rather than it just being about the police and twin killers - I could do more with extra supporting characters, making it easier to span over 6 episodes.

The one problem I found with introducing Fred into it, is even though he is used as a plot device mechanic, he was a decision I made to introduce relatively late into the process. This gave the draw back of his character not being developed as much as the other characters. That isn't to say he doesn't help the story, but I do believe if I had more time, or had time to work on him as a character more, then I would have been able to have created a more solid character who perhaps, would have fit in even better with the story.

Final Major Project - Script Length

When it came to writing draft number 5 of my script, I decided not to cut out as much as I had initially planned to do.

There is a variation on a 2-part Pilot episode, which I took into consideration. This is the extended pilot episode, where the first episode of a new series will be around 15 minutes longer than regular episodes in the season.

The reason behind this being, a writer/director is able to tell more of the story in order to draw the audience in to watching more. Examples of an extended hour long pilot, compared to a standard 45 minute episode are, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and more recently, The Flash.

By keeping my script at 60 pages, therefore being an hour in length, it gave me more room to tell more of a story, involving two murders, and showing the downfall of both my major characters, Edward and Evelyn. This then ties in for setting up for the rest of the series, where they are both already killers, allowing the story to move forward quicker in episodes 2 through 6.