Screenplay - Initial Ideas

 Outline of Screenplay - (still in progress)

 

 

The contrast of someone’s old life vs their new 

A woman who lived a life in a structured society under it’s influence to then living a life away from it all. 

 

I will be showing my story through a series of flashbacks and flash forwards that I intend to contrast one another regarding the values and life style of my main character as well as the impact that the world has one her. The woman will be seen struggling with an everyday situation, such as going to work or being obsessed over social media to be shown in the contrasting setting of a more natural world where she has to make her own life by building or being her own boss ect. Away from the expectations of the busy society she lived in. It will not really centre around a main plot (note: maybe add in the actual transition from this old life to new...or keep that a mystery, maybe irrelevant? Also need to make her progression more obvious to show what she had to work for to get where she is...or maybe that is irrelevant too) but rather show a personal and emotional journey/development. I intend to keep the scenes simple and short and only have 2 main characters and 2 that just appear once for character development purposes.

 

This starts off with us being by a lake seeing her (unknown at the time) building a fence around the loch but we only see a small snippet before the sound of the hammer is replaced by the slam of a car door and we see the same woman stressing about the annoyances of daily life that are amplified by the pressure to perform to a certain standard. She is clearly frustrated about a long line of things that have built up, not just this stand-alone event. This contrasts with her new life out of a busy London setting into a small village where things are ultimately different. It later shows moments such as her being obsessed with social media and the image that she portrays to people to her now being focused on physically painting the world around her for her own benefit rather than to "post". Other things like trying to prove her self in her field to her using the harsh judgement to benefit and inspire her to work harder to get out of this world and make her own with her own shop and her own ideas (she has to work harder but it lacks the controlled system ordinary people live in?). I chose London as the starting point (or maybe I'll change it to America?) to focus on the idea that people believe big dreams happen in a big city and only happiness can be found in structured work - but contrast to her having materialistically, less (need to make that more obvious in the screenplay) but emotionally having more. I don't plan on specifying exactly where she moves to as I'm not sure if it is actually necessary as the main focus is on the fact that she has made an escape no matter where it is (maybe??). I don't want it to show that she has disconnected from society completely as she will just live in a village somewhere, but rather she has moved from what is expected in life to a place where people might require less materialism and forced ideas, but mainly, the big move is from her as a stationary character to now being someone a bit more true to themselves?

(Not sure how to fit this to Todorov's narrative theory?)

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